How To Get Out Of Your Head: Joseph Goldstein and Sam Harris on Nirvana, Non-Clinging, Non-Duality, and the Best Way to Meditate

Which is the best path to freedom? 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 many books including, most recently, Dreamscapes of the Mind http://give.dharma.org/JGpoetry. Sam Harris https://www.samharris.org/ is a neuroscientist, author, podcaster and the proprietor of the Waking Up app. In this episode we talk about: What the term "non-duality" means — and why it matters to ordinary meditators. The multiple meanings of non-duality across Buddhist traditions (Theravāda, Mahāyāna, Vajrayāna). How different traditions (and even different teachers within them) define samsara and nirvana. The non-duality of the observer and observed — and how that insight can alleviate suffering. Whether understanding non-duality is practically relevant for reducing stress and emotional reactivity. The evolution of Buddhist teachings over time and how interpretations differ across countries. Sam's argument that the non-dual view can be directly experienced in everyday consciousness — and that realizing it ends unnecessary suffering. Joseph's emphasis on non-duality as one path among many toward the ultimate goal: the end of suffering. How metaphysics and direct experience intersect, and whether doctrinal differences are "self-confirming." The concept of "non-clinging" as the real heart of Buddhist practice — and how it relates to non-dual awareness. Related Episodes: How To Suffer Less: Joseph Goldstein, Sam Harris, and Dan Harris on the Buddha's Eightfold Path https://www.danharris.com/p/how-to-suffer-less-joseph-goldstein?r=4duxik&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false Join Dan's online community here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD Additional Resources: For a 30-day free trial to the Waking Up app, go to wakingup.com/tenpercent http://wakingup.com/tenpercent Tickets are now available for an intimate live event with Dan on November 23rd as part of the Troutbeck Luminary Series. Join the conversation, participate in a guided meditation, and ask your questions during the Q&A. Click here https://troutbeck.com/culture/luminaries-series-conversation-meditation-with-dan-harris-2025/ to buy your ticket! To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris Thanks to our sponsors: AT&T: Staying connected matters. That's why AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they will proactively make it right. Visit att.com/guarantee http://att.com/guarantee for details. Fabletics: Treat yourself to gear that looks good, feels good, and doesn't break the bank. Go to fabletics.com/Happier http://fabletics.com/Happier, sign up as a VIP and get 80% off everything.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:34Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:49Dan Harris?

  Hello, everybody. How we doing? So this is going to be an interesting one. I'm both excited and a little worried to hear how you respond to this. Let's get right into it. For the past 15 years, I've been listening to an ongoing argument between two of the most influential meditation teachers in my life. Sam Harris, the author, podcaster, and proprietor of the excellent Waking Up Meditation App, and Joseph Goldstein, also an author and the co-founder of the legendary Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts. Sam and Joseph are not only old friends of mine, but they're also very old and very close friends of one another. For decades, they have been debating the relative merits of two ancient styles of meditation.

• 1:34Dan Harris?

  One is vipassana, or insight meditation, the foundation of most modern mindfulness practice. The other is zogchen, a Tibetan approach that points you directly to the open, boundless, selfless nature of awareness. If this sounds confusing, bear with me. I will unpack this as we go. Here's how the debate between Sam and Joseph breaks down. Sam believes that zogchen is the more direct route, that you can recognize right now that the sense of I that we all harbor self-consciously is actually an illusion. This recognition that you can get through zogchen is often called non-dual awareness,

• 2:14Dan Harris?

  meaning there's no separate me or I observing my anger or my sadness. There's just experience unfolding, sensations, thoughts, emotions, all passing like weather in the open sky. This may sound a little esoteric, but it's actually incredibly practical. When you stop taking your emotions so personally and so seriously, they lose their power to hijack you. Most of us, however, practice in a more dualistic way, watching the breath, noticing thoughts, feeling like there's an I observing them. That's how you start practicing when you do vipassana or insight meditation, although

• 2:54Dan Harris?

  over time you do eventually come to see that the self is an illusion. So Sam's argument is that zogchen is better because it emphasizes the direct recognition that there's no separate self behind your experience, that what we call I is just thoughts, sensations, and emotions unfolding in awareness. Joseph does not disagree that this realization is incredibly important, but he argues that for most of us, we actually need to gradually and steadily cultivate mindfulness in order to really have this non-dual insight and all of the freedom it brings. This is why Joseph teaches in a way that mixes both vipassana and zogchen. Am I making sense here? Are you with me?

• 3:39Dan Harris?

  Just to restate it, Sam emphasizes the direct recognition that there's no separate self or you or I behind all of your experience, that what we call I is just thoughts and sensations unfolding in awareness. And Joseph agrees that this insight into selflessness is central in Buddhism, but he points out that for most of us, it's only through steady, dualistic mindfulness and repeated investigation that this insight becomes stable and freeing. Like I said, I've been listening to these guys debate this subject for years. You can find hours of their discussions over on Sam's Waking Up app. Quick plug, by the way, if you want to sign up, use this link, wakingup.com/danharris. I'll put a link in the show notes. I get a small cut, so do me a solid.

• 4:24Dan Harris?

  Also, as I said earlier, it's an excellent app. Anyway, after all of these years of listening to Sam and Joseph go at it, I thought, why not invite them both onto my podcast and try to moderate this discussion myself?

• 4:37Dan Harris?

  That may have been hubris, as you'll soon hear. These two are not easy to wrangle. But what I hope we've achieved is a funny and respectful and illuminating conversation between two of the brightest minds in the meditation world about how we can all upgrade our minds and suffer less and do life a little bit better. One very quick thing to say before we dive in here, and this is relevant to our discussion of non-clinging or non-duality. There's a new meditation that drops today with November's Teacher of the Month, Christiana Wolf, and it's all about how to be less attached, specifically how to be less attached to your moment-to-moment impulses.

• 5:18Dan Harris?

  In the meditation, Christiana teaches something called urge surfing. You can access all of our companion meditations if you sign up over at danharris.com. Subscribers also get access to our weekly live meditation and Q&A sessions every Tuesday at 4 Eastern. And if you want to meditate with me in person, I'll be doing a live meditation and Q&A at Trout Beck, which is a hotel in the Hudson Valley, an intimate little gathering, coming up on November 23rd. There's a link in the show notes. We'll get started with Sam and Joseph right after this.

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• 6:51Dan Harris?

  Joseph Goldstein, Sam Harris, welcome back to the show.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  Thanks, Dan. Great to see you both.

• 6:58Dan Harris?

  Okay, let's get started. As I've joked to both of you, preparing both of you for this conversation has been like negotiating the Dayton Accords. So let's, let's start with the subject of nonduality. And I'll tee this up for a second. Sam and I have talked about nonduality on this show. I think it's such an important issue. It's great to revisit it. Joseph, I don't think you and I have really gotten into it in such a big way. So let me just start with a really overarching question of what, what do you mean when you use the term nonduality? And as an add-on, what does it matter to the rank and file meditator?

• 7:35Speaker 04

  One of the things that came out of our endless back and forths about this, about this conversation, this topic, I took a little deeper dive into really researching how this term nonduality has been used. And I was kind of surprised in a way, although a little bit familiar with it, that it really can refer to several different things. And so it does feel important, first to understand the different ways that the term nonduality can be used, and then to define how we're using it in any particular context. Just

• 8:18Speaker 04

  one other kind of footnote, when I was looking at the different meanings of it, I was struck by the fact that some meanings really cross traditions, that in all the Theravada, in Mahayana of Adriana, some of the meanings of nonduality, the same one can be found in all of them, and other meanings of nonduality are really specific to particular traditions. So I thought that was pretty interesting, and perhaps one of the reasons for some confusion. Because if we're not really precise about how we're using the term, then it's going to be hard to have conversations about it with anyone. There were, I think, around

• 9:02Speaker 04

  four or five different meanings, how the term nonduality was used.

• 9:10Speaker 04

  One that is kind of uncontroversial and it's really quite limited, I think, in the Theravada tradition. One of the ways it's used, there are other meanings of nonduality in the tradition also. But one of them is just the nonduality of the unified mind in absorption, in jhana practice. You know, where there's that unification in the absorption. It could be like the infinite space or infinite consciousness and a total unification in that.

• 9:46Dan Harris?

  Can you, I hate interrupting any guests, but particularly you. But because this is a conversation that can get a little abstruse, I want to make sure to police the use of terms.

