Pod Insights 10% Happier with Dan Harris Three Strategies for Getting Over Yourself | Joseph Goldstein About this episode Every year, Joseph Goldstein does a three month silent meditation retreat by himself at his home in Massachusetts. In this conversation you're about to hear, Joseph had just emerged from one such retreat with a bunch of thoughts on what are called the three proliferating tendencies or three papañca to use the ancient Pali term.
These are three ways in which we perpetuate an unhealthy sense of self. Joseph has explained that you can think about the process of going deeper in meditation as a process of lightening up or getting less self-centered. You're about to get a masterclass in doing just that.
For the uninitiated, Joseph is one of the co-founders of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. His co-founders are two other meditation titans, Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield. Joseph has been a teacher at IMS since it was founded in the seventies and he continues to be the resident guiding teacher there.
In this episode we talk about:
The framework for understanding the three proliferating tendencies; the basic building blocks of our experience in the world
Six things that make up what the Buddha called "the all"
What non-self means and why it's essential to the Buddhist teaching of liberation
The two levels of truth: conventional and ultimate
Why language is so important in conditioning how we experience things
How the three proliferating tendencies provide a very practical guide to understanding how we manufacture our own suffering
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Transcript 10,545 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Dan Harris? This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
0:19 Dan Harris? Hey, hey, how we doing, everybody? Every year, the great meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein does a three-month retreat by himself at his home in Massachusetts. And every year, he emerges with a bunch of really interesting thoughts about how to do life better, and often very specifically about how to improve your meditation practice. And in the conversation you're about to hear, Joseph had just emerged from one of his retreats with a bunch of thoughts on what are called the three proliferating tendencies, or the three prapanchas, to use the ancient Pali term. By the way, Pali was the language in which the teachings of the Buddha were written down. Anyway, these three prapanchas are the ways in which we perpetuate a sense of self.
1:01 Dan Harris? Not a healthy sense of self, which we all need, but an unhealthy sense of self, like the Beatles sang about in that song, "I Need Mine," the sense of self that locks you in and blocks you from full connection and happiness. As Joseph has explained to me and to many others before, you can think about the process of going deeper in meditation as a process of lightening up or getting less self-centered. And you're about to get a master class in doing just that. For the uninitiated, Joseph is one of the co-founders of the Insight Meditation Society in Barry, Massachusetts. He's written several books, including One Dharma and Mindfulness, both of which I highly recommend. In this conversation, we talk about the three proliferating tendencies, or prapanchas,
1:45 Dan Harris? the basic building blocks of our experience in the world, six things that make up what the Buddha called "the all," what not-self, or selflessness, means, and why this idea is essential to the Buddhist teaching of freedom or liberation, the so-called two truths, conventional reality and ultimate reality. I'll let him unpack that. Why language is so important in Conditioning how we experience things, in other words, how to talk in ways that actually reinforce a Dharma understanding, and how the three proliferating tendencies provide a very practical guide to understand how to suffer less and how to create less suffering for yourself in your life.
2:28 Dan Harris? Before we dive in, I just want to say a quick word about the Insight Meditation Society, where Joseph lives and which he co-founded nearly 50 years ago with Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield. Since IMS was founded, thousands of people around the world, including myself, have come through to learn about mindfulness and the Dharma from many, many leaders in the field. Speaking personally, as I mentioned, IMS has played a gigantic role in my own life. I go there every year for a retreat at least once a year. But here's the thing, for more than a decade, IMS wait lists have steadily grown with thousands left waiting every year. They did a recent survey, the folks at IMS, and they found that 91% of people have been
3:09 Dan Harris? unable to get into retreats, and 82% said they would attend more if the space were available. Limited space is a huge problem. It really blocks people, especially new people from underrepresented communities, from getting access. Even teachers who were trained at IMS and teach there all the time, even many of those teachers are unable to teach at IMS because the calendar just fills up so quickly. So, and this is big news, IMS has decided to build a new retreat center on the same location. They've got plenty of land there, and they're going to build a beautiful new center. And if you would like to contribute to that goal, you can go to dharma.org. I'm going to put a link in the show notes.
