Joseph Goldstein On: Impermanence, Impersonality, And How To Use Mindfulness To Be More Creative

One of my favorite episodes that we've recorded in a long while. Joseph Goldstein https://www.dharma.org/teacher/joseph-goldstein/ is a cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society https://www.dharma.org/ and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/, both in Barre, Massachusetts. He is the author of Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening, A Heart Full of Peace, One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism, Insight Meditation and The Experience of Insight: A Simple and Direct Guide to Buddhist Meditation. Joseph has studied and practiced meditation since 1967 under the guidance of eminent teachers from India, Burma, and Tibet and he leads Insight Meditation retreats around the world. This year, IMS printed a collection of Joseph's poetry, titled Dreamscapes of the Mind: Poems and Reflections. The book includes 21 poems and almost a dozen short verses. We have made copies available for a suggested donation of $12 to support IMS's Retreat Center scholarship fund (shipping to U. S. addresses only). For a copy of Joseph's book, visit give.dharma.org/JGpoetry http://give.dharma.org/JGpoetry In this episode we talk about: Impermanence, impersonality, and the vast spaciousness of the mind Mortality How we can use mindfulness to be more creative Joseph reads one of his favorite poems (and a couple others) Thoughts on how to approach death What Joseph means by dreamscape of the mind Deep Dharma topics like Nirvana, rebirth, taking refuge and more Related Episodes: Joseph Goldstein + Mark Epstein On: How To Handle Unwanted Experiences, How Not To Waste Your Suffering & The Overlap Between Buddhism + Therapy https://www.meditatehappier.com/podcast/tph/joseph-mark-live I Just Did A 10-Day Silent Meditation Retreat With Joseph Goldstein. Here's What I Learned https://www.happierapp.com/podcast/tph/retreat-episode-829 Dr. Mark Epstein On: How To Transform Your Neuroses Into "Little Shmoos" https://www.happierapp.com/podcast/tph/mark-epstein-10th Nirvana | Joseph Goldstein https://www.happierapp.com/podcast/tph/joseph-goldstein-675 Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD Our favorite playlists on: Anxiety https://spoti.fi/3Qa8kMT, Sleep https://spoti.fi/3MjtMxF, Relationships https://spoti.fi/3QvyA5J, Most Popular Episodes https://spoti.fi/3QxZASc Additional Resources: For a copy of Joseph's book, visit give.dharma.org/JGpoetry http://give.dharma.org/JGpoetry

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Dan Harris?

  It's the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:19Dan Harris?

  Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How we doing? This truly is one of my favorite episodes that we've recorded in a long while. A few years ago, a really interesting thing happened to my great friend, the meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein. At age 75, seemingly out of nowhere, he started writing poetry. As he says, "A channel opened up for him." Just to say right here at the jump, if you're like me and you're not especially interested in poetry, don't worry. Yes, technically, this is a conversation about Joseph's poems. He just published a slim volume of poetry. But those poems are really a way to talk about the depth of Joseph's Dharma teachings. So really, this is a conversation about impermanence,

• 1:01Dan Harris?

  impersonality, and the vast spaciousness of the mind. And quite practically, it's also a conversation about how to think about mortality and how we can use mindfulness to be more creative. Also, obviously, if you love poetry, which many people do, then you're probably going to love this episode with no disclaimer required. Anyway, just before we dive in here, for those of you who don't know Joseph, he is the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, both in Barre, Massachusetts, two amazing places I highly recommend. Joseph is also the author of several books, including Mindfulness, One Dharma, and The Experience of Insight. His new book is called Dreamsapes of the Mind.

• 1:44Dan Harris?

  That's the poetry book. It's available through the IMS website, and I will put a link in the show notes. Joseph Goldstein coming up right after this.

• 1:54Dan Harris?

  If you care about supporting independent media and if you care about being a node of sanity and an insane world, there are a few quick, easy and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching right now. That really helps. Three, share your favorite episode with a friend. This is a great and low stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit. And not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds and they really do help.

• 2:35Dan Harris?

  You will be supporting me and my team and our mission and I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show. If you care about supporting independent media and if you care about being a node of sanity and an insane world, there are a few quick, easy and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching right now. That really helps.

• 3:18Dan Harris?

  Three, share your favorite episode with a friend. This is a great and low stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit. And not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission and I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show.

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• 4:16Dan Harris?

  Hi, Joseph.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Hey, Dan. Good to be here.

• 4:19Dan Harris?

  It's always fun to see you. Okay, so you started writing poetry at the age of 75. Why? What happened?

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Good question. So I was in Spain at the time, just in this small town just outside of Barcelona. And listening to the poetry of Ocean Vuong, who was a young Vietnamese poet, living in the States now, poet, writer, and really quite brilliant. And I don't know exactly what happened, but somehow, just in listening to the poetry and being in a quiet space, I was on vacation then, you know, so I was really just absorbing the poetry

• 5:11Speaker 02

  in the quiet, and suddenly poems started coming out. And really, what made it so meaningful, at the time this was happening, I was there with two friends, Elizabeth Cottrell and Giana Gibson. And as I was sharing what was coming out, you know, my first, my first attempts at poetry, they were so overwhelmingly enthusiastic that

• 5:42Speaker 02

  it made me take it a little more seriously than I think I would have if I had just been by myself. You know, because they were tremendously supportive and said, you know, this is great and you should do more of it. And so that was, that was really a help at that time. Because, you know, I probably would have just had a lot of doubts about it and let it go without that. So that was the beginning. I'll just share one other little story, which will probably feed into the rest of our conversation somewhat. So in that very first rush, you know, of starting to write, I also was quite naive.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  As an aspiring poet, you know, because this was not my, my self-image or my sense of who I was. So in that time, in the flush of that first enthusiasm, I just had the idea that whatever came out, came out perfectly first time.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  And now, when I look back, of course, to those very early ones, they were far from perfect. But because of, you know, the support of my friends and their enthusiasm, I kept writing. And then sometime later, maybe a year later, you know, I connected with another friend who's quite a well-known and superb haiku poet, Sylvia Ford Ryan. And I started sharing my poems with her for some critical feedback, which was really helpful, you know, just to get some input into the craft of writing. And she said something which had

• 7:27Speaker 02

  a tremendous impact on me and which, over these last five years, I've really taken to heart and seeing the importance of it. This is a bit of a paraphrase of what she said, but she said, "A major part of the art of writing poetry is revision." And that really landed, you know, as opposed to my first, you know, naive assumption that it came out perfectly first time. And that has proved so much the case. And for me, very

• 8:04Speaker 02

  much part of the joy of the creative process, the revision just allows for the exploration of greater subtlety, you know, a form of style, of content. So that has really, really incorporated that understanding into the writing since then. So those were kind of the beginning formative aspects, you know, again, this whole second career, even though it's not actually quite a career.