• 9:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:58Dan Harris?

  When you say absorption and jhana, what does that mean?

• 10:01Speaker 04

  Okay, so in the Theravada tradition and in the early Buddha's suttas, the Buddha makes a lot of reference to the development of deep states of concentration. You know, and there's a series of ascending levels of absorption where the mind is unified on a single object. So it's the fact that it's unified on a single object that it could be expressed as being nondual in that state. And jhana is just the Pali word for these different states of deep absorption or unification of mind. So that's the basic meaning of it.

• 10:45Speaker 04

  This meaning of nonduality, I think, is very straightforward and other traditions don't give that much importance to jhana as part of the practice, this level of samadhi. So I just wanted to mention this. This is not really the one that's most interesting to me. So a few of the other meanings or ways the term is being used across traditions is the nonduality between existence and nonexistence. Right? So that duality is collapsed in the understanding that one can say or claim things to be either existent or non-existent.

• 11:32Speaker 04

  And that's reflective in the law of dependent origination, that everything arises out of conditions and passes away. So to say things are existent doesn't acknowledge the continual passing away of things. And to say things are nonexistent doesn't acknowledge the arising. So dependent origination just collapses that dichotomy. And so that's one way the term non-dual is being used with reference to the duality of existence and non-existence.

• 12:11Speaker 04

  It's a little bit technical, but I've come across that a lot in teachings in various traditions. Another meaning of non-duality, and this is really specific to particular traditions, does not cross over, the non-duality of samsara and nirvana, which is a very common expression in Mahayana and Vajrayana teachings. And it's based on a certain metaphysics of what nirvana means in those traditions.

• 12:49Speaker 04

  In Theravada, the distinction between nirvana and samsara is very definitive because the meaning of nirvana is different in that tradition than the later ones. So non-duality here is the non-duality of samsara and nirvana, but it's very tradition-specific, that particular meaning.

• 13:15Dan Harris?

  I'm gonna jump in again.

• 13:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:17Dan Harris?

  Can you define Mahayana, Vajrayana, samsara, and nirvana? And Theravada?

• 13:24Speaker 04

  Okay, do you have a couple of hours?

• 13:27Speaker 05

  Your question is samsara.

• 13:30Speaker 04

  Good points, Sam.

• 13:32Dan Harris?

  Wait, wait, wait. Sam, I thought our implicit deal was any abuse verbally was gonna be directed at Joseph.

• 13:39Speaker 04

  Yeah. No, you can abuse Dan. That's okay.

• 13:44Speaker 05

  I already have minus one point. I'm keeping score.

• 13:47Speaker 04

  So, you know, the teachings all began with the historical Buddha, you know, who lived somewhere around between 500 and 400 BCE. And after his death, and over many centuries, the teachings transformed and evolved and changed in different ways. So Theravada is the name of one of the early traditions of the teachings. It means path of the elders. But then as Buddhism spread, Mahayana was a later development in the teachings.

• 14:30Speaker 04

  And it began to emphasize the bodhisattva ideal that is practicing for the attainment of Buddhahood in the sense of really practicing to attain the Buddha mind. You know, all of this, it's footnotes to everything I'm saying now. So, but I'm trying to just give an overarching thing. So Theravada was an earlier expression of the teachings. Mahayana came later. And after that, when Buddhism was brought to Tibet, another whole tradition developed of Vajrayana,

• 15:13Speaker 04

  which we know mostly now through Tibetan Buddhism. That includes many different kinds of practices. But one that we've talked a lot about are the Dzogchen practice and Mahamudra practice, which are quite explicitly expressed as non-dual traditions. Does that cover what you were hoping for, Dan?

• 15:34Dan Harris?

  Yes, absolutely. It did leave out samsara and nirvana. And I know that's a particularly tricky, a deceptively simple or complex question, actually, because the definitions of samsara and nirvana are different, as you referred to, depending on the tradition. But can you just give us a brief overview?

• 15:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. So in the Theravada tradition, samsara refers to all conditioned phenomena.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  Everything that arises because of causes, and therefore impermanent, kind of unreliable because everything's impermanent, you know, and selfless. So samsara is just every aspect of our experience, including awareness. Because in Theravada, awareness itself, consciousness itself, is seen as dependently arising, as a conditioned phenomenon. In Theravada, nirvana is that reality. It's been referred to with a lot of different, I don't know if epithets is the right word, unborn, unformed, uncreated, unfabricated,

• 16:47Speaker 04

  a lot of uns in it. But the key point in understanding different traditions is that in this notion of nirvana, it transcends awareness. It transcends consciousness. In the later traditions, okay, I'm gonna allude to something which is going to lead to another definition of the nondual. But for example, in Zochin, which is part of the Vajrayana tradition, nonduality refers to the inseparable unity of clarity or the knowing aspect of mind, awareness,

• 17:30Speaker 04

  the inseparable unity of awareness and emptiness. And nirvana is seen as being the recognition of that unity. And samsara is described as that delusion of not seeing that unity. So in that way of understanding, the quality of awareness is seen as unconditioned, an unconditioned awareness, which has this clarity aspect of knowing, but also its empty aspect, insubstantial, selfless,

• 18:14Speaker 04

  can't be found, and yet the knowing is there.

• 18:19Speaker 04

  And so that's the basic difference in the understanding of samsara and nirvana. In the earlier tradition, nirvana transcends awareness. In the later traditions, awareness itself can be experienced as the ultimate reality.

• 18:40Dan Harris?

  I'm going to ask a question that eventually I want to direct at Sam too. But I can imagine at this point in the conversation, some of the folks that I'm describing as kind of rank and file meditators might be thinking, what does this matter to me? I'm just trying to be less stressed, less owned by my emotions.

• 18:57Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 18:59Speaker 05

  I'm prepared to weigh in on that, but Joseph, you didn't get to your final definition of non-duality. You need to land the plane.

• 19:05Speaker 04

  I'm glad you're keeping track.

• 19:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:08Speaker 04

  No, you're paying attention. Good. So the last one, the last definition of non-duality, which in some way may be the most relevant as we begin to look at how it impacts, you know, just us as practitioners. And that is the non-duality as being the non-separation of observer and observed. So the dualistic perception would be this an observer and then that which is observed. And seeing that duality. So one meaning of non-duality is the collapse of that subject-object distinction.

• 19:53Speaker 04

  And this meaning of non-duality can be found across traditions. And this is the one that I think we might unpack as having impact in how we're living in the world and how we're experiencing things. To respond to that question, which I think is fundamental to this whole discussion, is what does it matter? Sam and I, and you, have rather philosophic minds. So, you know, we can get into this just for the joy of the discussion of it. But in terms of, you know, for just a practitioner who just wants to have a little more ease in their lives, I think the bottom line in all the traditions is coming to the end of suffering.

• 20:38Speaker 04

  You know, and what alleviates suffering in our minds, in our lives. And to see whether any of the things I mentioned, or how they would contribute to the end of suffering, or not. For me, anyway, that's the bottom line. That's the point of it all. It's not about some philosophic view apart from, does it alleviate suffering or not? So again, for me, that is really the fundamental question as we discuss duality, non-duality, you know, and anything else we might get into.

• 21:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, I agree with that last part, certainly, that that is the fundamental question. Actually, Joseph, I have a question for you about the traditions, though. Is it your understanding that the radical disjunction between Nibbana and Samsara in the Theravada tradition is throughout the tradition? Or is it, does it change as you go, let's say, from the Burmese Mahasi Sayadaw construal of it to something like the Thai forest tradition?

• 21:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 21:44Speaker 05

  Or are they dealing with precisely the same Abhidhamma claims and the same view?

• 21:48Speaker 04

  That's a really good point, Sam. Within Theravada, there are many lineages within the tradition. Theravada is the kind of Buddhism practiced in Sri Lanka, in Burma, in Thailand, Cambodia, and then Vietnam is some mix of Mahayana and Theravada. The Thai view, I think, is closer to, in some respect, to the Zochin view. Because some of the Thai forest teachers do talk about an unconditioned awareness. I don't know how, because I'm not intimately familiar with that tradition.