3:53 Dan Harris? I personally will be contributing and urging everybody I know to do so. This is really important. If you care about making the Dharma accessible to more people, please consider getting involved. Okay, that's the end of my pitch. We'll get started with Joseph Goldstein right after this.
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5:07 Dan Harris? Hello, Joseph.
5:09 Speaker 03 Hi, Dan.
5:11 Dan Harris? Thanks for coming back on the show. I haven't, luckily, nothing I've done in the last, whatever, 12 months since you've been on the show has sufficiently alienated you that you've banned me for life.
5:24 Speaker 03 No, it's a pleasure to be here, Dan.
5:28 Dan Harris? I had the pleasure of watching some talks that you had given recently where you were talking about what are known as the three proliferating factors. I think I have that right. Am I using the terminology correctly?
5:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, proliferating tendencies, yeah.
5:44 Dan Harris? Well, what do you mean by that? And then what are they?
5:47 Speaker 03 Okay, so first, just out of general interest, I just want to mention the Pali word for that proliferating tendency. Pali is the language of the ancient Buddhist texts because it's one of those terms that comes up frequently even in our modern discourse on the teachings. So just to familiarize our listeners to that term, it's papanca. And I like the Pali because it sort of is anammanapya. It sort of sounds like what it is, papanca. It's just the mind proliferating and elaborating.
6:27 Speaker 03 From the bare elements of our experience, from the building blocks of our experience, we then build whole worlds and then get enmeshed in one way or another in those worlds. And so there are three main tendencies which lead us in that direction. It's very helpful to become aware of them, to distinguish between them and to learn how to free ourselves from them. If not completely, at least to have more wisdom in relating to them when we see them arising. So that's basically what prapancha, or this proliferating tendencies of mind,
7:09 Speaker 03 just it expands in quite a powerful way just the complexity of our lives, particularly with regard to how suffering is created and how we can become a little more free.
7:26 Dan Harris? When I've used the word historically, I must be using the Sanskrit version because I have often said prapancha.
7:35 Speaker 03 It sounds like that difference between Pali and Sanskrit, which are very close.
7:40 Dan Harris? I love the term prapancha or prapancha, or however you want to pronounce it or spell it. And I've heard it translated as the imperialistic tendency of mind in that you take a data point from the present moment, like you stub your toe, and you colonize the future with this whole like, why am I always the guy who stubs his toe? You know, this is going to hurt forever. And what you're talking about here are these three sort of runaway trains of prapancha that are really three of the main contributors to how we suffer as humans.
8:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, I liked your description of them. We need to stop being imperialists in our own minds to curb those tendencies.
8:28 Dan Harris? So let's go through the tendencies. Yeah, should we take them one at a time? The first one is craving.
8:35 Speaker 03 Maybe before we do that, just set the larger framework behind it all. It's expressed in one very succinct teaching of the Buddha's, which he actually gave to his son Rahula. So it's, it has a kind of touching aspect to it, the Buddha's leading his own son, you know, on this path of liberation. And there's a whole story behind it where the Buddha is telling him, "Everything should be seen with perfect wisdom. This is not mine. This I am not. This is not myself." So not mine, not I, not myself.
9:19 Speaker 03 Everything should be seen in that light. And so the three proliferating tendencies are connected to the sense of mine or belonging to me, or to I am this or that, or to the view of self. So that's the underlying framework for understanding the three proliferating tendencies. Not mine, not I, not myself. So the not mine is connected to craving, taking things to belong to me. So there are a million examples of this. We do it all the time.
10:04 Speaker 03 So I'll just give one example from a meditative practice. I might begin to see the freeing aspect of it. You know, if we're doing walking meditation, for example, and we're being pretty mindful of the movement and the touch, it would be quite common to have, one might almost say, a subliminal or a very faint overlay of a sense of leg.
10:35 Speaker 03 You know, we're walking leg or foot. So even if we're feeling the sensations of the movement in the touch, very commonly, a very quiet overlay would be that sense of, oh, leg, foot. But actually, we don't feel the foot. We don't feel the leg. There's no sensation called leg. We're feeling hardness, you know, when we're touching the ground or maybe, you know, movement. So leg is the concept. Once we already have that concept leg, very commonly, we would think of it as my leg. Right?