• 8:39Dan Harris?

  Not yet.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Not yet.

• 8:41Dan Harris?

  Your point about revision or rewriting lands for me as somebody who's written a couple of books and is attempting to write a third. And there's often a lot of gold in the initial inspiration, but it may be covered in lots of mud. It reminds me of, you know, I've done so many retreats at IMS and and I, you're not supposed to do this, but I have a journal there in case I have, you know, an inspiration for something I'm writing on. And I often think when I get out of retreat that this journal

• 9:12Dan Harris?

  contains the best writing I've ever done. And then sometimes it's, it's pretty good. And then sometimes it's like the scrawling of the Unabomber.

• 9:24Dan Harris?

  And so I think learning to both trust and mistrust inspiration, the original burst of inspiration is a big part of writing.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely, definitely. And also something I've been even struggling with recently and also in writing some of my Dharma books. It also is important to know when to stop revising.

• 9:47Dan Harris?

  Yes, yes.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Because it could be an endless process. I don't know, always the last little tweak of this or that. Yeah, but it is really an important, an important part of it all.

• 10:00Dan Harris?

  So you actually wrote a poem about the beginning of your poetry career, such as it is. And that poem is called "The Muse." Could you read that to us and then maybe we'll talk about it on the back end?

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Okay, "The Muse."

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Something happened in my 75th year.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  A channel opened to oceans of space where words sparkle in their sparse delight. Calling, calling, calling.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  And that really does describe for me the beauty of this whole process. Because it did feel like a channel opened to space in which the words emerged sparkling. You know, so it was just a beautiful, a beautiful experience of that, you know, and paying attention to that.

• 10:57Dan Harris?

  I always hesitate to use this phrase in a Buddhist context. Can you put some more meat on the bone in terms of when you say a channel opened to space? What does that mean specifically?

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, we could get a sense of that and maybe some of the images, the poem, terms of words sparkling in this sparse delight. When we go up out at night and look up at the night sky, you know, and I think for many people, there is a, there is a sense or a kind of awe, you know, in feeling the immensity, the immensity of the space and then with the stars sparkling. And that's how it felt as these poems were coming. It's like my mind opened to that quality of, of, I'm a little hesitant to use the word boundless,

• 11:53Speaker 02

  but it felt a little like that. The mind opened to this kind of boundless, space-like awareness, you know? And in that awareness, you know, the words started coming and it was really beautiful. And it was, it was kind of the same feeling as going out at night or sleeping under the stars. You know, we just opened to something so much bigger than ourselves. So that's really what the feeling was like.

• 12:25Dan Harris?

  Well, it seems like there's an overlap between the experience of creativity, or the muse visiting, and the experience of meditation in that both are these receptive modes. I think a big mistake people make in both creativity and meditation, and I say this as somebody who's made this mistake himself daily for 53 years, is to try to force it, to try to lean in, grit your teeth, militaristically try to get somewhere. But in creativity and meditation, and I'm curious if you think I'm on to something here, it really is a leaning back, a receptivity where the magic happens.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I definitely think you're onto something, Dan. Because I think both in meditation and in the creative process, in this case, poetry, it's really a process of opening to our intuitions. So I see both as a very intuitive process. And so trying to force anything is counterproductive, because that really closes off that whole level of sensitivity to the intuitions that may be arising, or that we are sensitive

• 13:42Speaker 02

  to. So I think that's really an important, the understanding and the exploration and the deepening appreciation of the intuitive quality, you could say, of the heart, of the mind. Because often, we live so much in the conceptual world, and some of the poems are about that. So we're lost in our head a lot, we're lost in our thoughts a lot, and we solidify things a lot. Whereas the receptive space, just as you say, it's settling back,

• 14:18Speaker 02

  it's opening to what emerges by itself, which is a very intuitive process. And for me, the beauty or the overlap between meditation and writing is actually paying attention to those moments, rather than overriding them. Because I see it in myself, in the busyness of the day, in the busyness of our daily lives.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  We don't often give ourselves the space just to hear that more intuitive level of our experience. And so this is where I think for me, the the poetry and the writing and Dharma practice really share a say, a basic ground. You know, stillness of silence of intuition.

• 15:10Dan Harris?

  Do you think of art and creativity as? You know, we've talked about the overlap with the Dharma. But you do you see art and creativity as part and parcel of the Dharma as? As a form of Dharma practice?