• 22:33Speaker 04

  I don't know the range of understandings that are contained within it. So I'm just familiar, really, with a few teachers in that. But I would say that within that view of the Thai forest tradition, I don't think it would be in accord with classical Theravada teachings. Now, somebody in the Thai forest tradition who's really, you know, experienced in it might take issue with that statement. So when I say the classical teachings, I'm basing it on kind of the view,

• 23:18Speaker 04

  the Sri Lankan view, the Burmese view. But even, as you know, there's this really quite brilliant German monk immersed in what he calls early Buddhism. Right? So really just going back to the Pali Suttas and not any of the later commentaries. So he distinguishes himself from Theravada.

• 23:40Speaker 05

  You're talking about Analyo or?

• 23:41Speaker 04

  Analyo, yeah. And that's why he refers to it as early Buddhism, even before the development of Theravada. And he also would say that that Thai view is not classical, based on the Suttas. However, I've read from really wonderful teachers in the Thai forest tradition of how they try to base that understanding of an unconditioned awareness with Sutta references. We might say there's some controversy here. But for the most part, I would say that... Distinction is characteristic of Theravada.

• 24:23Speaker 05

  Couple of things to say. One is I I'm not especially interested in in the metaphysics. I think I share Joseph's bias here that it really is all about suffering and the end of suffering and what works and what helps and how people can recognize what is available in the present moment. So as to experience that difference between suffering and the and the end of suffering. My interest in the metaphysics extends, however, to the, I think, the empirical fact that each of these views is in some important respect self confirming, which is to say, if you hold one, you really can practice in such a way as to seem to discover that it is in fact true.

• 25:04Speaker 05

  And that has certain consequences with respect to this question of what is sufficient to relieve suffering, right? So in my view, you can suffer quite unnecessarily with the dualistic view. And yet, all the while, seem to validate it and ramify it based on your moment to moment experience of mindfulness, right? And I believe I have some experience doing that about which I've complained for years. And Joseph has been quite hard hearted and judgmental of my complaints, which he should look into. Talk to your.

• 25:38Speaker 04

  Number two, Sam.

• 25:43Speaker 05

  Okay, back to the high wire. So so my the kind of the energy that that you sometimes hear from me in debating Joseph on this topic is coming from this sense of urgency around the difference between suffering and the end of suffering that is to be realized by resolving this debate in favor of nonduality.

• 26:01Speaker 04

  So what definition of nonduality are you using here? This is where it gets confusing.

• 26:06Speaker 05

  I'll definitely get there. But one more point about the metaphysics or about the just the difference in this view. Or I guess this is one of the one species of nonduality that you just mentioned, Joseph. The reason why a nondual construal of samsara and nirvana makes sense, I think it should make sense to you just logically, is that clearly, in every tradition, even within the Burmese construal of the Theravada.

• 26:33Speaker 05

  That it's possible to be an arhat or to be a Buddha in samsara, you know, with your eyes open, teaching the Dharma and talking to people and eating lunch and making decisions and obviously experiencing the full range of phenomenal existence. You see and hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking moment by moment. There has to be a way to do that that's compatible with the freedom of an arhat or a Buddha. Right. So what is that? What is that state? And is it possible to recognize that directly? Right. The non-dualistic schools like Zokchen and Mahamudra, but even outside of the Buddhist tradition. I mean, the Advaita tradition in India generally that goes nominally under the, in the bin of Hinduism.

• 27:18Speaker 05

  And you can add Zen to this and a bunch of other lineages. They all seem to agree that it's possible to recognize the mind of the Buddha, the open-eyed mind of the Buddha directly, right? That it's available now and that in some sense it's coincident with what people are mistaking for their ordinary dualistic consciousness, uh, which is to say, if you're just sitting there reading your email in a dualistic, samsaric, entangled frame of mind, it's possible to have that same experience of reading your email as a Buddha would have that experience or as an arhat, you know, as an enlightened being would have that experience. There's just, you have to find that specific orbit in your conscious mind

• 28:01Speaker 05

  or you're, you have to find that kind of, uh, you have to cease to do something that is obscuring that way of seeing in this next moment. And you can do that without turning the lights out, without going elsewhere, without schlepping up the mountain from the base, without doing lots of work. It's actually, it is in fact coincident with your experience in this moment. And there's a, an act of misperception, a kind of false cognition, an illusion that is present that has to be cut through. And so I would just say pre-theoretically or just, you know, on the basis of no experience, just a priori, there's a reason to think that that would be the case because all these traditions claim that it's totally possible to be a Buddha who drives a car. Right. Or walks across the street without getting run over.

• 28:47Speaker 05

  And obviously that Buddha is seeing and hearing and smelling and tasting and touching. Right. So your three definitions of non-duality, leaving aside Jhana.

• 28:56Speaker 05

  All sort of collapse into the last one in my experience and what I believe is in fact the view of Dzogchen, which is to say that when you overcome this false distinction, this illusory distinction between subject and object in the moment of experience, right? So you're seeing the full contents of your visual field, there's this sense of there being a seer and the thing seen. If you look into that matter closely enough in the way that would be recommended by a Dzogchen teacher or any of these other nondual teachers, it's possible to recognize that that dichotomy is false and that what in fact exists is this open and inexpressible condition, which in Dzogchen is called Rigpa, which is their

• 29:39Speaker 05

  nondual awareness. You can call it consciousness, you can call it awareness, or you can call it emptiness, right? So and those two designations, you know, consciousness, awareness, Rigpa on the one side, or emptiness on the other, strike a slightly different emphasis. I mean, the consciousness and awareness is the first-person character of it, like the what it's like to be you. Emptiness is more the kind of third-person descriptive character of what's left when you cease to divide reality into parts and into this basic subject-object framing. That's where it seems to me those three other definitions of nonduality kind of merge, because when you no longer have a sense that you're the subject and everything is still appearing,

• 30:23Speaker 05

  from this Dzogchen point of view, it's not true to say that it's now one thing. It's not this monistic fusing of everything. It's not a unity experience, although it's easy to see how people could kind of misdescribe it that way. It's not just one thing, because everything in all this diversity continues to appear. You haven't been reduced to just kind of some

• 30:42Speaker 04

  Blub.

• 30:43Speaker 05

  You know, lack of intelligence, where you can no longer discriminate. If someone says, can you hear the bird? Yes, you can hear the bird. And yet, hearing from the perspective of there being no one who hears Leaves a continuous, open and inexpressible totality, which has a kind of paradoxical quality to it, right? So in some sense, a bird is not really a bird, right? And so this is where those other notions of emptiness come in, in a slightly different sense of like, the first one you gave, Joseph, was with respect to dependent origination, which is to assert the existence of something is to deny impermanence. And yet to deny its existence is to deny that it arose in the first place. So there's this kind of inscrutable non-duality there.

• 31:26Speaker 05

  I would change the emphasis a little bit and move it from impermanence to just the fact that this is more, kind of more of like a Majomica view of the situation. Things don't have an independent existence, even when they're present in some basic sense, right? So like, the borders of things are specified conceptually. And when you erode your hold on those concepts, you begin to see that the mountain isn't really quite a mountain, even though something seems to be happening, right? So first, there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. But the then there is state, that final state, the non-dual version of it is you recognize that in some sense, it's the mountain as though seen in a mirror.

• 32:09Speaker 05

  The reality of anything is provisional and is somehow emergent out of this totality of, that is in fact inexpressible and is coincident with awareness.

• 32:19Dan Harris?

  Just, I'm going to stay with the pointy edge of the stick here in terms of what does this matter? How does this matter for a regular person? And I think what you said there was something to the effect of, if you can tap into what we're calling non-dual awareness, then you don't take your anger, your panic, whatever afflictive emotion so seriously. And therefore, it is way less afflictive, maybe 0% afflictive.

• 32:50Speaker 05

  Yes, I'd like to bring in one other term here that Joseph is very fond of, because I think it will help us dissect the difference here, if there's a difference exists. So Joseph often wants to say that all of this, everything we've just said is just academic and of kind of secondary importance, because the real...

• 33:10Speaker 05

  Promise of the Dharma, the real practice and the purpose toward which any one of these methods, whatever their metaphysical views is applied, is non-clinging, right? Non-clinging is the practice and that is what liberates the mind. And so the Sogyal Rinpoche tradition and the Theravada tradition have a different view about what it takes to practice non-clinging. Well, okay, but they're still, where the rubber meets the road is, are you clinging or are you not? That's the difference.

• 33:40Dan Harris?

  It might be helpful to just say what clinging is.