11:20 Speaker 03 So right there, we're getting involved in, this belongs to me. This is mine. And when it's mine, we have all kinds of wantings or cravings about it. I want whatever's mine to be this way or that way or not to change. Or all kinds of things come out of that belief that things belong to me. So this is a very simple example, just in walking. But just imagine how many times this plays out in one's life.
11:59 Dan Harris? What's wrong with claiming my own leg is mine?
12:04 Speaker 03 What's wrong with it is that it's not. You're living in delusion. Once again, Dan. So, for example, if we're really deeply embedded in that both view and sense of it being mine, then...
12:34 Speaker 03 There's a couple of things. One is, we're going to suffer when things happen to it that we don't want it to happen. Let's leave the example of the leg, but we could just take the whole body. You know, taking the body to be mine, belonging to me. Well, the more attached we are to that view, how do we feel as the body ages? As it gets sick, as it dies? That's going to create a lot of suffering. Whereas if we see the body, you know, just the physical elements which make up the body as being just an aspect of nature. It's non-personal.
13:16 Speaker 03 It's just these physical elements in certain configuration fulfilling their functions, subject to the laws of impermanence and change. When we see it in that way, we were not claiming it to be mine. Then, as it goes through the inevitable changes, this is not like, it happens to some people and not to others.
13:42 Speaker 03 All of our bodies go through this process. Then we're really, it is, we're in harmony with nature, rather than creating a papancha, creating a mental proliferation, which adds to the basic experience of what's happening, this idea, this is mine. And you can see that when that's strong, then it leads to a lot of craving of how we would like the body to be. And just how much of our society is built on advertising things that appeal to our
14:27 Speaker 03 sense of what we would like our bodies to be like.
14:33 Speaker 03 Because we take it to be me, we take them to be self, we take it to be mine. So it has a lot of consequences, you know, as we play out our lives.
14:44 Dan Harris? So craving is one of these papancha slash prapancha?
14:49 Speaker 03 Let's just say papancha, let's use the Pali.
14:51 Dan Harris? Okay, let's just do what Joseph says as usual. So craving is...
14:56 Speaker 03 Always.
14:59 Dan Harris? There's no craving in that. So that's craving, the next is conceit.
15:07 Speaker 03 Yeah. So this is really interesting. First, it's to understand that in the Buddhist terminology, conceit means something a little different than our usual understanding of what it means in English. Because in English, generally, we use that word to mean a very inflated sense of oneself. So one is conceited. The Pali word for conceit is mana, M-A-N-A. So in this Buddhist usage of that word, and how it's been translated in English as conceit, is much broader.
15:46 Speaker 03 Most basically, it refers to this deeply felt sense of "I am". It's just the "I am-ness", which manifests in a few different ways. It can manifest "I am in comparison to other people", so "I'm better than", "I'm worse than", "I'm equal to", just some comparing function is all considered conceit. Because even when it's in a negative way, you know, "Oh, I'm not as good as that person", that's still revolving around that "I am" sense.
16:30 Speaker 03 So that's one way the conceit manifests in comparing. And it would be interesting to notice...
16:38 Speaker 03 Not only the obvious times when that's happening, you know, where it's really very clear in our minds. But my sense is that it happens a lot, often under the radar. And it might be interesting just to notice when we're interacting with people, particularly people maybe that we're, you know, don't know that well, or perhaps are meeting for the first time, just to see if there's any undercurrent in that meeting of comparing. Maybe comparing personality, or comparing intelligence,
17:19 Speaker 03 or comparing looks, or whatever, kind of going on in the background that I think is often unnoticed, but still exerting its influence on our minds. So that's one aspect of conceit, just this comparing. And the other aspect is the "I am" over time. So when we're thinking of how I was in the past, or how I am in the future, in the present, or how I will be in the future. So that also is an expression of conceit. So it's pretty pervasive.
18:00 Speaker 03 And it's a contraction, you know, as soon as we become identified with that proliferation in the mind, the "I am"-ing. It's not a pleasant state, it's not a quality of happiness. It just feels like this contraction of our being.