• 15:26Speaker 02

  I do. So I would say that it's the creative process rather than the output. That that is really an overlap. Because one could be in meditation for years and be in this space of stillness and silence and intuition and never write a poem.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  But in meditation, there is this sense of creativity in the sense of exploring our experience beneath the level of our conceptual framework. So I'll just give you a couple of examples, which I think are quite common for people. For example, who have been on retreat. I know this happened to be many, many times. You know, both from the early years up until now. So when we're on retreat, as people know, who have been on one, everything gets slowed down. Our minds eventually get a little quieter. We're more open to sense impressions.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  And so often on retreat, both externally, just seeing things in a whole new way, you know, suddenly seeing a tree.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  Kind of not as a treat, as color and form and the light going through the leaves and the shadows, you know, and almost feeling the movement of the branches, feeling it in one's own body. So there's a intimacy, you know, with our experience. So that has to do with the external sense impressions in the meditation when we go inward. In a way, it's the same process because we're going from kind of a fixed notion of ourselves, of our bodies, you know, being somewhat fixed or solid. And we're not often exploring

• 17:35Speaker 02

  kind of the fluid energetic nature of it all. So as meditation proceeds, commonly, the common experience as it unfolds is we begin to experience the body as an energy field, not as my body being something solid. So that's a kind of new creative understanding, you know, of what the body is. And the same thing with emotions. You know, for the most part, we're so lost in the story of the emotion or the story that's creating it. And yet

• 18:17Speaker 02

  in meditation, we're less interested in the story and in that creative exploration of the energy of the emotion, you know, and that's a whole other level. So there's that kind of creative exploration that happens quite naturally in meditation. And I think it comes out of that same sensitivity to our experience that also inspires, for some, inspires the writing of poetry.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Hoping to a different level of things.

• 18:54Dan Harris?

  So are you saying that we could, you know, because I think a lot of people, I know a lot of people, here's another word that is tricky in a Buddhist context, but a lot of people want to be creative. That is a quality of mind that many of us are hoping to cultivate. And so are you saying that we could use meditation as a way to boost our creativity?

• 19:21Speaker 02

  Absolutely, because even before the poetry, you know, when I was writing some Dharma books, I think that the creativity, at least in my experience, really comes out of the space of silence of heart and mind. If we're just filled with a lot of chatter, you know, or restlessness or agitation, as I said, at least in my experience, the muse does not visit. You know, my mind is too engaged. But when I'm quiet, when I just have some quiet space and my mind stills, it's that creative intuition that happens by itself.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  It doesn't take effort. It just arises and we're in the space to pay attention to the fact that it has arisen. Because I think many people, just in the course of their lives, many people have intuitions about things or, you know, sudden inspirations from a new perception. But so often we're so busy and rushing, we just override it. And we don't, we don't let it flower. You know, it's, it's the qualities in meditation, the silence, the stillness, the receptivity, the intimacy with what's arising. It is an incredibly beautiful space.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  Another example is, in a way, it's more prosaic rather than a poetic example. But when I was writing my book Mindfulness, you know, that, that big book, I'd be writing and, and very often I would just get stuck. You know, I didn't know where the next paragraph should go, you know, something like that. And whenever I felt stuck in the writing, I would go sit. And I would just meditate and I would get into a meditative space. And it was so amazing to me that as soon as I quieted down and entered into that meditative space,

• 21:32Speaker 02

  it became so clear what the next step in the writing should be. So I saw this very intimate connection between silence, silence of the heart and creativity. It felt to me like that's the space out of which creativity expresses itself. And that's what was so inspiring to me is to see this overlapping of the meditation experience and the creative experience. But they just share so much and they always support each other.

• 22:04Dan Harris?

  I mean, this seems like advice that anybody could operationalize in their life. Just, you know, when you feel stuck, whether it's on a creative endeavor or how to handle a difficult conversation or any big decision you gotta make, sit for a minute.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  Well, maybe more than a minute.

• 22:24Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I use the phrase poetically. Something will come. It may not be the dish you ordered, but something may come.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. And it does come really intuitively. It doesn't so much come because we're trying to logically think it out. You know, so it's a different process that's happening.

• 22:51Dan Harris?

  Just staying with this overlap between the Dharma and creativity. It's interesting, you know, the way you're describing, and this is not uncommon, this is the way people talk about creativity. The muse visiting or a channel opening and words coming sparkling like stars. It's all impersonal. You know, it's a channel has opened, an idea has come to people. You hear songwriters talk about this, like they woke up with the idea came to them in a dream. It's, we can't claim any ownership of this, which of course is a central component of the Dharma, where this self that we walk around.

• 23:33Dan Harris?

  We feel like we're this self, but if we examine it, there's not much there.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, that's exactly my experience of things. And that's what makes it so delightful. It's really a joyful experience, both in meditation and in writing or any other, any other aspect of our lives in which we allow these intuitive understandings to emerge.

• 23:58Dan Harris?

  Does no clinging arise for you? Because I might get great ideas or, you know, once in a decade I'll get a great idea. But I feel after the initial burst of creativity, I pretty quickly claim it as my own.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  Um, more practice then.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Well, you know, that is really not a problem if you just see that pattern in the mind as another impersonal pattern. So that's all you just, you just, oh, look at the mind doing that. That's just another star sparkling in the sky.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  So you're okay.

• 24:42Dan Harris?

  That's the, that is the subtext to every question I ask you. Am I okay?

• 24:49Dan Harris?

  So let's, let's do some more poems. Would you be up for reading A Distant Call?

• 24:55Speaker 02

  So just to let people know, this is a fairly new experience for me in reading my own poetry. Why, at first, when I was first, you know, playing with all of this and people would ask, you know, oh, you know, I'd like to hear it. I would ask somebody else to read it. I was kind of too embarrassed. I've gotten over that part, but it's still, you know, it's still a little bit of a new experience for me. Okay.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  A distant call.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  One night, alone in bed, I heard the whispered call of death.

• 25:37Speaker 02

  Distant enough for now, but still.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Regrets and repose embraced as my heart quickened in the dark.

• 25:47Dan Harris?