• 33:43Speaker 05

  Right. There, I think we might find some difference of opinion. That's part of the rub there. But, so Joseph, just feel free to respond to that, but I do have a, I would love to complete the thought about how this relates to the difference between the two views, this notion of clinging.

• 33:57Speaker 04

  I would ascribe to that, but it would take some further explanation of why. And one of the difficulties which I'm beginning to notice in the conversation is that you have a young brain and can remember everything.

• 34:17Speaker 05

  Not so young.

• 34:18Speaker 04

  And I have it, I have an old brain and there were a lot of points you made and each one I wanted to respond to.

• 34:25Speaker 05

  Yeah. This is, look at this polite way of saying that I'm long-winded. Sam, you clearly like the sound of your own voice.

• 34:35Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Sam and Joseph talk about whether you can really stop clinging if you still see the world in a dualistic way, how shifting from "I'm aware" to "awareness knowing" can open up a whole new level of freedom, and the difference between being calm and being truly free.

• 35:32Speaker 05

  All right, let me just give you something very punktate to respond to. I do think this will sharpen things up, so let's agree that clinging is really, if it's not the only important thing, it's among the most important things. It's really kind of at the center of the bullseye of what we're talking about here, however we define it. And I would say that it is possible to have a view of clinging that is dualistic, that allows you to practice in a way where it seems like you're not clinging. And in fact, you're no longer clinging on the basis of this view, and yet you're still perceiving reality dualistically. Maybe an analogy would help here. So there's this classic analogy, and I'm not even sure it's Buddhist, it may just be Indian, but this classic analogy in the Dharma

• 36:17Speaker 05

  of mistaking a coiled rope for a snake, right? You see a coiled object in the corner of a room, you glance at it, and you think it's a snake, and then on further inspection, you realize it's a rope. Let's just, for the purposes of this analogy, let's have that realization, that cutting through illusion. That's the duality, non-duality illusion. So it's duality to think it's a snake, and you recognize non-duality when you recognize that it's a rope.

• 36:41Speaker 04

  Wait, wait, wait, wait. How does that follow?

• 36:43Speaker 05

  It's not a perfect analogy, just go with me for a second here. It's possible to practice in such a way that you still think there's a snake over there, but you have achieved real equanimity about there being a snake over there, right? You're no longer experiencing aversion, you're no longer experiencing desire to get away. You really have a balanced mind, and yet you are still taken in by this underlying illusion that you're in the presence of a snake. And I would say that the same can be done with dualistic mindfulness, where you feel like there's this subtle division between subject and object. Consciousness is arising spontaneously and totally unencumbered by aversion or desire. You're noticing impermanence.

• 37:29Speaker 05

  And yet, there's this snake, again, not a perfect analogy, but the snake that is present here is this sense of subject-object separation. The reason why this matters is that it can seem to be self-confirming, right? And you can maintain this orbit for quite some time, at least in my experience. And yet, the clinging is gone. What we're calling clinging in this case is the desire for experience to be any other way than it is, right? You're not pushing the unpleasantness away. You're not grasping at the pleasantness. The emotional tone of what I'm calling clinging, the contraction in the face of unpleasantness and the graspingness in the place of pleasantness, that has been relaxed, and yet, duality remains.

• 38:13Speaker 05

  That, in my view, is a problem, a serious problem. The first claim is just that that is possible.

• 38:19Speaker 04

  Okay. I should have been taking notes, because then I could go point by point, but I wasn't. So, first to say that a lot of what you said, I agree with. I don't see actually that much difference with some of the things you said and some of the others not. So, there are a few points that just I'm remembering from the beginning. In terms of your example of, yeah, of course, the Buddha is living in the world, right? And seeing, hearing, smelling. So, contrasting that to the Theravada view is missing one point of the different ways Nirvana is described in Theravada.

• 39:04Speaker 04

  So, one meaning of it is the cessation of the defilement. So, the Pali word for defilement or unwholesome states is kalasa. So, it's called kalasa Nirvana, because it's the eradication of the defilement. The other expression or manifestation of Nirvana is, within the tradition, Theravada tradition, is that experience where the very aggregates of existence are no longer there, which is, in that understanding, is what happens at the death of an ahant.

• 39:45Speaker 04

  And so there is the complete acknowledgement that the enlightened mind living in the world can live in the world in nirvana, so to speak, because it's referring to kalasa nirvana. There are no longer any causes in the mind to cause suffering. And so I'm totally agreeing with you that of course, the enlightened mind can live freely, completely freely in the world of conditioned phenomena. And nirvana just has those two different meanings. So in terms of nirvana and samsara being the same or different, with kalasa nirvana,

• 40:29Speaker 04

  it's the same in terms of being free, because all the kalasas are absent.

• 40:38Speaker 04

  But they're not the same in terms of the skanda nirvana, which is the cessation of all the aggregates. And that's where the big distinction is.

• 40:48Speaker 05

  But the distinction is with respect to methodology. So in your view, or in the Theravada view, it is necessary to keep experiencing skanda nirvana in order to ultimately get to kalasa nirvana?

• 41:03Speaker 04

  No, no, just the opposite. Exactly the opposite.

• 41:07Speaker 05

  Well, no, it actually goes both ways. But in your view, you need to have the lights out experience repeatedly in order to uproot the kalasas so that you can experience kalasa nirvana. And the way to get to that, to the lights out experience is to rest in such equanimity, the mind can enter into it in the first place.

• 41:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's to rest in equanimity, but this goes to another point of the collapse of the subject-object dichotomy. There are many examples of

• 41:40Speaker 04

  That aspect of nonduality, that collapse of subject-object distinction within Theravada, both classically and in modern times. So, classically, the Bahaya Sutta really expresses it. In the scene, just the scene. In the herd, just the herd. In the smells, known, just the known. And it's pointing to the absence of any subject there, of any self as subject. And so it's a very nondualistic expression of understanding and of the path, of a path of practice. In more modern teachings,

• 42:26Speaker 04

  à la Joseph, there's one practice which I came to in my own practice, which really was transforming. And you've probably heard me give this little rap on the passive voice construction. And so, because the way we language things definitely conditions how we experience things. So if we're languaging things to ourself in the active voice, I'm knowing a sound. The I is built right into there. Right? And so it's going to be reflective very often in how things are experienced, unless there's some counter-practice for that.

• 43:12Speaker 04

  What I found was relanguaging to myself in how I'm experiencing things in the passive voice, which would be sounds being known. In the passive voice, there's no self as subject. And in fact, I asked ChatGPT, what is the subject in the passive voice? If the I is not the subject, then what is the subject? And it was really interesting and it confirmed, it confirmed my understanding. It said that basically the object becomes the subject.

• 43:51Speaker 04

  So sounds being known, sounds becomes the subject, not the object. And so when we're experiencing things with that frame, that duality of separate subject and object disappears and it's just things being known. And the knowing and what's being known are inseparable. And there's no I apart from it. And so the very thing you're talking about, I think, is also found within the Theravada teaching.

• 44:26Dan Harris?

  Okay, I'm just gonna jump in again because first of all, the passive voice practice has been massive for me personally. But I want you to articulate exactly why that non-dual experience that one can have by using the passive voice in practice matters.

• 44:46Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, it matters for a lot of the reasons kind of Sam mentioned. First, it's effortless. Once I framed things in that way, it was totally effortless. I started doing it in walking, but then it could be with anything. And as soon as I got my mind into that linguistic frame, and at first I had to remind myself of it, but at this point, it's just automatic. Things are being known effortlessly, spontaneously. Sounds, thoughts, and whatever arising and being known, which metaphysics aside, is, seems to me very resonant with the zodhjan practice. It doesn't feel that different to me.

• 45:31Speaker 04

  That's one point. Another point, going to your question, or exploring a little bit more your question of why does this matter? For an ordinary practitioner, what's the importance of this? I think it's important to ask, what is the cause of suffering? That nonduality teachings, in the way you're describing, Sam, addresses? Because, okay, I'm gonna throw this in, it's something I, somebody just told me this, and I've come across it in different writings by Kenzi Rinpoche also, who's a great Tibetan master.

• 46:15Speaker 04

  But Silken Rinpoche, who's a contemporary Zodchen teacher, he was giving a retreat, I wasn't at the retreat, so this is, somebody who was there told me about this exchange.

• 46:26Speaker 05

  This is either better or worse than ChatGPT in terms of its authenticity.

