How to Find the Extraordinary in the Ordinary: Why Meaning Comes From Within with Henry Shukman #689

What happens when the boundary between you and the world around you dissolves? It’s something I experienced myself recently, and this week I sat down with Zen Master Henry Shukman to try and make sense of it. What results is a conversation that moves from the practicalities of a sitting practice, to the outer edges of what meditation can reveal about who we really are. Henry has been meditating for almost 40 years and is the guide behind The Way, the meditation app I use myself and have long recommended to you. He’s Director of the Mountain Cloud Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, an award-winning poet and the author of several books. This is his third appearance on the podcast, but our conversation this time goes somewhere we've never been before. We begin by talking about how meaning, purpose and happiness are found within us, not externally. Our culture may measure worth through outward achievement, but meditation can show us a deeper reality beneath the striving – a natural, open heart that doesn't need to prove itself. I share the deeply affecting experience I had at a retreat earlier this year – one that changed how I understand connection, identity and what it means to feel truly at peace. Henry helps unpack it, drawing on Buddhist teaching, his own blissful awakening at 19, and decades of guiding others through similar moments. We talk honestly about what this means for people living ordinary, busy lives, and why none of it requires stepping away from our responsibilities. Our conversation also touches on ageing and independence, prompted by reflections on my own parents and what they taught me about serenity in circumstances that looked far from peaceful. And in the second half, I invite Henry to answer some of your most-asked questions. Among many useful topics, we cover building a consistent meditation habit, fitting it into family life, coping with shame, cravings and addiction, and how to stay grounded in a difficult relationship. This episode moves effortlessly between the practical and the profound, and I think it will mean something different depending on where you are in your own life right now. But whether you're new to meditation or have been practising for years, rest assured there's a powerful message here for you. The Thrive Tour: Transform Your Health and Happiness, a live show: Book Your Tickets https://drchatterjee.com/live Thanks to our sponsors: https://drinkag1.com/livemore https://thewayapp.com/livemore Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/689 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  By the pursuit of what we think is best, we're missing all the beauty right here with humble, humble little things. You know, we think, I want some great awakening. But really, we need so little to be really deeply happy and at peace.

• 0:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hey guys, how are you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast, Feel Better Live More.

• 0:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  What happens when the boundary between you and the world around you dissolves? Well, that's something I myself experienced recently. And in this week's conversation, we explore what those experiences can reveal about who we really are. Henry Schugman is a Zen master, author, poet and co-founder of the Way Meditation App. As many of you know, I have been using the Way app for a long time now. And a few months back, I also became an investor because I very much support their mission to get more people meditating, as I passionately believe this will lead to a more compassionate world.

• 1:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Now, this is Henry's third appearance on my podcast, but this conversation goes somewhere we've never been before. We explore how meditation can lead to something beyond increased calm and focus. It can give you a direct encounter with the sense that we're not separate from the world around us. This is something I myself experienced recently. And during this conversation, Henry helps me make sense of that experience. And in doing so, opens up a conversation about awakening or non-duality, finding meaning from within, and how surrendering the need to achieve allows your heart to open.

• 1:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  Of course, not everyone seeks truth through meditation. And if you're happy to just practice in order to feel calmer and a sense of peace, then Henry assures us that's entirely valid as well. Towards the end of this conversation, there is a really practical section where I put some of your most asked questions about meditation to him, including how to build a consistent practice, how meditation can help with addiction, and how to carry increased awareness from meditation into the rest of your life. This is a beautiful conversation that moves effortlessly between the practical and the profound.

• 2:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I think it will probably mean something different depending on where you are in your own life. One of my own biggest insights over the past few months has been to really recognize how much power there is in cultivating an open heart, not just for our own peace and mind, but also because this will ripple out into our relationships, our communities, and ultimately, the wider world.

• 3:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  Many people these days, Henry, feel lost and lacking in purpose. How do you see meditation as a practice that can help people find meaning?

• 3:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a great question. Here's my initial take on that. It's like, the first thing we try to do with meaning is try to find it out in the world. It's out there somewhere. And actually, I don't know that that's the right place to look for it. I think it's within. And meditation is, you know, lots of things and people understand it lots of different ways. But fundamentally, it's always coming back to what's already here within us. I think, you know, the deepest meaning of our lives is within. And when we, when we connect with that, we also see it out in the world.

• 4:13Speaker 00

  It's like it comes from within, we find it within, and it reorients how we then live our outward lives. So that, I think that's the first thing, to be still with ourselves, to come home to ourselves.

• 4:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  You're saying that many of us look outside for meaning, outside for purpose. And I guess many people have bought the myth that happiness also exists on the outside. I mean, these are just terms, right? You know, they could, for some of us, they could be interchangeable, meaning, purpose, happiness. But I think the truth within all of them is that they're really not found on the outside. They're all, I guess to me, games that are played on the inside.

• 5:03Speaker 00

  Yes, I think that's, that's right. I've heard, I've heard some, someone say, or I think it's a common saying maybe is like, happiness is an inside job. You know, I think it's, it's really true. There's a, I remember there was a time that the Dalai Lama came to visit Santa Fe. I'd actually, I happened not to be there at the time, but it was actually after I moved there, some 30 odd years ago. And he was, he was fascinated by skiing, you know? He'd never done it and he wanted to see what it was like. And there's a ski, there's a ski mountain half an hour outside Santa Fe and he went up there. And, and after, after, I mean, he didn't actually get put on a pair of skis, but he was just watching people doing it.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  And afterwards, he went in, he wanted to go into the cafeteria, have a, have a hot drink. And he was sitting there and one of the servers, you know, working in the cafeteria, she so nervously came up to him and asked him, you know, your, they call him your holiness.

• 6:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  Your holiness, yeah.

• 6:07Speaker 00

  I know you're a very wise man. I want to know what's the meaning of life? And, and he burst out laughing. He says, oh, how he often does, says, the meaning of life, meaning of life is very simple. It's to be happy. It's to be happy. But not so simple is how to be happy. Not so simple.

• 6:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 6:35Speaker 00

  And, you know, I think it's such a good reminder for all of us that when we're driven to, so much by our culture to try to live up to things, outward measures. And we're driven to, how do I measure up? How do I earn my place? How do I feel worthy? And there's a totally different path of non, non-accomplishment, non-achievement. It's the opposite, that your meaning, your deepest meaning and your deepest purpose and your happiness are never going to be earned. You know, that's, it's so radical. We, I mean, I still have that conditioning strongly that I've got to, I've got to,

• 7:20Speaker 00

  I've got to do my projects, do them well, they've got to be helpful. I want to serve the best I can. And somehow my, my, my right to exist, you know, I can fall into this thinking, my right to exist, you know, is earned by how well I act and sort of perform. But that's, that's the wrong path for true meaning and true happiness.

• 7:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's interesting, and I guess for many people, perhaps reassuring that you, as someone who is a certified Zen master and someone who I think has meditated for, how many years now?

• 8:02Speaker 00

  I'm a little embarrassed, I ought to be better by now. It's like, it's getting on for 40 years.

• 8:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, so let's say 40 years of meditation.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:10Rangan Chatterjee?

  You're still susceptible to this external conditioning that many of us fall prey to in the modern world. And as you were talking just then, I thought back to the retreat that I came on, that you were sort of co-hosting in Santa Fe earlier on this year. And this morning, I was going through my journal, actually, of some of the notes I made afterwards. And I remember very clearly on the first day, because it was only about 10 of us there. And, you know, some of the people who were there were, I guess, would be relatively well-known people. Not everyone, but some were.

• 8:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I think you said something like, sitting in this room, many of you are overachievers.

• 9:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  And none of you ever needed to achieve anything.

• 9:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  Or something to that effect. And it stopped me in my tracks. I thought, yeah, there's, there's a lot of us in here who by modern standards would be considered successful. And just that kind of almost contradiction that, hey, you, you guys are all overachievers. And none of you ever needed to achieve anything.

• 9:29Speaker 00

  Ah, yeah.

• 9:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  I mean, what are we meant to do with that? Does that mean we're not meant to go out there in the world and do things? Or is it something different?

• 9:38Speaker 00

  Yes, it's, it's, it's a, it's a bit of both and, I think. Because it's great, for example, you offering this incredible podcast that is helping just millions and millions of people. There's no question in my mind, it's a really good thing.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  And, you know, you've done deep training in medicine and you're, you know, very, very effective and, and beautiful skill as a healer and a, and a doctor. That's all fantastic.

• 10:05Speaker 00

  But there's still another path. There's still another reality about our lives that we can only find by being a kind of underachiever. It's like, it's really counterintuitive, but there's a way that even while we may be, you know, you're called to do the kinds of, you know, sort of big things that you're doing, and it's fantastic. Others are called to do smaller things, but they're still called to do stuff.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  But either way,

• 10:36Speaker 00

  the most beautiful thing of all is letting go of all of that and finding, I think it's like finding our true heart. Our true heart knows that it, it never needed to, to prove itself. And there's something about connecting with that in ourselves, for ourselves to really coming back to this totally natural, spontaneous, sort of innocent, open heart that we all have. I think living with that and from that will, will be helpful just by our interactions. And, you know, not in big ways.

• 11:19Speaker 00

  It might be in big ways if, if, if, if we're, if we have a, a large reach or something like, as you do, but, but everybody, you know, it's something about the human race. When we come back into this sort of tender, open heart that we all have.

• 11:39Speaker 00

  I think that, if that spreads, the whole human race gets this little magic sort of ripple of kindness and openness and, you know, our compassionate nature comes forth.

• 11:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I completely agree. The, the way I see it is it's to do with the energy behind what you're doing. Right? So let's take this podcast for a moment.

• 12:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  If I'm doing it in order to say something about who I am as a human being, and I judge my worth as a human on how many people have listened or not listened to an episode, I think that's very different from doing it with an open heart.

• 12:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 12:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Doing it because you're interested in this topic and you want to explore it and express it.

• 12:36Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 12:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  And whether people listen or not,

• 12:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  it was still worth having that conversation because I did it for me.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 12:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's, it's a subtle, it's like, it's like a subtly different flavour, isn't it?

• 12:49Speaker 00

  That's right. It's like, I mean, I see it as a kind of gratitude for having this experience at all. That we're, we're able to sit here feasting on, on the visuals of, that are appearing before our eyes, hearing the soft choir in the room, hearing our voices, sharing, you know, just, just to be doing this is already such a gift. And to feel, to be touched by that gift of being alive, you know, it's, it's available to us in every moment.