  Okay, so having read this book several times, death comes up over and over. So maybe say a little bit about why you think that is.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  Well,

• 26:02Speaker 02

  probably because we're all going to die.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  And it's not something that we necessarily think about a lot or really take in or really understand

• 26:19Speaker 02

  that it's completely natural.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  You know, and the Buddha highlighted this so explicitly. Whatever has the nature to arise will also pass away. You know, and he talked a lot about reflecting on death. So this particular poem arose. It was a particular moment and I think, as I say, one night alone in bed. I think that, you know, that space where we're alone at night, maybe lying down. And in some way, I think it's not uncommon, an uncommon experience for something lets loose in our minds and our hearts. And we just, in a way, free associate or just new things are coming up

• 27:07Speaker 02

  that normally are covered in the busyness of our lives. So I was lying there and for whatever reason, kind of the thought of death arose, but it it wasn't an intellectual thing at that point. It was almost like feeling, feeling the immediacy of it, not in the sense that I thought it was going to happen in that moment, but it's almost as if in some way, my heart, my mind transversed to the moment of death. So it's the feeling, the feeling, oh yeah, death is going to happen.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  That became a very visceral experience for me, you know, in those moments. And then what was interesting to me as I was watching all of this and feeling it, I could see different regrets about my life arise. The ability to find some repose with all that arose. So that's why regrets and repose embraced. You know, they, I could see all of that and feel all of that in that moment. As my heart quickened in the dark, it was that quickening from a connection

• 28:29Speaker 02

  to the experience of dying, even though it was, you know, at that point not actually happening, but it felt very real. This is a good example of what I meant by, when I said, very often, just in the course of our lives, we have different feelings or intuitions like this, but don't necessarily really pay attention to them and let them flower. So it was that experience, but it was in a space where I could just be with it, not override it, not be rushing on to the next thing. Really see what, see what came out of being in that space. And that was, that's what was beautiful about it for me.

• 29:14Dan Harris?

  So in some ways, it seems like taking on, here's another tricky word in a Buddhist context, but taking on the identity of poet allowed you to pay attention to moments that even with decades of meditation under your belt, you might have bustled past.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  Okay, so this is an interesting point here. So, given where I was, it does point to a slight difference. And we talked about finding the overlap of poetry and meditation, but also a slight difference. So in that kind of poetic mind space, it was really paying attention to and feeling into what was arising. In a more classical mindful meditative space, I might have just noted it.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  You know, oh, thinking, a feeling, and seeing how those just arose and pass away. So what we do with it may depend on whether we're in a kind of formal meditative mode or a more poetic mode, even though the underlying space of awareness is the same. How we're responding to that intuition or that perception may vary a bit. And this was definitely in my more poetic mode, you know, to let it, to really let it flower.

• 30:51Dan Harris?

  Okay, but in that poetic mode, is there also some flavor of clinging or striving? Because, okay, I'm going to memorialize this. I'm going to write this down.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  That came later, maybe the next morning. In the moment, it was just the sensitivity to the experience and didn't have any thought. Oh, this is going to be a poem, you know? It was just, it was, it was a kind of somewhat unique new experience. Because I was in that space and just feeling into it and letting it, letting it unfold. You know, so, and there was a great beauty to it. But I wasn't thinking about, oh, this will be a poem. You know, it's like, it was like the next day or whenever. And then I reflected back on what had happened. So then it began to emerge.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  But without that sensitivity to the experience, nothing, nothing would have emerged in terms of creatively.

• 31:57Dan Harris?

  So I want to make sure I'm understanding your point on this, on the difference between the poetic mind state and the mindful or classical meditative mindset. And you keep using this term sensitivity to experience. So if this experience, this kind of visceral sense of the reality of your own finitude, if you had been in a classic or classical meditative state, you might have noted thinking, physical sensations, let it come and go, and you're on to the next thing. In a poetic mind state, you're doing what instead?

• 32:39Speaker 02

  Okay, I'll just add one more thing to the meditative space where, you know, as the meditation progresses, really, the, one of the emphases and, you know, a core element of unfolding insight is seeing the impermanence of everything. And so our mind is kind of on that channel of seeing impermanence, of seeing things just arise and pass away. That's not, in my experience, that's not what's happening when I'm in a more poetic mind space, where there's that same connection, but it's not about seeing the impermanence.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  It's about letting the whole experience. I use, I keep using the word the flower to unfold, you know. So the aim is not to just be seeing the momentariness of things. It's letting whatever that feeling state or the emotion involved to really let it, let it blossom so we're feeling it fully. So I, at least for me, it's a slightly different intention. Did that help?

• 33:54Dan Harris?

  I need to sit with that for a while. But let me, let me go back to the poem, A Distant Call. Your heart quickened. Do I take that to mean that in this moment of really taking in on a molecular level that you're gonna die, that it was scary for you? Or just that it was an experience that was powerful that caused the heart rate to elevate?

• 34:21Speaker 02

  I think the latter. I don't, I don't remember particularly that there was fear in that moment, but, but kind of a, a certain level of intensity. You know, not, not overwhelming. That's why, that's why I chose the word quicken. It wasn't disturbing, but I noticed, oh yeah, this is, this is something important. Or, you know, there was, there was impact from that experience. Yeah. And that's really what I meant by that. It was not just in the same flow of every other experience. And I think that was so because of the power of reflecting on death with that kind of visceral immediacy.

• 35:07Speaker 02

  Oh yes, this is going to happen to me. You know, there's, there's something powerful about that, about that reflection. And it, it can call up a lot of different things and for different people, it probably will. You know, for some people it might call up fear or it might call up, I don't know, many different kinds of emotions. Or maybe it calls up really a state of peace. And that's why I kind of liked that juxtaposition of regrets and repose embracing. You know, because it had that quality of, of holding both.

• 35:44Dan Harris?

  Do you think it's one of the fruits of the practice for you that this visceral experience of mortality did not call up overwhelming fear?

• 35:56Speaker 02

  I hope so. So that's probably part of it. But part of it also might be that I really didn't think it was happening right then. That's why, that's why I called it a distant call. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it was like a whisper. I heard the whispered call of death. So I think that mitigated whatever fear there may be there. It was not manifesting. It didn't call that up because I didn't feel like I was on the precipice. And we'll have to just wait and see whether the meditation actually has borne that fruit.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  I'll let you know from the next side.

• 36:44Dan Harris?

  May that be many years from now. Coming up, Joseph is going to read us some of his short poems. He's also going to talk about something that he says might get him in trouble with his meditation colleagues. And then we're going to talk about how to approach death.

• 37:03Speaker 03

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• 37:33Dan Harris?