• 46:31Speaker 04

  If, if it was just that, I might have that degree of skepticism, but it reinforced what I've read very often. In fact, I think I sent this to you, although I have one email in my draft folder that I never sent to you. So what I'm about to say might be in that email I never sent, where Kenzi Rinpoche says, "In awareness, there's no clinging, and if there's clinging, it's not awareness."

• 46:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:00Speaker 04

  And so what Silken Rinpoche said, as I heard it, you know, secondhand, he was asking the student on the retreat, "Well, why is rikpa important?" That'd be a reasonable question. And they gave various answers, and he ended up saying, "No, it's none of what you're saying, it's because in rikpa, there's non-clinging." And so I think it has a more essential part of the Zodchen teachings than you give credit for.

• 47:33Dan Harris?

  Sam, before you get into whatever ancient tit-for-tat you're tempted to get into, I will get back to it, but I just, I want to stay with the why does this matter for a second? Because Joseph, I don't think you really answered the question. On a very basic level, the ability to be aware of whatever's arising in our mind, especially if it's provoking unhappiness or suffering, without claiming it as ours, or even claiming the awareness of the thing as ours, is inherently and deeply freeing. Am I going in the right direction? And if so, can you just say a little bit more about that before I let Sam come in and do whatever violence he's gonna do?

• 48:17Speaker 04

  Okay, so one of the problems may be, I mean, one thing I have to thank you for, Sam, is all your comments do inspire a lot of reflection. Makes me think about these things more than I probably would otherwise. So in some way, we're talking, or I've been talking about clinging as the cause of suffering, and therefore it's experiences of non-clinging, which is the end of suffering. However, in a technical sense, clinging has one very kind of specific connotation. There are other qualities in the mind that also are creative of suffering,

• 49:01Speaker 04

  that express a slightly different aspect. So for a few examples, the quality in the mind of, in Pali, the term used is mana. It's translated as conceit. But conceit in this sense, the fundamental meaning of it is the feeling or sense of I am. In a wide variety, we could think of it as I am over time. You know, I was this in the past, I'll be doing this in the future. If there's some sense of an I am in there, that's conceit, and that's a contraction. That's a source of suffering. So technically, conceit and clinging are two different things. But when I refer to non-clinging...

• 49:49Speaker 04

  I'm really talking about it not so much in the technical Abhidhamma definition, which is a very specific way of relating to things. I'm including in it things like clinging, desire, grasping, conceit to anything. But conceit is the I am. Wrong view is the belief in a self. Craving is the sense of this belongs to me.

• 50:19Speaker 05

  I think we can add one more piece, which seems to be related here. I mean, you can talk about it separately, but it does seem to be attached to the same erroneous cognition, which is identification with thought, the sense that this thought is me. So Joseph, you've just stumbled upon, I think, the core truth of Zogchen, which, in my view, the only real difference between clinging and non-clinging that you need to consider is the difference between duality and nonduality, right? I mean, it's cutting through dualistic clinging, it's cutting through dualistic fixation, to use the common Zogchen phrase, that unties all these knots. This is what Khenpo Rinpoche was saying, if he did in fact say that, if it's awareness,

• 51:04Speaker 05

  there's no clinging. If there's clinging, there's not awareness, meaning rigpa, meaning nondual awareness. If you're cutting through the knot of dualism, untangles all these things. And I'm glad you brought in manna, conceit, because that's just another shading of the same illusion, which is the sense of I am the same subject that was here a moment ago or last year. This is why it's a little question begging to say it's all a matter of clinging without really defining what you mean by clinging. From the Zogchen side, the root clinging really is in this subject-object dichotomy that is cut through in recognizing rigpa. And then...

• 51:47Speaker 05

  All of this is resolved. And it is, from that view and in that experience, an experience of what you're calling Kalesa Nibbana. This is where some of the paradoxes of the Vajrayana view also come in. It's, that's true even in the presence of Kalesa, right? Like, so let's say you feel a moment of anger, right? Or aversion, which is, you know, testifies to your unenlightenment, you know, certainly from the Theravada view. But that moment of anger recognized becomes the same nondual openness and emptiness and great perfection. And the crucial bit is that that's true even before the physiology of anger has dissipated.

• 52:32Speaker 05

  You know, these weird tantric phrases you meet in Vajrayana teaching, like, you know, anger dawns as wisdom. How is that anything other than just weird PR for this hierarchical view? It's empirically true when you can experience it, when your mindfulness is such that you're recognizing anger as a mere expression of the totality of emptiness from a nondual point of view. What I would argue, and this is why it matters, Dan, is that it's possible to practice in a dualistic way such that you're noticing anger mindfully. And your mindfulness then appears to be this sort of remedial,

• 53:15Speaker 05

  provisional, gradually cultivating practice, which is not revealing to you in that moment the utter freedom that is compatible with emptiness and nondual recognition. What is revealing to you is this sort of, this yet another moment of kind of balanced mediocrity. It's a vigil. The vigil continues. You're still waiting to get to get somewhere, even as you're balancing the factors of equanimity. And this is the crucial bit for me, Joseph, is that... Either a moment of mindfulness is good enough, or it isn't, right? And you can't fake it. You can hope it's good enough. You can wish it was good enough.

• 53:59Speaker 05

  But the question is, is it really good enough? Is it really a moment of freedom? Or are you still waiting on some subtle level for your experience to change, to become enlightened, to get somewhere? And so my question to you is, why isn't Kaleasa Nirvana good enough? Like, if Kaleasa Nirvana is really available in the next moment? I mean, you might doubt whether it is. But if you agree that it is, if your passive voice gets you to a recognizable experience of Kaleasa Nirvana, wherein you don't find the evidence of your unenlightenment, even in the presence of anger that just arose the moment before, and now it's just this inscrutably empty display of energy,

• 54:42Speaker 05

  why isn't it good enough to experience Kaleasa Nirvana in that next moment?

• 54:47Speaker 04

  Can you summarize that question, Dan?

• 54:50Dan Harris?

  I think what he's saying is that most of us practice mindfulness, or many of us practice mindfulness in a way where anger might arise, and we feel like the subject, the point of awareness witnessing this anger separate from us in our consciousness in some way. And we might be able to reduce our suffering by breaking, or by putting the anger through a cheese grater, you know, like seeing that it manifests as rumbling in the chest, redness in the ears, starburst of self-righteous thoughts.

• 55:25Speaker 05

  And no longer being identified with the thoughts that were making you angry.

• 55:28Dan Harris?

  Correct. But that is missing a crucial non-dual piece, which is to see that by separating yourself out and viewing it dualistically, you are missing an aspect of freedom that is not available in the way he's saying you teach Joseph, as opposed to the way he teaches. How'd I do, Sam?

• 55:51Speaker 05

  I wouldn't have put that final and videos flourish on it. But you could take that as implied. Yeah. The only other thing I would add is that you're condemned for that to be so. I mean, everyone has to start where they start, right? And everyone, basically, everyone starts from a dualistic place where they feel like they're a subject having to learn to meditate and they want to get somewhere and they're suffering. And so the dualism and the seeking and the distance of the goal is all implied by the very structure of the practice in the beginning. The unique capacity of a non-dual insight is that it obviates all of that. Then you can then practice the goal so that there's no distance between you and the goal. And if there is a distance, if there's a seeming distance between you and the goal,

• 56:36Speaker 05

  that's just the way things seem. And then you are condemned to feel that way about each moment of awareness.

• 56:45Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Joseph and Sam talk about the Bahia Sutta and what it means to really see and hear without a me behind the experience, whether freedom is something you can touch right now or only after years of practice, and why different Buddhist traditions disagree on what the ultimate goal even is.

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• 57:41Dan Harris?

  Just to put a fine point on it, the goal in this context is back to this. Bahia Sutta that Joseph referenced earlier, which is a classic, just for the listener who might not remember it, is something the Buddha is said to have said in a so-called Sutta, which is a teaching of the Buddha in the classical texts, where some guy named Bahia asked him about the nature of freedom. And he said something like, "In the seeing is just the seen, and the hearing is just the heard." So with the anger, it's just, there's no me witnessing my anger, it's just anger angering. And there's an enormous amount of freedom in that because you don't need to take it so personally.