• 13:27Speaker 00

  And if we, if we do get it, then if we do sense that, it's like we, we sort of don't need anything else. You see what I mean? It's like, we're not doing it for some ulterior, later purpose. It's just for serving

• 13:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  the very gift of life. And I think when, when we've got that vibe going on, when we're feeling that ourselves, I think everybody recognizes it, or everybody knows that they too do sometimes feel like that. And, and our society or our culture, contemporary culture, so doesn't recognize the value of that.

• 14:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hmm.

• 14:07Speaker 00

  And it's such a relief when it is called out and recognized. And when we sense somebody else is just free. And I think it's, it's a natural human thing to have that spontaneous warmth in our hearts. You know, when we, when we're feeling it, it's its own reward. It's its own reason.

• 14:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think what meditation does for many of us is provide the kind of structure and container for us to experience these things. Because I think if you are left to the prevailing wind of society

• 14:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  in the modern world, you can end up being swept up in busyness and emails and things you have to do. And you never quite feel you're doing enough. And there's always something else you could be doing and that to-do list just keeps growing, even though you've made so many efforts to actually, you know, get through it. And I guess that the sort of common tendency is to think that we need more productivity hacks, you know? How do I get through my to-do list faster? You know, many people, and people maybe right now are listening to this episode on 1.5 the speed, twice the speed, right? I love podcasts. I have never ever listened to a podcast at anything but the actual speed.

• 15:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay? And that's not to judge anyone who does it differently, right? Many people say, yeah, I listen to things double the speed.

• 15:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  And actually, I really enjoy it and I get more information and quickly.

• 15:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  I just realized I actually want to experience it as it was. Like, I don't want it sped up.

• 15:50Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 15:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  You know?

• 15:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I think busyness is such an epidemic these days that any practice of solitude or silence, whether that be meditation or whether it be something else, I think has incredible hidden power, basically.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly. And it's, it's not by, it's not on the same register as like the metrics of getting more done. It's not at all. It's like, actually, there's this, I'm trying to remember, there's a really funny song called The Sickest Buddhist, I think it's called.

• 16:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  And the best Buddhist or something like that. I forget who the comedian is doing it. And he says, and there's a line in it, like, that 25 minute meditation, I killed it in 10.

• 16:41Speaker 00

  You know, and it's like, it's exactly like that. Could you possibly speed up a meditation? You know, it's like, it's, it's insane. The whole point is like, we're just joining the unfolding of the universe. We're just being still and joining what's actually happening.

• 16:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 16:58Speaker 00

  And, you know, it's such a different mindset from what can I get done?

• 17:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, it, it brings me back to that retreat. Okay, so it was something like a three-day retreat that I did with you earlier on in the year. And one of the things I wrote down in my journal that I saw today, because I hadn't looked at it for a while, was I felt as if my internal momentum had changed.

• 17:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  Which is really beautiful, because I think when we're in this sort of routine of daily life,

• 17:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  that kind of internal pacemaker, as it were, runs at a certain speed, right? We don't realize it, that we're sort of being, it's like a thermostat in the house. Like, it's always bringing us back to that speed. And I felt because of the container you provided during that retreat, everything within me started to slow down. There's something about internal momentum that I think many of us don't realize until we slow down. Until we have that practice of solitude, we just don't know how fast we're moving through life.

• 18:06Speaker 00

  I totally agree. Very often, as we start to settle through doing regular daily meditation, we start to feel, oh my gosh, there's a kind of flywheel constantly turning inside me. It's got this momentum, even though I'm, I'm still now, this thing is still spinning that's trying to make me do stuff. And so it takes a while for that momentum to sort of bleed off, as it were, just gradually slows down. And we get into the pace of actual living. You know, I mean, I totally relate to it myself. You know, I, I've, I've done it a lot in my life, just trying to drive myself faster. Actually, I'm wondering, I've got a poem about this, about this very problem.

• 18:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  Shall I, shall I share it?

• 18:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  I'd love you to, yeah.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  Okay, well, it's called, it's called "The Slow One", and I'm gonna, I just need to give a little bit of a setup of what's going on in it.

• 18:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, amazing.

• 19:00Speaker 00

  It's, um, it's a time in my life, relatively recently, actually, when we had had to move to California, Southern California, to support a loved one who was having a very hard time. And we were living in, you know, the suburban spread of, of Southern California, which was not somewhere I'd ever really wanted to live, to be honest. I, you know, LA area, you know, I, I, I'm blessed to live in a beautiful city, Santa Fe, where you came wrong earlier this year. And I grew up in a beautiful city, Oxford and so on. And I was, I was really not very comfortable about going there, but we had to. And, but the good thing I discovered soon was we were only 10 minutes from the ocean. So I could drive down to the ocean.

• 19:44Speaker 00

  And I started going every morning at dawn, or just before, and I'd see the sun coming up and I'd get in it. It was, it's quite chilly actually down there, the ocean, but really, really, really beautiful. And I started to notice that I'd get this expansive, beautiful experience at dawn. And then I'd already, before I knew it, I'd be wanting to get back, to get onto my computer, to go, to go, to go working. And I suddenly noticed how sad that was. And this poem is, is about that. It's called "The Slow One". "The real me moves slowly. The real me moves slowly. He looks at things a long time,

• 20:26Speaker 00

  until he understands what he's looking at. Like this morning in the sea, down by the broad beach, early, when the sun had just risen and was bright like oil on the water. And the water itself was dark purple, almost black. And it was the sea's surface, the seeming thickness of it, like animal hide, but moving, breathing in its big, slow rhythm, that caught his attention. It seemed heavy, like a blanket being shaken in slow motion, its colors and folds lit by the morning sun.

• 21:07Speaker 00

  He was studying it, he was studying it, enjoying it, learning about it, when already we were showering off the salt at the public's bigger, toweling dry, getting in the car, into the traffic. And he was still staring back, trying to see the sea with the great light risen across it, which wanted to show him his true place in the world, something he was happy to learn again and again. But someone else, someone thoughtless, heedless, busy, had already taken him away."

• 21:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  I mean, how many people are going to resonate with that, straight away, Henry?

• 21:49Speaker 00

  It's like, you know, there's something so beautiful inside us that, that loves this world and loves being alive. And how often am I really connected with it? You know, my practice is to be connected with it. And I have long spells when I'm really lucky. I just, I just do feel more connected with it. And I, but it's not constant. I can get taken out.

• 22:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  What, what would you say to someone who resonated with that beautiful poem, but doesn't feel it's relevant for them? They're like, okay, yeah, Henry, you're a meditation teacher. You live in the mountains of Santa Fe. I live in inner-city London. My life is busy. I've got a job to go to. I've got errands to run.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 22:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  What's the relevance of that for me? What would you say to that person?

• 22:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's, there's, there's beauty all around us, even in, in a city. I, I spent a lot of time in New York and in London, actually, as well. And it's, there's beauty sort of everywhere, you know? And, and I would say, just see what it's like to allow yourself five minutes of, um, sitting on a bench and just watching the world go by. The, the shift from being caught by the, our own inner momentum that society kind of approves of us having and has conditioned us to have. The switch between that and just disengaging from it

• 23:18Speaker 00

  for even a little bit, just watching, people watching, watching the world go by, just a moment of it, you'll, we get the flavor. We can all, all of us can get the flavor. And the question then is, when you get the flavor of slower, of coming back to a slower version of you that you've always had, that you had as a kid, and you still have today, when we get that flavor, you know, how do you feel? How, when you, when we really get it, do we sense there's another way of being alive? It doesn't mean I have to abandon the other one.

• 24:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  No.

• 24:02Speaker 00

  It's the balance.

• 24:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  What I've experienced myself is that if you can taste slowness in the morning, okay?

• 24:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's not just about that luxurious feeling that you have. You almost remind yourself what slowness feels like. And so this is why I personally am a fan of morning routines or rituals, just some sort of morning practice of stillness. Because I think it just grounds you a little bit. It reminds you what it can feel like. And even if you then get caught up in the busyness of the day, I think you're much more likely to slow down at some point if you've tasted it, right? And I think unfortunately, so many of us don't feel we've got time

• 25:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  for even five or 10 minutes of slowness or stillness or meditation. And therefore, we've forgotten what it feels like. We're just used to our thermometer or our internal momentum running at a fast speed. And we think that's our natural speed, but it isn't.

• 25:19Speaker 00

  I know.

• 25:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's your conditioned speed.

• 25:22Speaker 00

  It is.

• 25:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  And you can actually uncondition it without needing to go to, you know, a wonderful retreat. You can start to do that with five or 10 minutes a day, can't you?

• 25:32Speaker 00

  You totally can. And I would say, the thing is, it's, it's actually, it's not just about momentum and speed. It's like, if we get that little space, yes, in time we'll learn to disengage. And we'll, it's like unplugging, disconnecting. And you suddenly feel alive in a different way. And I feel that once we got that sense more consistently, touching into it more consistently each day, we can then throw ourselves into the busyness of life. It's fine. But there's a bit of another dimension that we start to sense that's with us all the time. And, you know, we'll remember it, we'll forget it, we'll remember it, we'll taste it, we'll forget it again.

• 26:15Speaker 00

  But we're starting to get the sense of slightly larger life that's with us all the time. It's not only when we slow down. It's that we start to get the sense, and it, it doesn't, it doesn't mean we, we shouldn't, you know, have our busy lives. It, it doesn't mean that. It's just that there's a larger life with us, even while we're doing our busy thing. And that's, that's just such a treasure to discover that.

• 26:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, that, that topic of another dimension, I want to get to very shortly. Before I do that, though, I just wanted to, if I may, read a section from, I think, my favorite book of yours, Original Love, entitled "An Invitation" at the start.

• 26:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, please, of course.

• 26:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  Because it really speaks to what we're talking about. "Imagine you're alone in a quiet room. No one can disturb you. You're comfortable, you're still. And gradually, you're getting the sense that a greater quiet surrounds you and holds you. The more you feel this quiet, the more you know in your bones that you can trust it. It's beautiful and precious. And you find yourself letting go of your plans. Your to-do list evaporates. Your agenda disappears like vanishing ink. Now there's only the quiet, which feels almost like a presence.

• 27:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  And it brings on a deep sense of well-being." And then, Henry, you continue with another paragraph, but then I'm just going to pick it up one paragraph later. "In a while, you take a deeper breath and end the period of meditation. You go downstairs, make coffee and enter your day, feeling not just replenished, but as if you have just touched something wider, an unnameable mystery, a secret side to your life that has reset your priorities."

• 28:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I'm glad I wrote that, actually.