  Let's do another poem, Lazy Day at Seventy Six.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. I have many favorites, but this is one because the experience was so... Yeah, maybe the poem will express the experience, hopefully. Lazy Day at Seventy Six. Morning coffee and a first glimpse into the unknown day. Waiting for that pulse of life to push through the pale joy of sitting, doing nothing. Going for a walk is almost too much on this day of questionable ease.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  Is it simply resting up to save the world? Or the faint glimmer of decline?

• 38:24Speaker 02

  I'll decide tomorrow if I awaken in the morning light.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Even admitting I can just, it brings me back to that morning. Yeah, I had the morning coffee, I was just sitting on my porch and just didn't wanna move. I was just there, there was no impulse to engage with the day. And I say the pale joy of sitting, doing nothing. It wasn't, it wasn't exhilarating, it wasn't exciting, it was just, oh, I'm just sitting. I felt like I could just sit there forever. And then, kind of the reflection, you know, what does this mean?

• 39:14Speaker 02

  Is it just resting up, you know, to go, go out and save the world? Or the faint glimmer of decline?

• 39:25Speaker 02

  When I won't be able to get up.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  So this is kind of what I mean. This for me was an example of the beauty of poetry and writing and being in that space. So I could have had that same experience.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  And really not, not appreciated it. Or not, not seeing the nuances of it. Yeah, you know, I'm feeling a little tired, I'll just sit here. Which is kind of boring, you know, but, but when we sense, you know, when we're, when we're being sensitive to the whole experience, it's very rich. Yeah, oh, this is an interesting experience. You know, just this sitting quietly, doing nothing, not wanting to do anything. Well, what's, what's that? You know, and so that's, that's kind of the exploration that I think that comes when we don't simply just don't pass over

• 40:29Speaker 02

  what could be a very common experience. You know, and so here's where I see the potential of poetry expressing and also revealing.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  A great beauty in very ordinary things and very ordinary experiences. But we have to drop beneath the level of our usual, our usual mode of perception. It's like, yeah, it's just dropping into a more sensitized space.

• 41:03Dan Harris?

  I think this is what I was driving at before, when I was saying that,

• 41:08Dan Harris?

  you know, you, you had been cultivating the capacity to wake up since your early twenties in meditation and it, from what I can tell, is reasonably finely honed. And then at age 75, you start writing poetry and there's a new level that opens up to you of the savoring of the moment. I think, am I pointing in the right direction as I say all of these words?

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Well, you, you just hit upon a key point, which is,

• 41:44Speaker 02

  and I might get into trouble with some of my meditative colleagues for what I'm about to say. But I don't see meditation, I would not use the word savoring the moment in meditation. It's aware of the moment, but it's more, it's more impersonal.

• 42:08Speaker 02

  You know, the impersonality of it really stands out, which of course is a profound realization in itself from a meditative perspective. The savoring of these experiences, for me, is the flavor of poetry. You know, where it's the same experience, but we're relating to it in a somewhat different way. We're really letting it emerge, you know, in its fullness and, and with a certain quality of reflecting, you know, or appreciating that moment. So I see, I see in this sense, kind of the, the creative process, and it doesn't have to be, of course, poetry, it could be, you know, writing, music, or there are a lot of

• 42:53Speaker 02

  creative endeavors. But I just see it as being a source of great beauty in our lives that we normally overlook. You know, so to me, it's a doorway to that. And that's, that's a beautiful thing in one's life. And you know, just in thinking about evening and everything we're talking about, one artist came to mind very, very vividly in terms of the sensitivity that opened to a whole new way of seeing, you know, and I was thinking of Van Gogh, you know, and

• 43:32Speaker 02

  the Starry Night. His vision, his experience of the night was so spectacular, you know, and it just illustrates beautifully the incredible sensitivity, you know, just, just in new ways of seeing things or perceiving things or expressing things. And I think that's what's so, I was gonna say seductive, but I don't mean that in a bad way, seductive about art, and art meaning all creative expression, you know, it just opens us to a new world of seeing things or feeling things in a new way.

• 44:15Dan Harris?

  And while there is an overlap with the meditative lens on reality, there are some meaningful distinctions that might come down to this word savoring.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think that's, when you said that word, it really struck a chord in me as, as being a, a good indication maybe of the difference, but not, it doesn't imply that there's a difference in exploring new realms, because in meditation, we also go through a process, but it's, I would say it's, it's, it's more, maybe called more impersonal or, or more scientific maybe, you know, it's that exploration of all of our experience

• 45:05Speaker 02

  on levels underneath our usual way of perceiving the world. I was just thinking about this in terms of Dharma practice and meditation and understanding the nature of reality. I was recently listening to a book, it was the History of Quantum Mechanics.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  And I'm not a scientist, I'm not actually very science minded. But I, I found it fascinating because it was just the exploration of an unbelievably radically new understanding of the nature of reality. Underneath our very normal perception of things. You know, we think we understand the world, you know, and classical science understands it kind of in the way we normally do. Quantum physics, quantum reality, the very little I understand it and know about it is mind blowing.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  You know, things are not what they seem to be on that level. So that's more, I think of that meditative exploration. So it can equally open us to whole new levels of perception and understanding. But it's in a different, a different way.

• 46:28Dan Harris?

  I love that. Let's do some more poetry. The next one on my list here, although you could always change my list, is Rebirth.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Yes, so this one is interesting because it's also about death, but from a very different perspective than a distant call. So Rebirth. The birth canal of death propels us forward. Is it love that beckons or the grappling hook of hope pulling, pulling towards the first crying breath?

• 47:06Speaker 02

  So just a little background to it. This whole image came to me, I was teaching a retreat and there was one meditator, really middle aged, who was in the last stages of cancer and was dying. You know, she was in that process. And when we were talking, we were talking a lot about her experience and what was going through and how she was feeling. And then from the Buddhist, you know, based on the Buddhist cosmology, which does not believe that death is the end of things, you know, and that from death comes rebirth.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  I began to, it was almost a visualization, but not exactly, but as an image of death being the birth canal for rebirth. So instead of the dying process kind of leading us to an end, it's actually leading us to a beginning.