• 58:22Speaker 05

  Well, even anger, anger isn't even anger at that point, really. I mean, again, it's just a display of awareness or emptiness, depending on how you want to describe it. Let's not open the door to the crazy wisdom teachings and all the dysfunction that follows thereupon in Vajrayana Buddhism. I'm not recommending that people not view anger as something to be avoided or mitigated, etc. All of that, you know, all of that's fine as a matter of practice. I'm just saying that either a moment of mindfulness really delivers the goods of freedom, no matter what's happening, or it doesn't. Or it's a method that you're applying to an otherwise problematic circumstance that is samsara.

• 59:04Speaker 05

  In my view, only non-dual mindfulness caches the check of samsara and nirvana are one, right? Otherwise, you're just, you might believe that, but you're not experiencing that. And there's no reason to say that.

• 59:17Speaker 04

  Okay, it's so much.

• 59:20Speaker 05

  So much heresy. I hit you with buckets of heresy so that you, with your thimble, can just try to clean them up.

• 59:28Speaker 04

  First, I think it's really important to recognize that the goals are different. And so to use the frame of zochen and nonduality as you're expressing it.

• 59:48Speaker 04

  Posits a certain understanding of what nirvana is.

• 59:53Speaker 05

  Well, it need not, Joseph, it actually need not. We could leave all of the metaphysics and the views aside. I'm just talking about certain experiences are available in the present moment. And you're either having them or not in the present moment.

• 1:00:07Speaker 04

  Yes, so, okay, I think it may have more important implications. I'll leave it aside for the moment. Just as in zochen, where people are giving the pointing out instructions and and so they're beginning to practice nondual awareness. That does not mean that people are actually experiencing it. Again, I think it was Sopra or maybe somebody else, you fake it till you make it. You keep practicing in, you know, in this way and that way until you finally land at what it really means.

• 1:00:47Speaker 04

  But it's not like that understanding is immediately available. There will be some people for whom it is, but I would suggest that it's much rarer than you may believe. Because it's possible to be approximating what's called vikta, but not really.

• 1:01:13Speaker 05

  Okay, so let me just translate that back into my language. So that doesn't really, that's not a counterpoint to anything I would want to say, because in my language, that's just to say that some significant percentage of people try to practice zochen and they fail. Or they might say they're practicing it, but they're not. There's an important difference there, and I would totally acknowledge that that's the case. But that's not zochen practice. That's the failure mode of the zochen teachings.

• 1:01:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I would say the same thing is true of the deeper understanding of mindfulness.

• 1:01:52Speaker 04

  And that what you're describing, that people can be practicing mindfulness in a dualistic way, in the way you're talking about. But when you really get down to what mindfulness in its fullness or in its depth means, many people are, they're not practicing that. They're practicing mindfulness in the same way that people are practicing zochen, but haven't really quite landed yet at the essential element of it. And it's the same thing with mindfulness. So just a few examples of this.

• 1:02:34Speaker 04

  People often conflate recognition and mindfulness. You know, so you're practicing and anger, to use your example, you know, moment of anger arises and we recognize it. Yeah, we could name it anger and we're experiencing it in some way. But that recognition is not sufficient. It's necessary, but it's not sufficient. Mindfulness has a deeper dimension to it than just that. And one of the dimensions of it is the mind in that moment, free of greed and hatred and delusion. Yep.

• 1:03:18Speaker 04

  So it's just to say that in both practices, there's kind of an entry, you know, a long runway to get to the place where we're actually practicing with the full experience of realization, either of what non-dual awareness is, using that phrase, or what mindfulness is. Because in my experience, mindfulness properly practiced in its fullness is a non-dual practice.

• 1:03:55Speaker 04

  Because the nonduality is the freedom from the subject-object dichotomy. That's one of the meanings of nonduality. And that comes at a certain point of understanding and development, as expressed in the Bahia Sutta, as expressed in the passive voice construction.

• 1:04:20Speaker 05

  But Joseph, you're ignoring all of the dualistic constructions that are even more canonical. I mean, just the fact that consciousness is considered to be this separately arising, impermanent-conditioned phenomenon that is known.

• 1:04:34Speaker 04

  Not separately arising, dependently arising.

• 1:04:37Speaker 05

  No, dependently arising, but it's separate from the thing that is known, right? So there's the sight and the consciousness that is arising.

• 1:04:43Speaker 04

  No, no.

• 1:04:44Speaker 05

  Well, there's the object. Consciousness knows its object.

• 1:04:48Speaker 04

  Okay. Do you see this?

• 1:04:50Speaker 05

  I do.

• 1:04:51Dan Harris?

  A pad of paper.

• 1:04:52Speaker 04

  What is it?

• 1:04:53Speaker 05

  This is like the flower for Mahakasapa.

• 1:04:57Speaker 04

  So what shape is this?

• 1:05:00Speaker 05

  All right, this is, it's a rectangle.

• 1:05:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:03Speaker 05

  And it looks gray on your camera, yeah.

• 1:05:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, okay. So.

• 1:05:08Speaker 05

  Its grayness and its rectangle-ness are combined in the same.

• 1:05:12Speaker 04

  Exactly. They're inseparable. The color has a shape and the shape has a color.

• 1:05:17Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:05:18Speaker 04

  But they're inseparable. Is that understanding, if you're highlighting the color or the shape, it will seem dualistic? If you're highlighting the inseparability, it's a nondual. And same thing with consciousness, the knowing and an object are inseparable.

• 1:05:36Speaker 05

  The crucial difference, from my point of view, is just a matter of practice and a matter of kind of psychological well-being, is the experience of mindfulness drawn right out of the Bahia Sutta. So in the scene, just the scene, in the heard, just the heard, in the cognized, just the cognized, right? So that's just this kind of radical evaporation of a sense that there is one who's doing anything or being mindful. Is that synonymous with every moment of mindfulness, even off retreat in one's ordinary life? Or is that some sort of peak experience that one achieves only by virtue of real continuity and stability and equanimity along the progress of insight far out there, sort

• 1:06:21Speaker 05

  of on the map?

• 1:06:22Dan Harris?

  Can I answer that one, Joseph? As your student?

• 1:06:24Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:06:24Dan Harris?

  This I can say with a kind of definitive tone. The passive voice practice can be done anytime, anywhere, whether you're meditating or not, no matter how strong your concentration is. Just by, for context, Sam references earlier, but one of his historical beefs with the way Joseph teaches is that there's an aspect of you have to do this hard work, as Sam said before, like schlep up from the base of the mountain to the peak, at which point maybe you have a nirvana experience where the lights go out. But the passive voice practice is something you can do right here, right now.

• 1:07:06Dan Harris?

  And if it's frustrating, because some people, it doesn't click. But just for me, for example, it was just immediately obvious. I'm walking down the hallway and things are being seen. Well, seen by what? And if you look for it, you won't find anything. And it's right there. It's immediate. It's not dependent upon spending seven days on retreat.

• 1:07:27Speaker 05

  Okay. Obviously, I'm not going to doubt any of that, because consciousness simply is this way and can be recognized this way. And if the passive voice technique works for you, well, then great. But again, the sticking point for me is that the metaphysical view dictates a certain logic of the practice, right? And it is possible to practice by a certain logic and with a certain view. It might all be happening in the background all the time. It may never be explicit. You don't wake up in the morning on your 17th day of a three-month retreat, thinking again about the metaphysical view and thinking again about the light, just being mindful. But the question is, what is available for you to notice in each moment of mindfulness?

• 1:08:12Speaker 05

  And if it's just nondual suchness, then that's a certain experience.

• 1:08:20Speaker 05

  But if it's just more impermanence from this subtle point of view of kind of trying to build concentration and trying to get somewhere, it's a different experience. And it is a self confirming experience. Again, you can have the experience where this is, that's all there is to notice. And what I'm saying is that that can extend to a very high level of concentration and continuity and real feelings of subjective freedom and equanimity. In my experience, what's unique about the non dual approach is that, again, not everyone can practice it, not everyone has enough mindfulness to be successfully introduced to it, but if it works for you, what is revealed is that even in just the most ordinary moment

• 1:09:05Speaker 05

  of consciousness, the radical freedom of subject object delusion is available. Nothing has to change, it doesn't matter what happened a moment ago. And I would grant you, yes, that once you've recognized that, the passive voices is as good an indication as any to recognize that again. But until you've recognized that, it's very easy to feel that samsara and nirvana are radically different, right? And you wouldn't even know what to make of the claim that they're the same thing.