• 28:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's beautiful.

• 28:20Speaker 00

  It's always, I'm not always so keen on what I wrote before, but actually, that, that, yeah, I, I sort of, I think that's right.

• 28:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  You stand by it.

• 28:28Speaker 00

  I stand by it. I think that, that's the big point, that we, once we do, once we do the disconnecting, the slowing down a little bit, it, it's not just that we go slower and we're more appreciative. We touch the mystery, the mystery of being. And that's the big, that's the big kahuna. That's the thing that really matters.

• 28:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  That's what I want to focus on in today's conversation, because you've been on the show twice before. And, you know, we've covered all kinds of practical things to do with meditation and some of its benefits. And it would be very easy to talk about the science of how meditation can help us with depression, anxiety, burnout, increase or change the structure of your brain, improve focus, all these things, which it does. But I think there's something much deeper that it does that probably underpins all of that. And again, you touch on it there, you know, a secret side to your life that has reset your priorities. That's what's happened to me, maybe six weeks ago, something like that.

• 29:30Speaker 00

  I think we need to hear about it, because it's really important. And it, because it, you know, this is, this is what really matters, is that we, we think we sort of know what life is. We know it in a certain way. We have a consensus about it, you know, and we're conditioned to, to go with that consensus. But there's a totally different way of knowing this life, where we, where it's about, it's more about not knowing. We sense it in a different way, we experience it in a different way, and it, and we, we actually get closer to the mystery of being. So please share what you shared with me, you know, and we'll,

• 30:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  We'll unpack it.

• 30:05Speaker 00

  We'll unpack it, yeah, yeah.

• 30:13Rangan Chatterjee?

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• 30:57Rangan Chatterjee?

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• 31:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay, so

• 31:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  a friend of mine was having a birthday celebration. This friend has been doing a lot of what would be called men's work for the past few years. Okay, so, you know, he's found that incredibly helpful to help him understand himself, to become a better man, a better father, a better husband. He's just found it incredible. So my friend invited a few people for this weekend away. I was the only one who was invited who had not done, you know, men's work before. Okay, but my friend thought that because of the things I'm interested in and the sort of things that I have done, that I would fit right in.

• 32:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  Now, I didn't know much about what was going to happen. And on the first day on the Friday, they have something from their men's work, I think called a circle. And basically, you know, a fire is lit and we are sitting around the circle. And they have a process for everyone to go and share something about themselves. It was incredible because I tell you, at the end of that hour, I felt I knew all of these guys really well. Right, because it was real honesty and vulnerability. And you realise we've all got a narrative and a story behind us actually being there.

• 33:20Speaker 00

  Right?

• 33:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  And just to be clear, this is very different from the sort of birthday celebrations I used to do with this guy. Maybe 20 years ago, okay? So there's been some evolution, let's put it like that. But on the Saturday, we sat around and

• 33:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  this is something one of his, his friends and his wife had actually set up, where we were going to go around and express gratitude for who this friend of ours was, what he's meant to us, what we're grateful for, about who he has been and the person he is about to become.

• 34:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  And it was just so beautiful, just hearing all these people express from their hearts in a way that men often don't. It was so powerful, right? People were tearing up. It was just absolutely beautiful that we're out in nature, there's a fire there.

• 34:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  It was just incredible.

• 34:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  I'm just sitting there, I'm feeling amazing. I closed my eyes. And at some point,

• 34:33Rangan Chatterjee?

  it just feels different. Like at some point, Henry, I no longer could feel where I ended and the world began. I think I could feel my bum on my seat and my bare foot on the grass. I think. But I couldn't feel anything else. Like I almost lost my sense of who I was and where my body ended.

• 35:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  It felt amazing.

• 35:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  It felt like bliss. Just to be clear, I hadn't meditated beforehand. And I wasn't expecting anything. I was just sitting there. I was just down to see my body. And I didn't know what to expect that weekend. And that, when I was feeling this, Henry,

• 35:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  at one point I became aware that I was, this was just an incredible feeling that I had never experienced before.

• 35:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I was tempted and I, and I stopped myself from opening my eyes. Because what I thought, and maybe I'd come out of this, I don't really know, Henry, but as I think back,

• 35:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  it felt so good. I thought, Rong, if you open your eyes, you may never feel this again. So I didn't want to open my eyes, right? And so I didn't. I just kept them shut and I, and I sort of bathed in the luxurious bliss that I was feeling.

• 36:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  So that's kind of what happened, right? All I know is that when I finally came out of it and when this whole kind of ritual had finished,

• 36:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  I just felt different.

• 36:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  I felt I'd experienced something I'd never ever experienced before and I loved it.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  So I could say more, Henry, but I'll just stop there for a moment.

• 36:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  If you have any questions.

• 36:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, that's fantastic. Just to, just to, just to recap a tiny bit on a couple of points. So there's a moment, and then it extends, when you, you suddenly cannot tell where you end and the world begins.

• 36:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 36:55Speaker 00

  Where there's just one space or sensation or something that includes both you and the world in itself. It's just one, that's, that's, you know, that is, that's one of the central aspects of our deeper spiritual nature of our, as, you know, in Buddhism, it's called Buddha nature. It means that we, we, we habitually, in a conditioned way, believe that we're separate. That's the foundation of our egoic identity is that it's separate, that we are alone in being ourself.

• 37:35Speaker 00

  You know, that basically that's our fundamental nature is a separate entity. And what I would, you know, humbly offer, you got a taste of, is when somehow a door opens and that separateness is swept away or is invaded by something larger that is not separate. Where we discover we're part, we are one with, you could say we're part of. But there's, it's, neither of those phrases are quite right. It's like the true nature of things steps in. Somehow something in us opens and nobody, nobody has, I do,

• 38:20Speaker 00

  I hesitate to say this with a little bit of trepidation, but I believe nobody knows how to control that. When and how and why something in us can open. And we just receive this true nature of things that's not separate. And when we, when it happens, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a dimensional shift. It's like, we, we didn't know before that there's something about us that is very real, that is not about separateness, that it's, it's a wholeness with everything, world and us as one.

• 39:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 39:03Speaker 00

  And you, to taste that, I mean, I want to say congratulations because, you know, it's, it's, people seek it. People seek it for years.

• 39:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  Well, there's so much I want to say. Like, first thing I want to make clear is that there were no substances involved. I mean, literally, it was just a, well, I say it in normal sense, I say no. It was, I was at this thing with my mates. But I wasn't trying to get anything.

• 39:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right, and I've read that before. Like you've spoken about that on, on the way app, which, you know, I use regularly, which I love. You know, we, you talk a lot about this idea that, and many teachers do, that if you're seeking it, like you can't really get it through seeking. But of course, to a Western mind that's conditioned to saying, if you work harder, you know, you keep doing the reps, keep putting in, and then at some point you'll be rewarded. The great thing for me, Henry, because I've reflected a lot on this over the last few weeks, is that it's, it's as you say in Original Love, right? And it happened to you. You spoke about your experience when you were 19, I think, on our first conversation on this podcast. It just happened.

• 40:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Straight after it happened.

• 40:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  I shared with the group. I basically said that something incredible just happened to me. I explained a few more things, but I said, I think, I think I've just had what people call my first non-dual experience. And then I left you a message, I think I left you a voice message to say, hey, Henry, listen, this is what happened and you said, you know, you worked for jumping on a course. So we had a call about it. And one of the things I said to you was that, does it really matter? What we call it?

• 41:01Speaker 00

  Right.

• 41:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? Is that not sometimes, are we not at risk when we try and identify? I mean, we'll talk about this because I think people are very interested in what's called awakening. But it feels to me as though you can read about it as much as you want. It's just not the same as experiencing something. And then when you try and explain your experience, sometimes I think words are limiting. I'm trying to explain to you in words what happened, but it doesn't in any way capture what actually, it's a bit like, I don't know, if you go and see a beautiful sunset, right? And then you pull out your phone and you try and take a picture of it.

• 41:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  You look at it, you're like, oh, well, I know what I experienced and what I saw, and I know what I'm looking at on my phone screen, and it ain't the same thing. What do you make of that?

• 41:56Speaker 00

  Well, I think it's absolutely right. I mean, to me, it's very beautiful that there's a whole side of our life that we cannot get in words, that we cannot even get through thinking, that we can get through no amount of calculation, no amount of understanding. It just has to be experienced in order, if we're going to know it. We kind of know it when it happens, but it's only a kind of knowing. It's not knowing the same way that other kinds of knowledge are. It's not like, I know the train leaves at 14:18, you know? It's not that kind of knowledge. It's a, it's, I think is deeper.

• 42:39Speaker 00

  It's, I believe it's a, it's a discovery about something of our real nature. It's because it's, you know, it has that authority about it, that this is somehow more real. But we could not get to it through words and language. Language doesn't know how to contain it. And what a mercy, what a wonderful thing, that there's this whole other side to us, to each of us. And we're going to say to our life, but the important thing is it's about each of us. It's about what we actually are.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  There's this whole side to what we are that is a mystery. And we can encounter that mystery. We can meet it. It can come to us. We can receive it. And when we do, we're, we're, we're sort of, you know, you mentioned, we're sort of invaded by this well-being, by peace, by love. Sometimes it's a quiet joy, you know? And we just know our life in a different way. So actually, I wanted to ask you, like, when you're talking about it now and when you're sort of casting your mind back to it, how do you feel?

• 44:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  One of the things that has evolved with me in the last few weeks is my definition of success. I would say now, my definition of success is literally how much of my life am I living with an open heart?

• 44:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 44:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's, it's literally, can you, can you act with love in every situation?

• 44:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  Even when people perhaps are not being nice to you, can you still act with love?

• 44:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:37Rangan Chatterjee?

  One of the other things I've noticed is my sense of my periphery has changed, right? So when I'm walking, I'm seeing more. I, I, I kind of feel there's an extra 10 or 20 degrees on each eye outward has now come into my awareness.

• 45:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  Now, what's interesting, of course, it was always there.

• 45:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  But I was probably not seeing it.

• 45:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? I wasn't aware of it.

• 45:11Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 45:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  So I would say that's another thing that I've noticed over the last few weeks is that I've just got a greater awareness field, I guess is how I would put it.

• 45:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, kind of capacity or sort of expanded awareness, we might call it. Yeah, yeah. And how, how does it feel? What's the emotional tone of that, if there is one? Is it peaceful? Is it exciting in some quiet way, joyful? Is there a well-being that comes with that of some kind?

• 45:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  I would say it's joyful.