18:20 Dan Harris? I think there are many people listening to the show who are familiar with basic Buddhist concepts, who will completely understand what you're talking about. But there may be others who are so new to this and are thinking, "What is this guy talking about? What do you mean, 'I am' is a cause of pain? Of course I am, I look in the mirror and I see me." So why is that a problem?
18:42 Speaker 03 So first, in order to come to some...
18:49 Speaker 03 Full understanding of all this. I think it's helpful to talk about the basic building blocks of our experience. Because then the proliferation will become more apparent. So what are the basic building blocks of how we experience ourselves in the world? Well, it's quite amazing because it comes down to some very simple things. And the Buddha talked about this. He gave one discourse which he called "the all."
19:29 Speaker 03 So he described the all, which is everything, in six phrases. So just that's pretty amazing. Okay, so what is the all? The I, invisible object. The ear and sound, the nose and smell, the tongue and taste, the body and sensations, and the mind and mind objects, thoughts, emotions, images. So just these six things. Sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and objects of mind. And the Buddha challenged people.
20:12 Speaker 03 Does anybody experience anything outside of these six things? So I find this quite amazing, you know, because very often we think our lives are so complicated and, you know, there's such confusion. But really, all that's ever happening is one of these six things. So in some way, I see it as like our lives, everybody's lives. It's like a six-piece chamber orchestra that's playing the music of our lives. Right? So what makes the music either harmonious and beautiful
20:55 Speaker 03 or discordant are not the first five, you know, the sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch. There's no problem in any of them. Some are pleasant, some are unpleasant, but that's all fine. The complexity and the confusion and the suffering comes in our mental response to these six things, how we're relating to them. And the Buddha pointed out, those ways of relating, that cause suffering. And those ways of relating to these six very simple things
21:37 Speaker 03 in ways that create peace, create happiness for us. So the point in talking about "I am", the conceit "I am", is an important doorway into freeing ourselves from a lot of suffering. So I just want to read something. "Grasping and cherishing that which does not exist is the center of all our suffering." So we have created this sense of self, which is the last of the three papancha, the view of self. We've created this view of self
22:20 Speaker 03 and made it into something substantial in our view. And then we cherish it, we hold on to it, and we do all kinds of things. But as it says, we're grasping and cherishing that which does not exist. Because all that really exists are those six things: sight, smell, taste, sensation, and different mind objects.
22:44 Speaker 03 Are we getting clearer or more confused?
22:47 Dan Harris? Let me just ask a question. Let me just channel the
22:51 Speaker 03 Channel yourself.
22:51 Dan Harris? Yeah, the me of your, or just to do a service to some listeners who may
22:57 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
22:57 Dan Harris? be newer to this.
22:59 Speaker 03 Yes.
23:00 Dan Harris? Okay, so if it's a six-piece chamber orchestra and my sense of myself is, this is a beautiful phrase from my friend and colleague, the Buddhist teacher Jay Michelson. If my sense of self is born in that blur of these six aspects of the all. And to claim any of it as mine is, as to quote another Buddhist teacher who I first heard of through you. If to claim any of it as mine is a misappropriation of public property and causes suffering. Where does that leave me? I mean, because I still, you know, you need to function in the world as me.
23:40 Speaker 03 Yes. Okay. I think before addressing that specifically. And you may have to remind me again of the question after I finish this little digression.
23:56 Speaker 03 I'm getting old and
24:00 Speaker 03 I think I'd just like to spend, you know, a minute or two talking about the view of self or what self means. Because everything we've been talking about really rests on that understanding or misunderstanding. So the example I like to give in terms of explaining what non-self means. And this, this kind of understanding of non-self is absolutely central to the Buddhist teaching of liberation, of freedom, of greater happiness. So it's a really, it's an essential point to begin to explore.
24:44 Speaker 03 It's not that easy to understand because it's counterintuitive. You know, just as you said, what do you mean, there's no self? Of course, you know, here I am. And I need that to navigate in the world. So the example that I'd like to give, especially in these last couple of years, is that of a river. You know, so we all know what a river is and it's, you know, this body of flowing water. And there are lots of rivers and we give the rivers different names. But is there anything that is a river
25:21 Speaker 03 separate from, or different than, or independent of
25:29 Speaker 03 the flowing water? No, river is simply a designation.