• 48:10Speaker 02

  And then I started reflecting, okay, we're in the birth canal of death, propelling us forward. And then what is it that's propelling? So that's, that's the question of kind of mind. What's the force that's propelling? And so is it love that's propelling us forward?

• 48:34Speaker 02

  Or is it the grappling hook of hope? And hope could be desire for something or different energies could be propelling us forward in this birth canal of death. But I really, for me personally, and I'm not sure, but I think it, it may have helped reframe the whole experience for this person a little bit anyway. Instead of it being a potentially fearful experience, the dying process, you know, is there a way of

• 49:12Speaker 02

  understanding it as really a process of a new beginning? You know, that's leading us onward to a new beginning. And I think if, if we were able to have that frame, it would, it would change perhaps how we feel about the whole process.

• 49:30Dan Harris?

  From a classical Buddhist standpoint, though, isn't what keeps us on the wheel of rebirth, of the cycle of dying and being reborn, isn't what keeps us on that wheel thirst or clinging or desire?

• 49:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  So ultimately, in the Theravada class, we'll teach you early Buddhism, that's really giving emphasis to that. But for example, in some of the Mahayana and Tibetan traditions, they acknowledge that as being, you know, the force of craving is the cause of rebirth.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  However, with a certain level of meditative accomplishment, compassion could be the force that's driving it. You know, and these great masters, as they describe it, you know, come back to birth again and again out of compassion to the suffering of beings and with the intent to serve, to be of benefit. So it's depending on the Buddhist tradition, right, it'll have one predominant flavor or another. And so we, I think it's helpful to consider both of them, just to understand both, both frameworks.

• 50:53Dan Harris?

  So as we, each one of us contemplate our own mortality, if we're open to the idea of reincarnation, and I don't have any evidence for it personally, but if we're open to it, can we think of it as an act of love where we would come back to be useful?

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think that is very much part of, for example, the Tibetan tradition. But that also takes a lot of practice and accomplishment, you know, to be able to enter into that particular stream. I mean, this gets into rather a complex discussion of the Buddhist cosmology and all the different planes of existence and the potential to rebirth in, you know, different of these planes. So from one understanding, and this is what the historical Buddha taught, that the real freedom is escaping from the whole cycle of rebirth.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  It's helpful, I think, to have some kind of understanding of the various teachings in different traditions for people interested in this and people, you know, have some, at least openness to the idea of rebirth, which in my mind is really central to the Buddhist teaching. So I don't see this as a cultural phenomenon, you know, of ancient India. I see it as quite integral to everything the Buddha taught. And that's true in all the Buddhist traditions. So if we're somewhat, at least open to the possibility of it,

• 52:37Speaker 02

  then it's an interesting exploration to see what's motivating us, what's really within our potential, what's, there's a lot. It's just a very rich field to explore. I just wanted to put out that there's a wide range of approaches to this.

• 52:53Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I mean, as sometimes happens, I'm actually asking the question on a much dumber level than you're answering it. And what I, what I just meant is that whatever your view on the competing schools of Buddhist metaphysics or, or what it takes to attain X or Y, we're all gonna die. And most of us listening, we're not meditative adepts. And I just think it's an interesting reframe, right back to this middle-aged person who was in the throes of late-stage cancer, to think about approaching death from the standpoint of love, meaning, I don't know what's gonna happen on the other side, but I go into this with the determination

• 53:35Dan Harris?

  that if I do come back in some version, my job is to be useful.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I think, I think that kind of aspiration is worth cultivating. I mean, that's a beautiful aspiration.

• 53:51Dan Harris?

  It's a beautiful aspiration. And I think it's a, well, from speaking personally, it seems like a comforting aspiration because I, when I contemplate death, it does provoke a lot of fear. I think I'm not alone in this. And so what's the opposite of fear? It's love.

• 54:08Speaker 02

  Yes, and I think that really a valuable way of thinking of it and experiencing it. And there is a very strong case to be made, which we won't do the same. It could be another, it could be another event for the hardcore. There can be a very strong case for the teaching of liberating this whole process, this mind-bodied process, from the endless cycle of rebirths. So I actually don't want to privilege one or the other. There's just two different perspectives that are expressed in different Buddhist traditions. And

• 54:54Speaker 02

  For myself personally, I find them equally compelling.

• 54:58Dan Harris?

  This is from the guy who wrote a book called One Dharma. So yeah, I can see, I can see how you hold that position.

• 55:07Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Joseph reads some more poems and we talk about topics like Nirvana or Nirvana, rebirth, taking refuge, and more.

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• 55:54Dan Harris?

  Let's see if we can sneak in a few more poems here. How about "Ode to Non-Being"?

• 55:59Speaker 02

  Okay, so this is the one, if that really takes a deep dive.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  I'm not actually sure how successful this poem is. This is the one that is very meaningful to me, but I'm not quite sure if it works as a poem. So that's a disclaimer.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  Okay. "Ode to Non-Being." Wait, I just need to explain the title a bit. It came from a book of the teachings of Chuang Tsui, as translated or related by Thomas Merton. And they were all in kind of poetic form. And this was from a poem, "Starlight in Search of Non-Being." And so the whole conceit is starlight goes looking for non-being. And it looks and looks and looks all over the universe and can't find it. Okay, so this

• 57:05Speaker 02

  little line right under the title is a quote from that poem, the last one.

• 57:12Speaker 02

  "If now on top of this, non-being is, who can comprehend it?"

• 57:21Speaker 02

  So it's like the reality that non-being is its own reality. Okay, so that's what the poem tries to tries to explore a little bit.

• 57:37Speaker 02

  What matrix keeps us wandering in the dreamscape of the mind?

• 57:46Speaker 02

  What if the matrix is being this itself?

• 57:51Speaker 02

  Castles of sand at water's edge, where aging children play. And Shiva laughs as breaking waves turn castles into caves. In zero, all the numbers of the world are freed.

• 58:12Speaker 02

  Who will brave this embrace of peace?

• 58:16Speaker 02

  That mysterious absence, terrifying at first and then release.