• 45:45Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 45:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, it's joyful. I think partially because I'm able to recognize that that was always there. I was just never looking at it.

• 46:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right?

• 46:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  And then you can extend that even further. I know at the end of Original Love, there's a, there's a beautiful meditation you write about where you're, imagine you're in a theater and the stage is illuminated, right? So maybe you might be on the stage. I can't remember how you wrote it, but essentially then you sort of move back, right? And you're, you're sort of furthest, you can see the stage still with the lights on it, but you can, you can see the darkness around it.

• 46:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, yes.

• 46:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  And to me, I take, it's just like life, that, you know, I'm looking at you. If I really broaden out, I can see Gareth in the corner shooting. I can see the cameras, but of course, there's stuff behind me.

• 46:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? Just because I'm not seeing it, doesn't mean it's not there.

• 46:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  I know, I know this could sound so obvious, right? At the same time, it, it doesn't feel obvious. It feels, it feels really quite profound that it's like, that's all going on.

• 47:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  But I'm just focused on this.

• 47:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 47:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  But it doesn't mean that isn't happening because it is.

• 47:10Speaker 00

  Exactly. And I think you're describing, I think that we can get this bigger awareness where we're, although we're not seeing the objects behind us, we have a sense of space behind us, to the side, around the field of known experience. There's a larger presence, a larger space, a larger awareness that's wrapping around everything. So maybe you're getting some sense of that.

• 47:37Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 47:38Speaker 00

  And it brings a bit of peace because, I mean, it brings a large dose of peace because it's like a bigger context in which life itself, as we know it, is happening. There's like, there is a larger context, if you see what I mean.

• 47:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 47:54Speaker 00

  And that's, that's a lovely thing to sense.

• 47:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  If a student goes to an experience like this, are they meant to, or are they recommended to talk about it with one of their teachers? Is that how it works in your tradition?

• 48:08Speaker 00

  Yes, it is. Yes, it is. It can be, it can be very sort of helpful and affirming, you know, to have a conversation about it because nobody, yeah, nobody really, you don't get, it's, it's not easy to access a lot of information on this or to be met. But, you know, when, as you mentioned, I, I had a random awakening experience of this sort of nature when I was 19 years old. And it took me about 10 years before I even began to know or think or recognize that there, that it might have been something that other people had had some experience of. I just, I just didn't know what category of experience it had been. I just knew that it was the truth of my life.

• 48:53Speaker 00

  But once I did get to meet with somebody and talk about it who understood it, it was, it was an immense relief to know that this, this was a real thing, that other human beings were valued and were, in a sense, devoted to and could see the extraordinary value of it. Because it's a, it's a real shift in the whole structure of how we understand life and self. And now, you, in your case, you know, I would think it's very likely that your heart is more open as a result

• 49:31Speaker 00

  because you've, you clearly have expressed how the boundary between me and the world just wasn't there. And that is an open heart in a, in a deep way. You know, we can be open-hearted on different levels. But that's a level where, you know, there's, there's just this whole border between me and the world has gone. Now, usually it will come back. It'll reconstitute sooner or later, and that's okay. But we've seen a reality without it, where we're just not separate from this world. And just to see that and to feel it and to be, to have let it in, to have let it happen,

• 50:15Speaker 00

  it can be the start of a reorientation in our, in our values.

• 50:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. It's kind of interesting. If I, if I think back over the last year, one of the things I was thinking about is that there comes a stage, right? Or certainly with me, where, you know, you can talk about gratitude, right? And you can look at the scientific literature and what it says about a practice of gratitude, right? But at some point,

• 50:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  You stop practicing gratitude and you become gratitude.

• 50:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  Like, I really feel over the last year, like, I, I just feel naturally appreciative and grateful for

• 51:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  everything, like even the most mundane, right? Or as you say, you know, beauty is around us everywhere. If you look for it, I mean, one of the most incredible things on our, on the retreat that you hosted was a walking meditation. Right? I'd never really done a walking meditation before. And you notice, or one of the things I noticed is how much surrounds us at all times that we miss.

• 51:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  You can actually find the extraordinary in the ordinary.

• 51:35Speaker 00

  That's, that's exactly right. Cause really the extraordinary, the ordinary is extraordinary.

• 51:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  Exactly.

• 51:40Speaker 00

  If only we could see it, you know?

• 51:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 51:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I think, you know, I would say another point wrong in here probably is that you've been meditating more, you know, over the last months and

• 51:54Speaker 00

  when we're meditating, it's like we're more, or when we have meditation in our life, we're more exposed to reality. The reality that we cannot know in our linear, through the linear mind, you know, the linear calculating, plotting, scheming, planning mind, we can't, the reality that we can't know that way is, has more, we're more available to it. And so that's another reason I'm not surprised that you would have an experience like that. When you had more meditation in your life, and it's not, it's, I wouldn't, I'm not saying it's the only factor. But when we have, all of us, when we have more of a practice, stillness and quiet and receptivity and noticing,

• 52:40Speaker 00

  mindful noticing, you know, in our, in our lives, we can, you know, the walls of the self get a little bit thinner. And they get a little bit more porous.

• 52:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 52:51Speaker 00

  And it's easier for them to have a little tear. So the, the, the outside, what we think of outside us and inside us, they pour in together. And we discover that they've always actually been one. Cause the thing about this is it's not, it's not that we're making something unusual happen. It's that we're becoming unusually more available to the way things really are. That's how I would view it. And I think most spiritual traditions would as well. That it's not that through spiritual practice of some kind, like meditation, we're making strange, strange things happen. So I, I don't even agree with the term altered states. You know, when somebody has an awakening experience, I think it's the opposite of an altered state.

• 53:36Speaker 00

  It's the, the protective state of, of

• 53:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  We're, we're living in an altered state.

• 53:41Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 53:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hence the unhappiness, the lack of meaning, the purposelessness, the feeling of lostness, whatever it might be.

• 53:49Speaker 00

  Exactly. And all the stress and the chasing, yeah.

• 53:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  Cause we're disconnected.

• 53:53Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 53:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 53:55Speaker 00

  And, and when we're reconnected to what was, what's always been here. Yeah. It's not like we suddenly stopped living, you know, there's, there's a story actually about the Buddha. When the Buddha had his great awakening, it's a, it's a beautiful story. I mean, the nuts and bones, the bare bones of it, that he'd been, he'd been doing incredibly difficult ascetic practice, mortifying himself and not eating and not drinking, having a grain of rice a day and stuff. And he was almost dead. He was completely emaciated and, and he suddenly thought, this isn't working and I'm about to die. So he took nourishment. This, this milkmaid brought him some lovely thick rice pudding and he was nourished by it.

• 54:37Speaker 00

  And they said, okay, I'm better, you know, now I'm going to just sit down under a tree and just let my heart show me what it wants to. And he sat down under the tree and as the story is on the, after a week,

• 54:54Speaker 00

  he was, at dawn, he saw the Venus, the morning star twinkling in the sky, and he had his great awakening. And, and then he just sat there in total bliss for three weeks, apparently, you know, just everything was resolved. He discovered the truth. And, and in the, in the story, the legend, you know, a god comes, Vishnu, and taps him on the shoulder and says, what are you doing? He said, what needed to be done has been done. I've found the truth. I've awakened. And Vishnu said, that's all very well, but look at the world. It's burning up with suffering.

• 55:32Speaker 00

  And the Buddha says, well, I can't do anything about that. They'd never get this. It would be like trying to swim against the stream. And Vishnu said, you've got to try anyway. So that expression, swimming against the stream, is exactly what we've been talking about with this conditioned mind, the conditioned way we live. To go against that is, is really hard, but totally possible. And so he got up and he spent the next 49 years teaching. And, you know, we're still benefiting all these years, 2,500 years later. I mean, I was, he's only one

• 56:10Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 56:11Speaker 00

  of dozens of spiritual teachers. But the point being, actually awakening in this kind of way to non-duality, non-separateness. It doesn't mean we become a useless blob. You know, you, you can, you still live a life.

• 56:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think you can exist in the world with more love.

• 56:35Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 56:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  You can exist in this, I guess, more conditioned world.

• 56:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  But enjoying it more.

• 56:43Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 56:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  Understanding it more with more of an open heart.

• 56:47Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 56:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  I guess what's reassuring with various traditions, like the Zen tradition or the Vedic traditions, is that there's many, many human beings who've experienced things like this in the past, right?

• 57:07Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 57:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  And, and they have, I guess, created frameworks of understanding. So we can sort of try with our minds to make sense of what just happened. In fact, in, in Original Love, Henry, I think you, you talk about some research where they say maybe 30% of humans have had some kind of,

• 57:25Rangan Chatterjee?

  you know, transcendent experience. I don't think all of them are necessarily non-dual, but something like that.

• 57:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:33Rangan Chatterjee?

  But I just want to make sure we keep the skeptic in mind here, right? So for someone who's never experienced this, they might literally be thinking, what on earth are you two banging on about? Right? Genuinely.

• 57:47Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 57:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  They might only be thinking, what do you mean, the true nature of reality? What do you mean? Like, I know my reality. I've got to provide for my family. I've got to pay the bills. I've got to take the bins out every Friday, you know, right? That, that is their current reality.

• 58:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 58:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  So they may have trouble understanding, like, for, for that skeptic,

• 58:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  how do you help them make sense of this? Why should they be even interested in this? Why, why shouldn't they just turn it off and go, this is complete nonsense?

• 58:23Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 58:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  Let me just get on with my life rather than hearing about some sort of altered states.

• 58:28Speaker 00

  Yes. Well, look, I would say first of all, you don't have to be interested in this. It's actually okay not to be. Number one. Number two.

• 58:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  Today's episode is sponsored by The Way, the only meditation app with a single long-term pathway. Now, if you've tried other meditation apps before, I am certain that The Way will be the one that will finally help you develop a consistent practice. You see, one of the best things about it is that you are not going to get overwhelmed with different options. You simply open the app and do the next meditation, building up your practice step by step. After a few sessions, you will feel as if you've got your own personal meditation teacher, who of course is the wonderful Henry Schuckman, who has appeared as a guest on this podcast on two separate occasions.

• 59:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  One of my listeners who started using The Way, following my recommendation, contacted me to say, I have tried so many meditation apps in the past, but simply could not make any of them work for me in the long term. However, using The Way has been a complete revelation. I've been using it almost daily for the past three months now, and it has had a transformative effect on my life. Now, I personally have been using this app for over six months now and I absolutely love it. In fact, I love it so much that I have invested in the company to join them in their mission to get more people meditating around the world. For listeners of my podcast, The Way is offering 30 free days to establish your own meditation practice.