25:36 Speaker 03 River is a designation for that process of water flowing in a particular channel.
25:46 Speaker 03 So river is not a thing in itself. It's just, it's just a word we use to designate that phenomenon. Self is just like river. Self is a designation for this changing process of mind-body elements. Self is a designation for the all, which is in constant change, constant flow, just like the water that we call a river.
26:19 Speaker 03 In understanding non-self, it doesn't mean that something is there that that suddenly disappears. And sometimes people, I think, have that, that feeling, "Oh my God, if I really understand no-self, you know, what's gonna happen? I'll disappear in a puff of smoke or something." And of course, it's not that at all. It's simply understanding that the word self does not refer to anything substantial in and of itself. It's just a designation for the flow of changing elements.
27:00 Speaker 03 Okay, so once we understand that,
27:04 Speaker 03 then the I am
27:09 Speaker 03 Do you know in a river, do you know what an eddy is? You know, the water is flowing downstream and then it hits some obstacle and part of the water flows back and it can kind of go around and around and around. So if one is canoeing or rafting or something and you get caught in an eddy, you just go around and around until something gets you out of it and you're back in the stream. So the I am, the I am-ness, the conceit, is like an eddy in the stream, in the flow of our experience. We're going along, going along, and then the minds of just the flow
27:50 Speaker 03 of that, or the, mixing metaphors here, the flow of the river or the six-piece chamber orchestra just playing the music, you know, it's going along fine. But then we get caught up in some mental fabrication. And we get caught either in that comparing mind or lost in past, lost in future, all revolving around something that actually isn't there, revolving around this mental creation of I am or self, which, as I just said, is really just a designation for the flow. Okay, so then, I do remember your question.
28:39 Speaker 03 Okay, so if we're not caught in this papancha, you know, of mine or I am or view of self, how do we actually navigate being this river of changing, of flow, how do we navigate in a way that's skillful? And of course, all of the Buddhist teachings are really about that. He's offering us ways of living in this flow of impermanence, of constant change and movement, but in a way that brings about harmony, a way that brings about peace, which is really just another way of saying...
29:20 Speaker 03 How can we live in harmony with the nature of things? With nature? And so here's where another aspect of the teachings comes in, which is really important. I mean, this is fundamental. That our actions, whether it's physical actions, you know, of our body, or in speech, or actions of our mind, that all our actions have consequences. So they're not happening in isolation. You know, they could say that there are ripple effects from everything we do.
29:59 Speaker 03 And the Buddha just pointed out what kinds of actions bring about suffering to ourselves and others, and what kinds of actions bring about peace for ourselves and others. So, once we learn that, then that's the blueprint or the template for living in the world, not needing this sense of I am-ness, this solidification or contraction, in order to live effectively and happily. And in fact, the freer we are from that contraction, the happier we will be.
30:38 Dan Harris? Coming up, I try to outwit Joseph with something I think is really smart, and then he smacks me down, as usual. Much more with Joseph Goldstein in a moment.
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31:51 Dan Harris? Okay. How can I be held responsible for the consequences of my action if I don't exist?
32:02 Speaker 03 You think you're gonna stump me.
32:11 Speaker 03 We could get into a whole little, a whole little thing here, Dan. But just in the very way you asked the question,
32:20 Speaker 03 forgive me for saying this, but reflects the delusion of the question.
32:28 Speaker 03 Because how can I take responsibility for my actions if I don't exist? So, in the very first part of the question, you're already positing the I.
32:42 Speaker 03 So if it really didn't exist, you wouldn't be positing it in the first place. But that having been said, I just had to, just had to play with you a little bit.
32:54 Speaker 03 It's much more a question. The consequences of one's actions is, it's, that's simply a conventional way of saying that the flow of our lives, the unfolding of our lives, the flow, is happening lawfully. And so, the present will condition in one way or another, what happens in the future. The sense of I is not at all necessary to understand that actions have consequences. If there's the understanding that a certain action, and this is using the Buddhist teachings.