• 1:09:35Speaker 04

  Okay. So what is the basis of the subject object distinction? The basis of it is an identification with consciousness as being self. It's identifying with consciousness, and that's what creates the duality, that's what creates the separation. The practice of vipassana, it obviously is taught in many different ways, but I just want to reiterate kind of Dan's and my point that there are ways of practicing mindfulness.

• 1:10:18Speaker 04

  That brings you immediately to the non-identification with consciousness because of how we are conceiving it. And that's where the past voice.

• 1:10:31Speaker 05

  But again, in your view, or in the Theravada view, consciousness isn't good enough, really.

• 1:10:37Speaker 04

  No, okay, so this is the second point I was gonna make. And here's where the difference in the view of Nirvana is important. It's not just a philosophical distinction. Because in the Zouchen practice, as I understand it, we practice until this non-dual awareness is stabilized. And that it's the recognition of the nature of that mind, which is the union of clarity and emptiness. So that just becomes the understanding of the fields in which life is taking place.

• 1:11:22Speaker 04

  And that is seen as the endpoint.

• 1:11:24Speaker 05

  But again, there is a slight, you have to hold that pretty lightly, because it really is, from the point of view of Zouchen, it's not as heavy-handed as the Advaita tradition, with the people like, you know, Punjji or Nisargadhat Maharaj, where they just castigate any efforts at meditation as being part of the illusion, right? And also, there's some Zen teachers who have done similar. But it goes halfway there, which is to say that you're not meditating on anything. I mean, that's why they call it non-meditation. And you're, I mean, they're very alert to the problem of trying to make it a practice, which is a natural way of misunderstanding what there is to notice, right? So you're not cultivating this thing.

• 1:12:08Speaker 05

  You're not trying to improve it. You're not using it as a tool. It's not a method. The path thereafter is not to overlook the way things already are, right? Like, leave it as it is, right?

• 1:12:21Speaker 04

  So. I understand all that. And that's not the point I'm making.

• 1:12:25Speaker 05

  Okay, but 99.9% of ordinary mindfulness practitioners, I would say, don't understand all that.

• 1:12:31Speaker 04

  Okay, well, I'm in the exalted 1%.

• 1:12:33Speaker 05

  That's, yes, I know you, I know you to be.

• 1:12:36Speaker 04

  So, but that's not the point I'm making. The point I'm making is that the end goal is different.

• 1:12:45Speaker 04

  And because it's different.

• 1:12:47Speaker 05

  What do you mean the end goal, Arhaanship versus Buddhahood? Or what are you talking about?

• 1:12:51Speaker 04

  What I'm talking about is rigpa, the union, the inseparability of clarity, which is awareness and emptiness. That is the endpoint.

• 1:13:05Speaker 05

  What's the other endpoint? And why have another endpoint? It's my question to you.

• 1:13:09Speaker 04

  Because the endpoint from the Theravada perspective, they would see that as still conditioned phenomena. And I'm not arguing for one or the other. I'm just saying they are different understandings of the endpoint. And for Zo Chen, that's the endpoint. And for Theravada understanding of the endpoint, it's the cessation of all of awareness itself.

• 1:13:40Speaker 05

  This brings us back to where we started because what is the pragmatic difference? If you're resting in the nondual condition of mindfulness without clinging to anything, including the sense of self, why isn't that a sufficient, even from the Theravada point of view, if it's just conditioned phenomenon, why isn't that a sufficient holding pattern awaiting the skandhanabana that you still subtly hope is going to happen at some point in the future?

• 1:14:10Speaker 04

  Because that.

• 1:14:12Speaker 05

  I mean, it's equanimity, right? It's non-distraction and it's equanimity. What is lacking from your point of view as a matter of practice? Let's say Mahasi Saito is right about everything and you've got to rub two sticks together fervently to make fire. Why isn't just resting in nondual awareness of everything as it arises without clinging this mindfulness sufficient unto the path of the progress of insight?

• 1:14:37Speaker 04

  It could be, but it depends on the understanding one has. And I think here, kind of the metaphysical basis has some relevance. If one has the view that this is the ultimate reality, then there's no either interest or elements in the mind.

• 1:15:06Speaker 04

  Which will be open to the cessation of it all. And this is borne out in the different practitioners in the different traditions.

• 1:15:21Speaker 05

  What do you mean? Say more about that. What do you mean it's borne out?

• 1:15:24Speaker 04

  Well, I think for Tibetan practitioners, cessation of it all is not even on the table. I mean, they, they think it's delusion, you know, and they think it's a dead end and a black hole. And I mean, they don't talk about it at all. It's not even.

• 1:15:41Speaker 05

  Well, that, that's why I feel like this matters. The metaphysics matters because it is self confirming.

• 1:15:45Speaker 04

  But on both sides, it's self confirming.

• 1:15:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, but from the other side, I think it's possible to practice in the kind of Mahasi way and have your repeated cessation experiences and still not know how to practice Zogchen. That's the problem I see, right? Non-dual mindfulness is still not available even after stream entry or it's intermittently available, right?

• 1:16:10Speaker 04

  No, I think it's as available to one of those practitioners as to a Zogchen practitioner.

• 1:16:16Speaker 05

  Well, no, it's not because Zogchen is synonymous with non-dual mindfulness. If you're not practicing non-dual mindfulness, you're not practicing Zogchen. I'm saying that from the Theravada side, obviously you can practice mindfulness, not really emphasizing the non-duality of it, because all the language, all the concepts, just what you did to Zogchen, you said it's obvious that cessation's not important to these guys because they don't talk about it. And when you, when you ask them about it, they roll their eyes and say, get off that. There's more important things to talk about. I'll grant you that that's the view. But conversely, within the Theravada tradition, certainly within the Burmese tradition of Theravada, there's a resolutely dualistic view, if you want to find one and all of your,

• 1:16:59Speaker 05

  and, and what you've added to it with passive voice, et cetera, and other kind of Zen and Zogchen vibe shifts is great for your students, but it's not, does not discount the fact that it's possible to be a pure Theravada practitioner for whom all this non-duality talk doesn't make a lot of sense.

• 1:17:20Speaker 04

  If one acknowledges that the endpoints are different, with respect to the Theravada view.

• 1:17:30Speaker 04

  There are many ways to the endpoint. Non-dual awareness, which I think comes automatically in the course of practice, and you may disagree with that, but it's my sense of that understanding because that non-duality is really just an expression of non-self. There's no self as subject. And that insight reveals itself very clearly at a certain point in Vokasimha practice and is there.

• 1:18:02Speaker 04

  But within the Theravada tradition, there are other means for reaching the final goal than emphasizing specifically non-duality. And that's why I think that kind of there is a commonality up to a certain point. And then there's a divergence because the endpoints are different. In Zochan, there's a very direct pointing to an experience of the endpoint. In Theravada, it's not that. So there's a real difference there.

• 1:18:43Speaker 04

  The difference is because the endpoint is different. And so it's just, again, not to claim one is better or worse, or superior or not. It's to say, okay, what's the endpoint? And what is one's own aspiration? And people will have different aspirations. And so then they connect with the practice that supports whatever final goal they're aspiring to.

• 1:19:12Speaker 05

  Well, first of all, I don't think most people or really virtually anyone is motivated by an abstract conception of an endpoint that may or may not be attractive to them. It's not that people are shopping for descriptions of the goal and then are finding a ton of motivation based on their favorite flavor of the goal as articulated by one tradition or another. It's much more the case that virtually everyone starts with this very compelling sense that they have a self and that that's a problem, right? And then the question is, what do you do from that starting point? And the immense power of... Vipassana, Theravada Vipassana, is that you can offer that person,

• 1:19:58Speaker 05

  that confused and suffering person, a practice that is totally straightforward and non-paradoxical, and it's just, "Here, do this." "I understand where you're stuck. I understand how things seem to you. There's a few things you should notice right now. Like, for instance, you're just spending all your time lost in thought, and you're so lost in thought, you can't even notice that. So here, pay attention to the breath and see if you can do that. And notice how hard it is to do that. And now, as you begin to train in that and begin to notice things, notice a few other things. Notice impermanence. And notice how everything's impermanent. Notice how you're getting a little more concentrated. And again, you can walk up from the bottom of the mountain here, or seem to, in a way that is not confusing. It's not easy. It can take years and years and years,

• 1:20:43Speaker 05

  and can be very frustrating, et cetera, et cetera. But it's not paradoxical. It's not Zen. It's not Zogchen. It's not Advaita. It's not, "You're already free." It's not samsara nirvana one. It's not, "You can't polish a brick into a mirror." It's not, "Show me your mind, and I'll pacify it." It's none of that, you know, highfalutin bullshit. It's like going to the gym to get muscles, right? You got a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger on the wall. He did it. He's going to tell you how to do it. Just start lifting heavier objects, right? Eat more protein. Lift heavy things. Non-paradoxical. That is its immense strength, but that is also its weakness. The weakness is, it can keep someone feeling like they've got a problem to solve.