• 1:00:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  All you have to do is go to thewayapp.com/livemore to get started. I am really excited to share that I am bringing my Thrive Tour, Transform Your Health and Happiness, to Canada and Europe this September and November. It's a live, interactive, uplifting show that over 20,000 people came to last year across the UK and Australia. I'll be sharing powerful stories, life-changing insights and simple tools that will inspire you to feel better, think clearer and live with more intention and joy.

• 1:00:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  To get your tickets right now and see all of the dates and venues, go to drchatterjee.com/live. I really hope that you can join me.

• 1:01:03Speaker 00

  None of this denies our ordinary reality. It actually doesn't mean that we don't go to work, we don't drive on the left-hand side of the road in the UK, on the right-hand side of the US. It doesn't mean that. It's like, it's more like all of this world is functioning the way we see and believe it to be. It's just that there's a whole other side to it that we don't normally experience and that we can experience. And when we do, it's like a great blasting open.

• 1:01:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:35Speaker 00

  And it's, and life is so much richer and so much more beautiful. And our hearts filled with love. So you can, you know, you can take that or leave it as a possibility. But it's not denying, you know, when I need to go to the shops, I need to go to the shops. When I need to go to work, I go to work. It's not denying that at all. It's more like there's another dimension that we can also see. And so it's not a denial of that. Now, in terms of, when it comes to meditation, I'm a firm believer that this is actually not the only reason to meditate. I'd say the vast majority of people who come to use our app, for example, they're not doing it for this. They're doing it because they want more peace in their lives.

• 1:02:18Speaker 00

  And that's a, that's an absolutely valid reason to do it. I mean, by and large, people are either doing meditation for peace or for, we might say, truth, you know, the quest for reality, a sort of deeper aspect of reality. But the huge majority is for peace. And of course, that's just great. So I would say to the skeptic, I mean, you can put all of this stuff about, you know, the ultimate nature of reality, whatever, you can just put it on the shelf. You don't need to, you don't need to go there. But I'd be hesitant to say the same

• 1:02:59Speaker 00

  about the beneficial effects of meditation on a nervous system that can help you with all aspects of your life. It's not like, you know, you're going to have to abandon your work or be a less good mother or father or parent, whatever. Not at all. I think it will help with pretty much every aspect of life, relationally, personally, in the career, in our, in our power to, of concentration. All will be helped because it is such a deeply human practice to be still and quiet. I assume that for tens of thousands of years

• 1:03:41Speaker 00

  and Paleolithic humans would have done this. It would just have been part and parcel of an ordinary life, that you get lots of hours in the day when you're not doing very much, or at least some. And it would be natural to be still, you know. And I mean, if you're a hunter, you'll spend a lot of time still because they're more likely to not scare off prayer if they're still. And then when they move, move very quietly and slowly, far more observant. That's all in our history. And, you know, ever since farming or, you know, 10,000 years ago, whatever, we've been losing that. We've been more and more caught up in, in, in the world of civilization that puts pressures on us that are completely different.

• 1:04:26Speaker 00

  And actually, it's still in our makeup to, to benefit from stillness, quiet. And the peace is like, we get quiet and still and we find a bigger quiet and a bigger stillness.

• 1:04:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:43Speaker 00

  And a bigger peace. And you don't, you can do all that without any question about awakening. You can just, you know.

• 1:04:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, and I think that's a really great reminder because I think there's, there will have been many humans who have existed and led happy and contented, meaningful lives, and perhaps never had an awakening experience. And I'm, I think back to the, the cart path analogy you write about in Original Love that we've spoken about on, I think, both of our previous conversations, where there's these two cart paths. Yeah, cart path one, there's mindfulness, support, absorption. These are things that meditation can really help you with, right? And alongside it, not at the end of those three, but alongside it is awakening. Awakening is always there.

• 1:05:29Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:05:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  You had it at 19 without a meditation practice. So it's not as if you meditate to get it.

• 1:05:35Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:05:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  It can just happen.

• 1:05:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  And you can have it and still exist in the world. I certainly, my limited experience, because it's just been a few weeks, is I can still, I think I can just exist in the world with, I felt I was already pretty peaceful and, and chilled. I think even more so. You can exist, you can exist in the world with a much bigger heart.

• 1:06:03Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:06:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  An even bigger heart.

• 1:06:05Speaker 00

  Yes, I think it's.

• 1:06:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  And when I think about perspectives, I'm drawn to, you know, the sun. Right, so your reality, if you're just looking at the end of the ocean in the morning, you just see the sun rise. Like, it literally looks as if it's rising really, really fast, right? Or at night, the sun is setting. Okay, that's one view. The other view, which I guess the science consensus today is that actually, no, the sun is still and we in the world are revolving and we're the ones spinning, right?

• 1:06:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  Both things are happening. I can, I can perceive it as a sunrise and a sunset. And there can be a deeper knowing that actually, no, no, no, this is sort of an illusion.

• 1:06:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? Because it's the world that's spinning around the sun.

• 1:06:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  Both things are true. I can still exist in the world. I could still enjoy a sunrise and a sunset.

• 1:06:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  And know the true nature. Is that a good analogy?

• 1:07:04Speaker 00

  It's actually, it's a very good analogy, yeah. Because we, you know, we, with, with the experience of awakening, you know, can get deeper and deeper. And, and there can be the point where everything falls away and, you know, there's just one nameless, indeterminate, they call it emptiness sometimes, but, and so you can experience that. It's possible. And, and then, having seen that, in a way, you sort of know everything from a different perspective. But you still have to treat it in exactly the same way. You know, the cup, the cup of coffee still has to be brewed. It still has to be picked up, brought to the lips,

• 1:07:48Speaker 00

  drunk into the body, even if you're seeing all of this as one single field that's actually in the end empty, you know. But nevertheless, it's all appearing as it is. So it's a very good analogy for being able to navigate this world even while awake to its fundamental non-separateness and emptiness. Because I don't know if that makes sense, but, but it's like, it is, it is like, you just see it all from a different perspective, but you still see the same stuff, you know.

• 1:08:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:29Speaker 00

  And it's, it's so beautiful. I mean, that's really the point that, see, what I, I love the fact that you need, we need so little. We're given so much and we need so little to, to be really deeply happy and at peace and filled with a love that we want to share. And it, it just comes from a perspective shift.

• 1:08:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, it's something you said at the retreats. I don't know if this is a koan or not. We shouldn't want even the best of things.

• 1:08:58Speaker 00

  Oh, yes, that is a line from a koan. It is actually, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's really interesting that, isn't it? It's like, by the pursuit of what we think is best, we're missing all the beauty right here with humble, humble little things that we don't think are the best. You know, we think, you know, I think I want some great awakening. But what about the cup, the beautiful cup that's in your hand? You know, the beautiful tabletop.

• 1:09:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, we're always seeking, aren't we? We think it's out there. When this happens, when I buy that, when that happens to me at work.

• 1:09:34Speaker 00

  Yes, then it'll all be okay.

• 1:09:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  But it, it really isn't that.

• 1:09:38Speaker 00

  No, because that.

• 1:09:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  That's the con.

• 1:09:40Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:09:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  It really is.

• 1:09:42Speaker 00

  It is a con.

• 1:09:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  But you, you only realize it's a con when you've seen through it.

• 1:09:45Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:09:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  But until then, you, you actually believe that is what's going to happen.

• 1:09:49Speaker 00

  Exactly. It's like we're in a little capsule of wanting and seeking at one end, fearing and trying to get away from at the other end. And we think that if we get to that next destination, I've got that thing, we'll be out of the capsule. But we won't, we're in the same capsule. The capsule hasn't been challenged. Do you see what I mean? Whereas we can actually challenge that framework. I'm calling it a capsule, like we're living in it of wanting X and seeking Y and fleeing A and B, you know, trying to avoid them. That model will just carry on being our model until we slow down and get to see it more clearly and then it can dissolve.

• 1:10:30Speaker 00

  And we find, oh my gosh, I'm, this is a vast life already here before I've got anything, you know. And there's, I remember the first time I did a retreat with my, with my current Zen master, Yamada Roshi, a Japanese guy. You know, he, he, he gave this powerful little bit in his talk, the first retreat I did, where he was saying, you know, we, humans have got this problem. We, we want certain things, we want to avoid certain things. We want, we want, you know, objects and possessions and wealth or whatever, and, or at least security and relationships. We don't want to lose them. But we also know that we are going to lose them when we die. You know, eventually we're going to lose them. And we probably will lose many of them before then anyway.

• 1:11:15Speaker 00

  And he said, but Zen's solution is not how to get them and keep them. It's to discover that we never really had them anyway. We never had stuff the way we thought we did. And that's, you know, what, what does that mean? But it's to do with this awakening thing of inside and outside being one.

• 1:11:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  In terms of reimagining reality or questioning what we think and what we know to be true, one thing I've been thinking a lot about over the last years is, I guess, the true nature of what it means to live a happy and contented life. And what I'm specifically talking about is this idea that we need to be mobile and independent in order to enjoy life. That's the conventional view. That's the view I hold, stroke, held, right? And even on this podcast and in many health and wellbeing podcasts, we talk about how do you stay mobile? How do you stay so you can be independent in your 80s and 90s? And I

• 1:12:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  want that. And at the same time, I do believe it's possible to be perfectly happy without being able to do any of those things. And why I think that, or the kind of situations in life that have resulted in me questioning my pre-existing assumptions are, I think there's two or three examples. One is my parents, right? So my dad died in 2013. Dad, when he was working, was a very hardworking doctor who was an immigrant to the UK in the 1960s, worked incredibly hard to give us a better life. But dad got really, really

• 1:13:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  sick suddenly in his late 50s. So he gets the autoimmune disease lupus, his kidneys fail, and he's on dialysis for 15 years, right? I've been reflecting on this recently. I don't think my dad ever complained about his condition. And my dad was a very active person up until that point. He was always working. Or when he was back home, he was in the garden, he was do, do, do, do, do. And for 15 years, he couldn't do anymore. He had to let other people do for him. And I never really appreciated it when dad was alive. But now I think, hmm, that did seem to be quite peaceful in his last few years. But he couldn't do all the things that he could have in the past. My mum has lost some

• 1:13:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  mobility in the last few years. And I've never seen her more peaceful, right?

• 1:14:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  So if I'm to buy into the belief that you need independence and mobility to be happy, I'm like, well, yeah, and there are people I know, namely my parents, who seem to have gained inner peace by not being able to move and do things. So in terms of understanding the fundamental nature of reality, yeah, we can talk about awakening, but I can also talk about these people and their experiences ago, they just make me question what I thought I knew to be true.