• 58:25Dan Harris?

  Well, so this harkens back for me to our many discussions. And I'll put some links in the for podcast listeners, I'll put some links in the show notes of Nibbana or Nirvana, which is often referred to as the unconditioned. Everything in our normal life is conditioned by an ocean of prior causes and conditions. But there's the Buddhist promises that there is this unconditioned, this island, this state of non-being, the unborn. And so that seems to me that that's what you're pointing at here, to the extent that I even understand what any of that means.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, no, that's it exactly. And that's why I snuck in again, even in reading it. I'm not sure, I'm not sure it's that clear, but in the little stanza, in zero, all the numbers of the world are freed. So if we think of all experience as being the numbers of the world, in zero, they're freed. One times zero is zero. A hundred times zero is zero. A thousand times zero is zero. You know, so zero can represent.

• 59:42Speaker 02

  The reality of non-being, that zero is not a thing, yet it's a powerful number. We tend to have a negative take on absence, right? Which zero is absence of numbers. And yet, the Buddha was pointing to this unconditioned reality. It's like zero. No phenomenon is arising within it. And yet, it is its own reality that can be experienced. So again, this goes into, you know, really the depths of the Buddhist teachings and

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  obviously very hard to express in a few verses. But that was my attempt, that is.

• 1:00:34Dan Harris?

  Well, I like it. And I think I heard, but you'll correct me, a reference to what we were talking about earlier, which is what is driving us through this round of birth and rebirth? And it seems like what you're saying is there's a reference to beingness itself is what is what is pushing us through this cycle of...

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  Yes. We are very attached to being this. And that's why I kind of, again, I don't know how well it worked as a poem, but that's why I use the images, castles of sand at water's edge, where aging children play. That's us, aging children playing with sandcastles. And Shiva left, Shiva is the Hindu god of destruction. Shiva left as breaking waves turn castles into caves. You know, it's like the breaking waves just destroy the sandcastles. And yet, we're all aging children fascinated by the sandcastles.

• 1:01:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that's what's behind some of these images. And we're fascinated. We don't want to give up our sandcastles, even as the breaking waves destroy them over and over again.

• 1:01:59Dan Harris?

  Yeah, it's like that line from the Mahabharata, the Hindu classic. You know, what's the most wondrous thing in the world? That we can be surrounded by aging, illness and death and think it somehow doesn't apply to us.

• 1:02:13Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly, yes.

• 1:02:16Dan Harris?

  So there's a phrase in that poem that is the title of the book. So therefore must have some, some real weight and importance to you. Dreamscape of the mind. Maybe it's worth saying a few words about what you mean by that.

• 1:02:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this goes back a little bit. It may not be an exact analogy, but it goes back to what I was talking about with regard to our normal perception of the world. And then the quantum reality, which has no bearing. I mean, it's like a totally different reality. But our normal reality, it's like I imagine from what would be the equivalent of the quantum level of understanding. Everything that's arising in our ordinary life is like a dream. There's an apparent perception of things and beings and, you know, our conventional world.

• 1:03:16Speaker 02

  But from another perspective, it's all, it's all just appearances, you know, impersonal, impermanent, insubstantial appearances arising in the mind. But it's like a rainbow, right? It has no substance. And so that's why I think of the mind as a dreamscape. You know, where everything's arising and it appears so real and we take it to be so real.

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  And yet it's all so empty and insubstantial and ephemeral. And we get so caught.

• 1:03:57Speaker 02

  By what we take to be so real and solid and fixed.

• 1:04:01Dan Harris?

  So would a rough analogy be, you know, like this chair I'm sitting in feels very real to me. But ultimately, it's a dream because if you take a high powered microscope to it, it's mostly empty space with spinning subatomic particles.

• 1:04:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So, you know, there's one Tibetan teacher in which, you know, you're very familiar with in talking about the reality or non-reality of the self. Yeah, of course, in Buddhism, so much about selflessness and non-self. And the Tibetan teacher just had a wonderful expression. He said, yes, the self is real, but it's not really real. So I think that expresses, you know, so the chair is real on its level, you know, on the level of conventional perception and experience. But on another level, it's not real at all. In fact, the whole idea of chair disappears. And that's what's so, for me, so completely intriguing

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  about the meditative exploration. Because we begin to experience for ourselves these different levels. You know, and we get a little somewhat unhooked from our attachment to the conventional reality. And it doesn't mean we don't engage with it or respond appropriately. We still do all that. Yes, the self is real, but it's not really real.

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  And the meditation really opens the possibility of our experience in the not really real aspect of it all.

• 1:05:43Dan Harris?

  Yeah, it's the, to me, it's like that T S Eliot line, another poet, not as good as Joseph Goldstein, but yeah, another poet, to care and not to care.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that expresses it well. He's not bad.

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  Oh, T S Eliot.

• 1:06:01Dan Harris?

  All right, let's do another poem. This one's called "A Fall."

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:06:07Speaker 02

  A fall. A high forest stream. A slip, a fall, a twisted knee. And summer plans asunder. Why? Because anything can happen anytime.

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  A night awake grumbling. And in the morning, peace. Why? Because anything can happen anytime opens the heart to life to death.

• 1:06:40Speaker 02

  So this came out of, I was teaching a retreat out in New Mexico in Wilderness Ranch. Did a hike on the last day of the rivers, you know, walking, jumping over stones, slipped, twisted my knee.

• 1:06:56Speaker 02

  Made it back. Gave a talk that night. Thought I shouldn't sit cross-legged, but I did. Those were the days when I still could.

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  At the end of the talk, I could not stand. I had to be carried back to my room, which was very embarrassing. And so that was so all night I was grumbling because I had a lot of summer plans, teaching. But then somewhere in the middle of the night, this phrase came to me. Anything can happen anytime. And what was surprising to me about it was that instead of it calling up kind of paranoia, you know, oh, my God, anything can happen anytime, you know, and create a fearful state. It actually had the opposite. By acknowledging the truth of it. Yeah, anything can happen anytime.