• 1:21:28Speaker 05

  Now they know how to solve it. That can endure for a very, very long time. And what I'm saying is that, in my experience, there is a shift that is available in how one experiences mindfulness, where mindfulness no longer becomes a practice, no longer becomes a style of meditation. It no longer becomes a remedy for this apparent problem of clinging, or selfhood, or suffering. It becomes a recognition of a prior condition, which is always already the case, which is just non-dual awareness, or emptiness, or... Whatever you want to call it. And it's available now, always already.

• 1:22:11Speaker 05

  And it need not be snuck up on by virtue of any other sustained practice. It can just be recognized as just the ordinary state of consciousness in any present moment. So advice to the listeners that this can be a very frustrating thing to hear. And trying to make your experience of mindfulness non-dual can be frustrating. And all the teachings around that, many of which can be found in over the waking up app or in, you know, Zogchen teaching or Vaiti teaching, and there's different flavors of methodology in talking around this liminal moment of how dualistic mindfulness becomes non-dualistic mindfulness.

• 1:22:51Speaker 05

  There is a difference there to be discovered and you, on some level, I would say you shouldn't be satisfied until you're satisfied. Use that frustration as a key to further inquiry. And I would say that that frustration bears witness to this predicament, which is it is possible to practice dualistically for a very long time. And the frustration of that occasion is built in to the circumstance because on some level, though you might want to encourage a very different vibe, the vibe is a kind of a superficial change in attitude. It doesn't really give you the freedom you're looking for until it does.

• 1:23:33Speaker 05

  It's a perhaps a bitter pill to swallow, but I would counsel honesty around the frustration, honesty around the insufficiency of mindfulness if it feels insufficient. Everyone has to start somewhere. I'm not saying you don't start with dualistic mindfulness as virtually everyone does. Of course you do. It is the only preliminary practice to dualistic mindfulness. But I just think that it's, it's appropriate to be frustrated if you still feel like

• 1:24:05Speaker 05

  You're working on a problem when you're meditating, when you're paying attention to the present moment.

• 1:24:10Dan Harris?

  Joseph, just in closing here, let's go back to your passive voice. I have heard from so many people who show up at my events and they're subscribers. You know, I often will teach and give you full credit, this practice of, you know, you, I'll do some sort of stabilization, concentration practice, like loving kindness, or focus on the breath, and then I'll open up to open awareness with the passive voice in there. And I hear from a lot of people, like, I don't get it. And so I'm just curious, what's your advice to them? My advice generally is, just keep knocking at the door generally, and you might see something interesting over time, but don't get too sweaty about it. Just keep trying it gingerly and persistently.

• 1:24:55Dan Harris?

  Would you agree with that? And what else would you add?

• 1:24:57Speaker 04

  I think that's good advice. And there are also a lot of other approaches. Everything we're discussing is really a skillful means. And just kind of in my closing argument. So the teachings, the Theravada teachings, but I think this is true across all Buddhist traditions, or at least most of them, but certainly Zhen included. There's one sutta in which it says, "Nothing whatsoever is to be clung to as I or mine." Whoever understands this, realizes this, practices this, has realized all the teachings.

• 1:25:40Speaker 04

  So if we understand the I, an attachment to the I in one form or another, as being the basis of dualism, that separation of subject and object, right embedded in the Theravada teachings, it's just this very clear statement, in whatever way one is identified with awareness or knowing, that's a problem. And so nothing whatsoever is to be clung to or adhered to as I or mine is just the essence of it all. What I'm suggesting is that there are many ways to come and realize that.

• 1:26:25Speaker 04

  And at different levels of realization, and just as Sam said, in Zo Chen and in Vipassana, there's a lot of practice one has to do to really, fully embody that understanding. One thing that I think sometimes you don't acknowledge, Sam, is that even within classical Zo Chen teachings, there are a lot of different practices which are supportive for that nondual awareness, you know, which is the essence of the pointing out,

• 1:27:07Speaker 04

  to not acknowledge that they are actually a necessary part of reaping the benefits of the nondual awareness. Because unless there's the capacity in the mind and that its qualities like mindfulness and like concentration, how often somebody without any of that background, without any of those qualities of mind, I think it would be extremely rare for people to actually remain

• 1:27:47Speaker 04

  or even remember nondual awareness in the busyness of their lives. One example, and this is something I love from Dzogchen, great Zo Chen master, when he talked about the undercurrent of thoughts, not the big dramatic thoughts, but just kind of a pretty steady stream of very light thoughts going through the mind throughout the day that we are mostly unaware of. And he called these the thieves of meditation, the thieves of nondual meditation.

• 1:28:27Speaker 04

  So for somebody who has not developed the capacity through mindfulness and some steadiness of mind, there is no way they're going to be aware of this undercurrent of thought. And it's very prevalent.

• 1:28:48Speaker 04

  And in all of those moments of undercurrent, which are not being recognized because they're very subtle, very light, people are not in non-dual awareness. Yeah. They are lost in those thoughts. And so what I'm suggesting is that I have a tremendous appreciation for kind of the Zo Chen teachings, you know, and I benefit a lot from them. They don't exist independent of all these supportive practices, which make that aspect possible for people to really integrate in their lives. And so in just the same way, a lot of the Vipassana practice,

• 1:29:33Speaker 04

  what we call Vipassana practice in the beginning, and the beginning can be a while, it is the development of a lot of these supportive practices. And there's a Zo Chen, I think Tulka Workit talked about this, and it's probably in the Zo Chen texts, where they talk about fabricated and unfabricated mindfulness. Right. And fabricated is kind of what you're suggesting, I think, characterizes Vipassana, where there has to be kind of some effort made. And unfabricated mindfulness, where it's just there. There's no effort required. Well, in Vipassana, there's also that move

• 1:30:17Speaker 04

  from fabricated to unfabricated mindfulness. Okay, so that's being said. Then I agree with you that there can be subtle dualistic perceptions, just like the undercurrent of thought that mostly go unrecognized, whether one's practicing Zo Chen or Vipassana. There are some really subtle, they're called cognitive distortions. And they're really explained quite definitively, although can be a little difficult to unpack

• 1:30:57Speaker 04

  in the very first discourse of the Middle East Sams, where the Buddha's acknowledging and pointing out these very subtle cognitive distortions that may be unrecognized. So I agree with you, you know, that that can be there, but they are also addressed within the Theravada tradition, and one does have to penetrate through them. So I would suggest something to the listeners.

• 1:31:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:31:28Speaker 04

  Acknowledging that we've been having these discussions for years, and you know, sometimes with different flavors and this and that. What I would suggest is, in whatever has been heard, any thread of any of it that seems of interest, just to pursue that thread. You don't have to kind of hold it all and try to figure out right and wrong. And if there's something in what was said that was helpful for the practice to relieve suffering in some way, go for it. I mean, just explore and see where it leads.

• 1:32:07Speaker 05

  I like that.

• 1:32:08Dan Harris?

  Joseph and Sam, thank you both. Appreciate you.

• 1:32:11Speaker 04

  Thank you, Dan.

• 1:32:12Speaker 05

  Until next time, Joseph.

• 1:32:14Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:32:15Speaker 05

  My seconds will call on your seconds.

• 1:32:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:32:23Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Joseph and Sam. I hope you all found it useful. I certainly did, although that was the first time I've ever, in the recording of a podcast, put my head down on my desk. Don't forget, you can get a companion meditation that comes with this podcast if you sign up over at danharris.com. Our Teacher of the Month, Cristiano Wolf, has crafted a meditation all about urge surfing or not being owned by your urges, both on the cushion and off. If you sign up, you can also come to our weekly live meditation and Q and A sessions. We do them every Tuesday at four. And as mentioned in the intro, I've got an I R L event coming up on November 23rd in the Hudson Valley. There's a link in the show notes.

• 1:33:06Dan Harris?

  Finally, thank you to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vassili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

• 1:33:39Speaker 06

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