• 1:14:33Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:14:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  Does that make sense, Henry?

• 1:14:35Speaker 00

  It totally does. I mean, I think there's this, there's this switch that we've really been talking about, which is like, from pursuing identified goals and activities and projects and things we think we want, to suddenly not doing that, or not being able to do that, and finding that there can be deep peace and joy anyway. I think it's, it's very real, you know? I'm thinking of my, I mean, my mum has been very, very busy. We're very, you know, she's, she's now 95. I was just with her in Scotland for a week. And she's got, she's very, you know, she's very, very smart. And she's, she's, you know, she's

• 1:15:20Speaker 00

  been an academic, actually, as well as a priest, and a very busy person. And now she's still, she's quiet, she listens to the wind, she looks at the trees. Her mind's still clear as a bell, but she's at peace doing so little.

• 1:15:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. To me, it almost feels, especially these days, right? Because it's so easy to stay occupied, right? Phones, Netflix, whatever it might be, you know, there's always something that can take you away from yourself, right?

• 1:15:58Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 1:15:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  It can be very enjoyable and entertaining to do so. But I think in some of these examples that I've mentioned, when that is, I guess, taken away from you, right? Maybe you didn't choose it.

• 1:16:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  It almost, and I can't speak for someone else, right? If dad was here, I'd love to chat about this with him. But it's almost as if when, you know, staying busy and constantly doing things has been removed from you, you're left with no choice but to see what exists underneath.

• 1:16:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like what's already here before all those activities.

• 1:16:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. At the same time, I am not at all saying, and I'd love your take on this, right? Even despite knowing that, I think I'd still rather be active and independent in my 90s, right? You know, I, I, I believe I can do the things and practices that I enjoy doing that will hopefully keep me mobile and independent for years. And at the same time, I can also acknowledge that, should things go in a different direction, I still think it's possible for me to find peace and happiness.

• 1:17:19Speaker 00

  Yes, I think that's exactly right. I mean, we may as well pursue that or hope to, hope, do what will be more likely to allow you to stay active, mobile, independent as long as possible. But know that you're going to be perfectly fine, actually, even if, even if that doesn't work out. It's like we, it's, it's, again, it's a little bit like discovering that inside us and outside us are one. It's, it's analogous to finding that the pursuit of things, we can do it. It's fine and good that we do it. But actually, if we can't do it, we're more likely to discover this other way.

• 1:18:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  That's the irony.

• 1:18:05Speaker 00

  It is.

• 1:18:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  When you can't distract, you're much more likely to find it.

• 1:18:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  Henry, listen, I could go so deep into awakening with you.

• 1:18:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  I guess primarily because of what has happened in my life recently. But it was okay, let's just shift the focus. I know a lot of people love listening to you and they love meditating on the way, right? Since you started coming on my show, there's many thousands of my listeners who use the Way app each day, like myself, like many of my team. So many of them will say it's the best meditation app out there. But I think what makes it different is that there's no choice, which sounds like a restriction, but actually is freedom, really, because you just go on and you do the next meditation.

• 1:18:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  You don't have to choose between hundreds of different ones, you just do the next one. And it, and it feels like you're on a journey that you are guiding us on. It's not about awakening. Having said that, if you do have an awakened experience, the teachings will probably help ground it within you.

• 1:19:15Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:19:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  So you know what to do with it, right?

• 1:19:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  But I thought we could maybe go to some of the common questions people have about meditation at large. Because as you've already said, most people aren't really meditating in order to experience awakening. They do it because they want their lives to be a little bit better, feel a bit more peace. So I've got a few questions from my audience that I thought I could put to you. And I think these are common things that people struggle with.

• 1:19:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay. In terms of the practice of meditation, how do I make sure I sit consistently? It's so difficult for me to get into a routine which makes meditation a practice that can easily slip away.

• 1:19:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think this is really common, right?

• 1:20:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is. I mean, the traditional view is like, the easiest thing is to do it first thing. If you do it first thing, there's a little window before the current of the day has picked you up. And it's generally like, get it out of the way, as it were, just do it very first thing. That's one solution that many like. And another would be like,

• 1:20:26Speaker 00

  Make sure there's something you decide you won't, you won't do this without having meditated first. For example, have lunch. If you've got a lunch break, you're going to spend the first 10 minutes meditating. Something like that, where you just make it a decision that you've already taken upstream. So you don't have to keep remaking the decision every time. See what I mean? Like, so if it's gonna be first thing, or it's gonna be lunchtime, or whatever you decide, you've already decided that. And, you know, and I think it's, people find that easier to do if it's time limited. Say, well, for the next month, I'm doing it every morning first thing. And, and then-

• 1:21:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  Before my coffee, for example.

• 1:21:02Speaker 00

  It could be literally first thing. And I'm like, maybe you go to, you have a quick pee first, you're allowed to do that. Then you're gonna sit, you know? And I know somebody who put their, they liked sitting on a cushion to meditate and they put it next to their bed. So they would literally sort of spill out of bed onto the cushion first thing. And that would, that would make her do it every morning.

• 1:21:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's interesting, if you, if we think about the sort of research on habit formation.

• 1:21:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  Having a reward, some sort of reward straight after you've engaged in the behavior helps to lock that behavior in and help turn it into a habit. And so in the morning, for example, many people, myself included, enjoy a cup of coffee.

• 1:21:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  And there, there's something quite powerful, isn't there, about, okay, I'm not gonna have it until I meditate. So you wake up, you do your five minutes, or your 10 minutes, or even 20 minutes, depending on, on what, where you're at in your practice. And then you get the rewards off your coffee.

• 1:22:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I, there was a period when I was always doing it before lunch. And I really liked that because I would be hungry and I'd find, while I was meditating, I was, I was enjoying looking forward to lunch. I was enjoying being hungry, which was really interesting. And then I got the lunch.

• 1:22:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, the, the second question, I guess, kind of relates to that first one. Since becoming a parent, I find it hard to make time to sit. How can I find balance between my life and my practice? I guess the answer's quite similar, but anything specific for parents?

• 1:22:44Speaker 00

  Well, look, I mean, I think a lot of sympathy, you know, I've been, I'm a, I'm a dad too. And I remember those early years when our, our two lads were really young. It was, it was definitely harder. And it's a, it's a little bit more unpredictable. They're usually up really early. It's hard to get up, you know, significantly before the, before the youngsters. If you can do, you know, or I would do it often late in the day, back in those days, with young kids. But once they're sleeping more regularly, it's all a little bit more predictable. And again, you just have to lock it in as a decision. That's the thing. The key thing is making the decision, you know, so that it's, again, it's not like a decision you're making daily. You've done it upstream.

• 1:23:29Speaker 00

  I'm meditating every day, you know, and it's gonna be at time X. And if it can't be then on a particular day, it'd be time Y. So, yeah, once they're sleeping regularly, you can, you can do that, you know?

• 1:23:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  I wonder if I might add something there and get your perspective. One of the things that I changed when I was meditating, when I had young kids, is I let go of the attachment to silence. And what I mean by that is, I used to have an expectation that I can only meditate in silence. And then when my kids were little and if they'd come, or they'd, you know, come into the living room while I was meditating, it used to frustrate me, right? And I thought, it's ridiculous. What a nice thing that they wanna come and see their dad when they've woken up. They, they wanna come down, they're excited to see you. Why should that frustrate me? And I, I instantly let go of my need for silence.

• 1:24:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  I thought, well, why can't I just meditate when they're here as well? And I would do that often with my daughter. I'd meditate and I'd, I'd open my eyes, I'd, I'd smile at her and, you know, tap the carpet next to me, she'd come sometimes to sit next to me while I did it for a bit. Or she'd go off and read and then come back and, yeah. So I just wanted to add that because many parents think, oh, I can't meditate now because the kids are making noise in the next room. I would say you still can.

• 1:24:49Speaker 00

  I couldn't agree more, yeah. I mean, I, actually, I got a bit of a schooling in it when, in the early, in the earliest days of meditating, I was a graduate student in London and I was often taking the tube. And I'd do it on the tube. I would, you know, I'd sit, I'd have a 20 minute ride and it's, it's long enough. And I'd just listen to the conversation, the clacking of the tube, the noise of the tube. It's, it's absolutely valid.

• 1:25:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:13Speaker 00

  You know, and right, actually, I started to really enjoy doing it in the thick of things. You're still, the world's doing all its stuff around you. Beautiful.

• 1:25:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, and actually, you could argue, if you wanna, if you wanna use the sort of strength or gym analogy, you, you kind of, you know, if you can do it there, you can do it anywhere, right? If you do it when there's people around you or kids playing and shouting in the room next door.

• 1:25:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  You can, it's pretty easy to do it in silence, you know? So I think there's something about that side as well.

• 1:25:45Speaker 00

  You know, I'll just say, there's actually an old Zen saying that, you know, it's one thing to be able to meditate in a hermitage up in the mountains, but you haven't really got it till you can do it in the middle of a busy city street.

• 1:25:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, there you go. Okay, I quite like this question. Henry, I struggle with addiction and shame. Can meditation help?

• 1:26:07Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh, yeah, it totally can. I mean, I'm mercifully, I haven't had addiction issues myself, but shame, I had, I grew up with tons of shame from this disfiguring eczema I had as a, as a kid and very difficult parental divorce and remarriage situation. I just, lots and lots of shame. I believe stillness and quiet is healing. I think there's a healing power, you know, that we can tap into when we're, when we're still, when we come home to ourselves. Shame is almost the opposite of being at home with ourselves.

• 1:26:50Speaker 00

  It's like, I'm not good enough, I'm never good enough. And, and, you know, there's something wrong with me. You know, it's a, it's a very painful thing. And I think, I wanna say, on the subject of addiction, you know, it's, it's such a, it's such an epidemic at the moment. There's, there's so many of us have different kinds of addiction, you know? It's not all about substances, but many, many, many people have substance abuse issues. And it's, so it's, it's so easy to feel shame around it and stigmatized. And, you know, and unfortunately, society is not very wise about it still.