• 1:07:51Speaker 02

  As I said, it opens the heart to life, to death. It's just when we acknowledge it, when we see, yes, that's the truth of things. We've just come to a place of acceptance, you know, and it changed everything in terms of my attitude about what happened and going forward. And as you know, and many others, it's a phrase I use a lot in teaching, anything can happen anytime, because it's true in life, it's true in meditation, anything can happen anytime. And it's really a question of whether we really embrace that or not, or fight against it.

• 1:08:30Dan Harris?

  Like many of your phrases, that comes up in my mind, not infrequently. I had an experience the other day, I haven't even told my wife about this because she would be horrified, but I was just driving along, coming from the city up to our house, and just driving along, it was a Sunday morning, not much happening, and I look up, I think I went to press fast forward on a podcast or something, and I looked up and there was a mattress in the road that had fallen off of a truck. And I just instinctively veered around it, but if there had been somebody next to me, I would have hit them.

• 1:09:11Dan Harris?

  Because I wasn't looking at the dash long, so it had all just had happened really quickly. Anything can happen at any time.

• 1:09:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:21Dan Harris?

  And rather than being a source of paranoia, although, I mean, I'm still prone to paranoia, but for me, if I take it in, I think in the right way, it's more like, it's vitalizing, it's, it's, let's not take shit for granted. I mean, this, this, this is all, it may seem solid, but it's not.

• 1:09:39Speaker 02

  And it really is, kind of there's a wisdom aspect in accepting, recognizing, accepting the truth of impermanence. You know, impermanence doesn't only happen, you know, on a macro scale, it's happening on a micro scale as well. But we, even though we know that conceptually, we often are not, we haven't embraced the truth of it very often.

• 1:10:12Dan Harris?

  I think we have time for one more. How do you feel about the sages say?

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  Okay. The sages say.

• 1:10:23Speaker 02

  The sirens song, the sirens from Greek mythology. The sirens song. Be more than you are. Be everything you're not.

• 1:10:37Speaker 02

  The sages say. Be less, not more. Because all that we're not lightens the burden. The lighting without hope, our desire in hearts.

• 1:10:52Dan Harris?

  I've been thinking about this a lot. Because I am such a product of capitalism.

• 1:10:59Dan Harris?

  And. I'm a businessman, I'm a, I guess, an influencer, you know, I'm constantly trying to be more, grow my business, grow my followers, all of this stuff. And I see, I really see the suffering in that. And so I find it very interesting, this notion of being less. But I also find it terrifying from these vantage point of like paying my mortgage.

• 1:11:23Speaker 02

  Well, this is an interesting point. So there are two aspects here. Be less, not more, because all that we're not lightens the burden.

• 1:11:36Speaker 02

  I was like, as one teacher said of another who was doing, you know, a really challenging project and being out in the world and doing good things. And this other teacher said, I'm glad they're doing it, so I don't have to. It's being taken care of.

• 1:11:56Speaker 02

  So all that we're not lightens the burden and. The lighting without hope, our desire in hearts. So it's acknowledging that there are these desires in our lives. For all of these things. But if we can delight in them and even doing them, engaging, but without hope, which really means without attachment. Then we're accomplishing the engagement with the world. But from a place of being less, not more. We're not establishing.

• 1:12:39Speaker 02

  Or strengthening our sense of self by what we accomplish,

• 1:12:45Speaker 02

  by being less, we're letting go of that self-aggrandizement. So then we can still engage, but without attachment, without clinging. And so we're still in the space of being less, even as we are engaging and doing all the things, for example, that you're doing. You know, so if you could be doing everything and really, really be refining the motivation, you know, is it for the aggrandizement of some self-image? Or is doing the very same things out of a feeling of service, which I think largely is, you know, and I appreciate that about

• 1:13:30Speaker 02

  everything you're doing. So the being less really has to do with the attitude rather than the activity, because we can engage fully from a very selfless place.

• 1:13:46Speaker 02

  And the being less is really about selflessness.

• 1:13:51Dan Harris?

  And maybe it goes back to caring and not caring by that hack poet, T. S. Eliot.

• 1:13:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  I'll send him this poem.

• 1:14:02Dan Harris?

  Joseph, thank you for your poetry. Thanks for all of your work. Thanks for making time to do this tonight. Really appreciate it.

• 1:14:07Speaker 02

  This was great. Thank you.

• 1:14:09Dan Harris?

  In, oh, I'm sorry, Joseph, I interrupted you.

• 1:14:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, you should be sorry because I was about to praise you.

• 1:14:18Speaker 02

  You're a great interlocutor. Is that the word? So it's always, it's always a pleasure having this conversation through the dead. So thank you.

• 1:14:27Dan Harris?

  Thank you. Thank you. Right back at you.

• 1:14:33Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Joseph, always great to have him on the show. In fact, I've had him on the show many times, and I will drop some links in the show notes to his previous appearances here. Don't forget to check out his new book, Dreamscares of the Mind: Poems and Reflections. If you want to get a copy, you can go to the IMS website, give.dharma.org/jgpoetry. If you don't have a pen, I put a link in the show notes. You can get it for a suggested donation of 12 bucks, which will support IMS' Retreat Center Scholarship Fund. IMS is an incredible place. I personally give quite a bit of money to IMS and support it in any way I can, because I've gotten so much out of them. So whether you're interested

• 1:15:15Dan Harris?

  in the book or not, I really highly recommend you check out their offerings, and if you're so inclined and you've got some extra cash, to support them, especially the Scholarship Fund, which helps a lot of people access these teachings. One last thing to say about the book, they only can ship to US addresses for now. So if you're overseas, my apologies. But you should still check out IMS. And I also want to thank everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Kara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vassili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

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• 1:16:36Speaker 04

  We work with veterans every day. Caring about people isn't the same as knowing how to help. Safeguard Veterans gave our team free online on-demand training to better understand military culture, recognize when someone may be struggling, and connect veterans to support and resources. It's practical, flexible, and our staff actually used what they learned.

• 1:16:56Speaker 05

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