• 1:27:31Speaker 00

  They don't really understand the power of addiction and how it works. But many do, you know? And there's a, there's a lot of communities of support, of course, around addiction. So I think one of the, I would say, we do have quite a few people on, on the app, actually, who are in recovery for addiction, which I'm really happy about personally. I would say, just keep doing it, keep doing it on a daily basis. And let it be part of your process of recovery to be recognizing your own shame

• 1:28:12Speaker 00

  and knowing that it's just a point of view. It's just a, it's actually, in a certain way, it's just a habit, an emotional habit. And that there is something larger that can hold it, that can hold our sense of shame. And, and as we discover that more and more, that we ourselves have a greater capacity than we think we do, to hold what ails us, including our shame. And it will, it will gradually dissipate, will gradually, you know, get freer of it. I, I speak from experience, you know, about that.

• 1:28:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think the incredible power of solitude, or one of the things it gives us is the ability to really experience what we're feeling. When we don't distract with noise.

• 1:29:07Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:29:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  We have to feel it. And, you know, if you do that enough, you can process it and let it pass through you and go, you know, that's not me. Yes, I know I'm feeling that, but I am something much bigger.

• 1:29:19Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:29:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  So much deeper than that feeling. That feeling will go.

• 1:29:24Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, exactly.

• 1:29:25Rangan Chatterjee?

  It will, they all go.

• 1:29:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  But can you sit with it long enough to, to allow it to go?

• 1:29:30Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:29:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Because a lot of our, you know, yes, you can have some quite serious addictions, but many people in the modern world have low-grade addictions, don't they?

• 1:29:42Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:29:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  Don't we, I should say, you know, sugar, social media, shopping on Amazon, whatever it might be, something to distract us away from our uncomfortable feelings. And I've certainly experienced in my own life, the more I can, I'm able to sit in silence with nothing and be okay with that, the easier I find it to resist what might be considered temptations.

• 1:30:08Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:30:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  And so, so one of, one of the things I was hoping to ask you, Henry, is, is about human behavior.

• 1:30:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  So I'm fascinated by human behavior. Why is it, despite knowing the right things or the things that we wanna do for ourselves, we end up self-subtaging so much? You know, anyone, for example, to make it really practical, who is trying to improve their health and wellbeing probably knows that excessive sugar consumption is probably not helping them. Yet many are still engaging with it, right? So there's a, there's a gap between knowledge and doing.

• 1:30:51Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:30:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right?

• 1:30:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  Let me put it to you, like you, you've been meditating for, as you said before, almost forty years.

• 1:31:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  Since I've met you, you strike me as someone who is

• 1:31:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  very calm, serene, balanced. Now, of course, that could just be when you're showing up with me or running a meditation retreat. I don't know what you're like at other times, right?

• 1:31:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  But I guess question one to you is, in terms of these sort of low-grade addictions that many of us have, let's, let's say, sugar and social media, for example, okay?

• 1:31:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  Have you found that as you've gone deeper into meditation,

• 1:31:37Rangan Chatterjee?

  your behaviors have changed?

• 1:31:40Speaker 00

  Yes, I would say it does get much easier to see urges towards doing things and to not need to obey them. I wanna just put it this way. It's not that the urges don't arise and

• 1:32:00Speaker 00

  and it's also not that I need to get rid of them. It's that I can allow them. Cause when we can allow it, we can just watch it go by itself, that we don't have to push it away. We just let that impulse be towards something that isn't gonna be good for us. We just let it arise and allow it. It's as simple as that because to allow it is to let it be itself and then it just evaporates. And it doesn't even matter if it doesn't evaporate because we're allowing it. You see what I mean? I'm not meaning that we allow ourselves to do it. We allow the urge to do something that wouldn't be good for us to, to just manifest.

• 1:32:45Speaker 00

  And actually, it's very, I find it's very beautiful to watch them. Cause they're actually, it's an amazing thing. There's, oh, this, this thing is, this system is doing this thing and I can just watch it.

• 1:32:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  Well, that's kind of a theme throughout today's conversation, isn't it? But it, it's about how do we change our relationship to things?

• 1:33:06Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:33:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  Not, not necessarily changing the thing, but our relationship to it.

• 1:33:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:33:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  Our relationship to life, our relationship to reality, our relationship to the urge to pick up our phone.

• 1:33:18Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 1:33:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  And a lot of people who never created space between the urge and the action

• 1:33:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:33:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  don't know yet just how powerful it is to even pop in two minutes in between.

• 1:33:31Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:33:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  Three minutes.

• 1:33:32Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:33:33Rangan Chatterjee?

  Even five minutes.

• 1:33:34Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:33:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  You just start to separate the urge from the action.

• 1:33:37Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:33:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  I personally believe that's eighty, ninety percent of the change that you, you might be seeking.

• 1:33:45Speaker 00

  You know, there's some research in the world of addiction, actually, that says typically cravings, which is a big issue for people with, you know, substance abuse issues, last fifteen seconds. There's, I don't know where that research came from, but I know that is, that's, that's, that's not very long.

• 1:34:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  No.

• 1:34:03Speaker 00

  Three slow breaths or not particularly slow breaths. But when they come, they're so powerful and they're loaded with so much

• 1:34:13Speaker 00

  associated emotional, you know, material that's very difficult to just let them be. But for, for people with substance abuse issues. But if they, if we can, if they can, fifteen seconds, they'll start to tail off.

• 1:34:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. And again, bringing up another theme from this conversation, if you're not regularly engaging in stillness,

• 1:34:37Rangan Chatterjee?

  that internal speedometer

• 1:34:39Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:34:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  is running at a different pace.

• 1:34:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:34:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  And therefore, you know, the, the space between your urge and your behavior isn't very much at all.

• 1:34:50Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:34:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  But if you can train yourself to just to slow down, even five, 10 minutes a day.

• 1:34:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:34:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  You know, you, you're much more likely to be able to put some space in between that urge and a behavior later on.

• 1:35:02Speaker 00

  I couldn't agree more.

• 1:35:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  I don't think people really get that. It's like, it's not just about that urge. It's, you know, how are you running outside that urge, which then will impact your, your, you know, your ability to resist or not act on it.

• 1:35:16Speaker 00

  That's, that's exactly right. It's like getting upstream, doing a little bit of work upstream.

• 1:35:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. Okay, a few more questions. I mean, there's so many. I don't know if we'll get through them all, Henry. Can meditation help me realize I'm worthy of love?

• 1:35:32Speaker 00

  That's beautiful. I could say in my own life, it has been absolutely pivotal for me to, to discover not just being worthy of love, but there's a love already here. I mean, I don't wanna get too woo woo, you know, but there's a loving presence. There's a presence in our experience right now. And it's, I don't mean a presence of something divine or something like that, but there's a, I don't know what else to call it, a presence here. And it's, it's awake, it's alive. In some way, it's who we really are.

• 1:36:14Speaker 00

  And it has a, it has a loving quality to it. We just sense it more and more that this, it's sort of, love is in the air, you know, it's sort of, it's here. And it's, it's, in, in a way, I feel, oh my gosh, maybe that's the real reason to meditate is that we get to know

• 1:36:39Speaker 00

  a loving quality in the fabric of existence.

• 1:36:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:44Speaker 00

  More and more.

• 1:36:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  I love that.

• 1:36:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  I, I can't imagine someone will go through the pathway on the way and not at some point start to realize that they are worthy of love. I think that will be a natural byproduct.

• 1:37:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  If you show up and do the sits.

• 1:37:05Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, yes. I really hope so.

• 1:37:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:08Speaker 00

  I mean, I was gonna say that

• 1:37:12Speaker 00

  I've, I've met many people over the years who, what really opened that up for them, a sense of being loved or having love as part of their life experience was, was something really difficult. They went through something, you know, tragic loss or a really, you know, very difficult situation, maybe a, a very grave diagnosis or something like that, you know, either for them or someone they loved. And in that sort of extremity of human experience and suffering,

• 1:37:48Speaker 00

  a shift happened where something gave way that they might not have wanted to give way. They thought they needed it, whatever it might have been, but it did. And instead of finding that they were unable to cope, they found that they were met and held by another dimension of, of their own experience that, that was loving. And so there's a, there's a strange phenomenon whereby the giving up of our coping strategies with difficult things

• 1:38:32Speaker 00

  can actually be the thing that opens us up to a discovery that we didn't need those coping strategies to begin with.

• 1:38:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:40Speaker 00

  We surrender and, and actually it's okay. In fact, it's a blessing. You know, we, we discover something that we hadn't known about our very life.

• 1:38:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:38:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  I really like this question because I, I think it will be a very common sentiment with people who have tried meditation, have heard about the benefits of meditation. And it's this, Henry. I enjoy my sits, but I have a hard time carrying anything from them into the rest of my day. Often, when I start meditating, I realize I haven't really been aware since my last sit the previous morning. How do we apply what we do in meditation to the rest of our lives?

• 1:39:32Speaker 00

  I could so relate to this.

• 1:39:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  The sixty-four thousand dollar question.

• 1:39:36Speaker 00

  I know, I know. I mean, I, I totally remember, it's very well described. I mean, I remember this, the early days of meditating, exactly that. It's like, oh my gosh, where have I been the last twenty-four hours? I'm now sitting again, suddenly I'm aware again. It's like, literally, what are, what, where, where has this awareness been since I was last meditating? So here's my take on this. Number one,

• 1:40:02Speaker 00

  you cannot overstate the value of patience. It just comes.

• 1:40:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  In the twenty-first century, we're not patient anymore, Henry, are we?

• 1:40:11Speaker 00

  That's old fashioned.

• 1:40:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  That's old fashioned, you know? If we want something now, we go online, we get it delivered that evening. I mean, I joke, but I, I, that joke is tinged with seriousness. I, I kind of feel people have become so impatient. Or even, oh, meditation's good, is it? All right, let me try it. Oh, I tried it for three days, it's no good. I can't meditate. It's like, okay, wait a minute, wait a minute. Like, you would not apply that to anything else, right? You, you know, if you wanna

• 1:40:42Speaker 00

  if you wanna get a far, get, get athletic training, you know it's gonna take time.

• 1:40:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  You wanna be a good snooker player?

• 1:40:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:40:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  You, you know, you're not gonna just try three times and suddenly be doing fifty-plus breaks.

• 1:40:52Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:40:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  You have to put in the work. But somehow we, we think it's different. But, but anyway, so you're saying patience is, is important.

• 1:41:00Speaker 00

  I think that's sort of number one. I mean, actually,

• 1:41:04Speaker 00

  the reason I think that's so important is that if we get that,

• 1:41:09Speaker 00

  this, this is a long path. It's gonna take time. You'll already probably start finding more awareness coming up just with that attitudinal shift.

• 1:41:21Speaker 00

  But secondly, we can do little things. There are little, if you like, hacks. You can do a thing where, where I've found this helpful.

• 1:41:31Speaker 00

  Anytime there's a sort of transition in your day, meaning you've been sitting down and you're about to stand up, or you're about to open a door. You know, the most basics are transitions, or you're moving from one room to another, you're going from inside to outside. Every time, see if you can notice, every time there's a transition, however small, notice that there is one. And that's enough. That can be enough, right there. Just to notice I'm going from sitting to standing. If you want a little bit extra, it would be be aware of an in-breath and an out-breath, and then stand up. Be aware of an in-breath and out-breath, and then go through the door.

• 1:42:15Speaker 00

  You'll find just those little micro-moments, they make a big difference.

• 1:42:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I mean, I've experienced that myself. You know, they feel, they feel almost insignificant, but you're bringing yourself back to your body, to your breath, to here and now. And even that question, if you think about it, often when I start meditating, I realise I haven't really been aware since my last sit the previous morning. Well, you know what? That is awareness.

• 1:42:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course it is.

• 1:42:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  That is literally what we're talking about.

• 1:42:46Speaker 00

  That's progress.

• 1:42:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  That is progress.

• 1:42:49Speaker 00

  That's really good.

• 1:42:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  The human tendency, and I would see this in practice all the time anyway. I think the principle applies here. I would, for many years, see people who'd been ill for years, and they were looking for someone to really take an alternative root cause approach with them. Okay, and I'd seen them for about an hour, hour and a half. So really trying to understand what is driving this and how can we help it? And one thing I noticed very early on is, even if this patient is significantly better in two months' time, they've forgotten the things that are better. They're focused on the things that are still not going well. Right?

• 1:43:30Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 1:43:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  And that's not a criticism. That's just, I think, the human condition. And so we have these things in medicine called symptom questionnaires. Right? And so the practice would be when they first came in, and I took their full history, like, okay, I'd like to fill this in as well. It's a lot of questions. And they'd have a score. So it could be that their score was 67 out of 100 in terms of symptoms. And that meant if in two or three months' time, if I'd managed to, you know, help them make some improvements, and they were saying, oh, you know, things aren't getting better. You know, I'm still, you know, I'm struggling with this, this and this. I'd get them to redo the questionnaire. And it is amazing how many times,

• 1:44:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  they'd start at 67, they're now only scoring 17. Right?

• 1:44:19Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:44:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  Which is great improvement. And I guess it's a shift in perspective. They're like, oh, yeah. I didn't realise that all these other things that I was struggling with have gone. Right, so it was a beautiful way of demonstrating improvement. And I guess that relates to that question. I think the question in and of itself shows that that person is becoming more aware.

• 1:44:42Speaker 00

  I totally agree, yeah.

• 1:44:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. Okay, let's go to this as a last question. I think it's quite an interesting one. Henry, I live with someone who is often anxious, pessimistic and controlling, which can trigger reactivity in me. How can I remain calm and less reactive in the moment without getting pulled into that energy so this pattern doesn't keep repeating?

• 1:45:13Speaker 00

  Yes, that's beautiful.

• 1:45:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's a great question.

• 1:45:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, it really is. I mean, I would, I would want to ask, you know, for this person, first of all, actually, have they been meditating for a while and they've come to see more clearly how this pattern is working, which they might not have seen before? Because it's a good analysis of it. They're actually realising that when they're in the thick of it with their partner or loved one, whoever it is that they're living with, that's anxious and controlling, they tank, their awareness gets sucked into that and they're no longer aware and they get reactive. So to be able to state that, again, is a level of awareness.

• 1:45:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:55Speaker 00

  Now, I think this is, this is probably more common than we'd like to think, actually. Because, you know, we're complex beings and our relationships are complex, especially when they're close. And it's very easy for us to get caught in relationship dynamics that can get very habitual and they can get very set in their ways. Here's the meditative sort of formula, and prescription, as it were, is that rather than first off trying to get them to behave differently or trying to make the relationship dynamic different, the first step is actually that you do the disengagement you need

• 1:46:39Speaker 00

  to stay more with yourself, to stay more balanced and grounded in yourself. The daily practice, obviously, as we've been saying, is going to be key to that. As that gets stronger and as you get more grounded and sort of know yourself better, so that you understand your own dynamics and how they get switched on, how you get triggered and caught up in the relationship dynamic, as you get clearer about that, you'll be able to navigate, interact in the moment in a different way. But it's really gonna, it sort of comes down to,

• 1:47:20Speaker 00

  you can't, it's not, the wise course is not to be trying to change them. It's to be working on yourself. You know, there's a, in some, in some schools, there's a, there's a saying, let it begin with me. That if I take on my responsibility for myself in this dynamic, we actually may be very surprised by how different the relationship becomes.

• 1:47:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:50Speaker 00

  Because we've taken responsibility for our part. And that means I'm going to stay grounded in myself the best I can. And I know that I'll get pulled out at times. But I know that my intention is to be more, you know, with myself, balanced, grounded, centred, knowing, sensing, you know, my own place in the world here.

• 1:48:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. You mentioned the word intention there. And I think, again, that's a very much under-emphasised sentiment. This question, which I think many people who are listening right now will probably have experienced themselves. I mean, you know, often it's our loved ones who get the worst of us. Right, the irony there.

• 1:48:40Speaker 00

  It is, it is, yeah.

• 1:48:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  But one of the things I love about my morning solitude practice, which includes meditation, is the intention behind it. And one of the intentions I set, and very much so over the past few weeks, has been an intention to live the day with a fully open heart. And if you keep reminding yourself of that every morning, the chances are that you're going to do it more often than before. Yeah. You know, you may react at one point, but then the following morning in your practice, you can acknowledge that and be truthful and go, hey, you know. And also try and figure out, why did I, yes, ah, you know what? I didn't meditate. I, I was rushing around.

• 1:49:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  I didn't go for my walk. Whatever it might be, you start to understand yourself better. And I completely agree. You know, trying to get the other person to change is one of the most futile endeavours in life. And you keep trying and trying.

• 1:49:42Speaker 00

  And we'll all do it.

• 1:49:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  We all do it. Until you realise, this is a freaking waste of time. Right? Because you've got no control over that. But as you say, you know, when you change yourself, you change the relationship.

• 1:49:56Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:49:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  The dynamic changes, like the, the kind of alchemy within it, the sort of, the balance, it's different.

• 1:50:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:50:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  So you stay grounded, that thing is not going to blow up as much as if you had reacted. And you're not perfect. You're not going to be perfect. But if you keep reminding yourself every day, little by little, things start to change.

• 1:50:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. It's beautiful how it happens.

• 1:50:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:21Speaker 00

  And it really does. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:50:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  Henry, I love chatting to you. I think we went into quite a different direction today compared to our last two conversations, which were perhaps a bit more practical about meditation. But I think the conversation we had about awakening, I think it's really important because there will almost certainly be people who have experienced that themselves.

• 1:50:42Speaker 00

  Well, honestly, that's the thing that I really, really, I'm on a mission, in a way. Because when I was a young man and this thing happened to me, where I discovered something about the nature of being alive that was so different from anything I'd ever been taught or heard about or knew about, and yet was undeniably somehow true. I wish it had been more available, it's an understanding of it, you know. So, and I do think it happens. I think, you know, many people get a little glimpse of something, another order of things. And I think, I think it's really, because it's part of our makeup. And it, but it isn't something that has been talked about in the West very much at all. So I think it's really important

• 1:51:26Speaker 00

  that we get some sense of this possibility, human possibility, kind of out there more. I don't want people to have the hard time that I had for a number of years, sort of flailing about trying to understand what on earth had happened to me. It's, you know, it's, I really think it's, I want people to know, you know, if in case it happens, it's already happened to them and they wondered what that was, or, or if they're curious about it, or if they feel some sort of calling, you know, to pursue this mystery of our being alive at all. It's great to know there is a path.

• 1:52:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:03Speaker 00

  You know, thank you for letting us go in this, in this wild direction.

• 1:52:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  I wonder if we could finish off, Henry? Thinking about the individual who is struggling at the moment. So they've heard what we've had to say, but they still feel, you know what, life is difficult. They're caught up in the stress of life. Maybe a relationship has ended and they don't know what to do about it. They think their wellbeing is dependent on things in their external world changing and they're feeling a bit lost.

• 1:52:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:52:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  You've got a lot of experience helping people through situations like this. You've been in similar situations yourself.

• 1:52:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:52:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  What would your final words of wisdom be for that individual?

• 1:52:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. Right, and I'm wondering, I've got a not very long poem that I could share.

• 1:52:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  I'd love to hear it.

• 1:52:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's called Frozen Lake and it's about going through really hard times, you know, and I think I'll just, I'll just, I'll just recite it and just see how it lands, it lands with you. Frozen Lake. When I think of friends who have been through the worst, through the dread love lives with, through the terrible fear anxiety can only dream of, I feel sorry for the rest, for those who had it all as they had hoped, who crossed the frozen lake from one side to

• 1:53:37Speaker 00

  the other, never guessing the great dark beneath. But those for whom the lake cracked and opened, who fell into its unspeakable night while still walking upright in the light of this world, whose hearts burst and met its waters, for them, there is no consolation, nor is any needed. Yeah.

• 1:54:18Speaker 00

  That poem came out of personal experience and as well as many difficult times people had shared with me. And the discovery that, you know, in the depths of desperation and extremity, catastrophic loss, that's where we can find that we're, we're held by something that's already here, by what we already are and where our sense of separateness can dissolve. And we find we're not alone.

• 1:54:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  What a beautiful way to end this podcast, Henry, with a, with a poem. I don't think there's much more for me to say beyond thank you.

• 1:55:10Speaker 00

  Thank you so much for having me on again. It's such a joy to be with you.

• 1:55:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else. Remember when you teach someone, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. Now, before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday Five. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email, I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I've been consuming and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect.

• 1:56:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I have to say, in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like something you would like to receive each and every Friday, you can sign up for free at drchatge.com/fridayfive. Now, if you are new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that I have written five books that have been bestsellers all over the world, covering all kinds of different topics, happiness, food, stress, sleep, behaviour change and movement, weight loss and so much more. So please do take a moment to check them out.

• 1:56:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  They are all available as paperbacks, ebooks and as audiobooks, which I am narrating. If you enjoyed today's episode, it is always appreciated if you can take a moment to share the podcast with your friends and family or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week and please note that if you want to listen to this show without any adverts at all, that option is now available for a small monthly fee on Apple and on Android. All you have to do is click the link in the episode notes in your podcast app. And always remember, you are the architect of your own health.

• 1:57:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  Making lifestyle change is always worth it because when you feel better, you live more.