33:38 Speaker 03 For example, if it's based in greed, or it's based in hatred.
33:44 Speaker 03 That the result of that action is going to be some kind of suffering
33:53 Speaker 03 down the road, either immediately, you know, which we feel, or perhaps not, but down the road, it will be a seed for future suffering. So that's all, there's no I, no sense of self needed to understand that cause and effect relationship.
34:14 Speaker 03 And so if there is the desire for greater peace or happiness, rather than a desire for suffering, we should pay attention to the causes behind those different results. And none of that has to do with an I or a self. It's just the law of nature. You planted an apple seed, you're not going to get a pear tree. So what kind of seeds are we planting? What kinds of seeds are being planted? We don't need the I in there at all.
34:51 Dan Harris? And we're going to get to that, the use of the passive voice, because you've got a very, what I found to be a very powerful practice built around that. Just staying on this question of not self. One framing that's helped me, I think, understand this, begin to understand this is
35:14 Dan Harris? talking about things on a relative level. This is, these are terms of art here, relative level and an ultimate level. Can you explain those terms of art? And do you think I'm on to something here in terms of this being a way that we can kind of grapple with the notion that we are more gerundial than noun?
35:36 Speaker 03 That's good, Dan.
35:39 Speaker 03 I've never been called a gerund before.
35:45 Speaker 03 So, yeah, this understanding of... In some schools of Buddhism, it's called the two levels of truth, relative truth and more ultimate truth. Another word that I like to use instead of relative is just conventional truth, and we could say more ultimate truth. So, on the conventional level, we use the term self and I and you, and, you know, there's just this very ordinary way of understanding things. And for the purpose of communication, that's totally appropriate. You know, so I'm not at all suggesting that as we begin to explore for ourselves and maybe even have some experience of what non-self means,
36:30 Speaker 03 we don't give up conventional language. You know, it'd be very awkward to say, "Oh, this process of the mental-physical elements is feeling hunger." "I'm hungry." So, it's to understand that it's totally fine and appropriate to use conventional language. The problem is that for most of us, or most of the time, we are seduced by that language into believing that is the more ultimate reality. Language is really important in terms of conditioning how we experience things.
37:14 Speaker 03 And it's very, very common, as I just said, to be seduced by the conventional language of I and mine into believing that that has some substantial reality as opposed to being just a convenience of communication. Let me give you an example of how understanding the papancha of conceit, of understanding that and how it's working and recognizing it, can free the mind from a lot of unnecessary suffering. So, this just happened to me on a recent retreat.
37:59 Speaker 03 It's very fresh in my mind. So I was on a self-retreat at home, and doing a fair amount of sitting and walking, but not super-intensively. I would be doing quite a lot, but at other times I would be doing a little reading or perhaps some writing projects. But on one afternoon, I just found myself frittering away some time. I don't even know what I was doing now, but I wasn't doing anything very mindfully or constructively. And so when I recognized this, I began to get down on myself a little bit. A little self-judgment came in. "Here on retreat,
38:42 Speaker 03 and you're this Buddhist meditation teacher. What are you doing, just frittering away this time?" I was definitely feeling some kind of just suffering involved in that self-judgment, you know, and for that short period of time, not feeling great about myself.
39:02 Speaker 03 And so I saw myself caught in this. But I'm familiar enough with all these teachings that at a certain point, for me at that time, it didn't take that long. You know, maybe five or 10 minutes of wallowing in the self-judgment. But then, as often happens, when I'm suffering a lot, it piques my interest. You know, I said, "What's going on here? You know, why is my mind in this place of suffering?" And I realized that it was just a situation of "I-aiming."
39:38 Speaker 03 "I'm so bad because I just wasted all this time." "I, I, I." As soon as I recognized the mindset of conceit, now that particular defilement of mind, rather than focusing on the story of, "Oh, you know, spent all this time. It was really a waste," which created that bad feeling, as soon as I recognized, "Oh, this is just conceited work. I'm just a lot of "I-aiming." Immediately, in the recognition of that, the whole mindset, just let go. I was back in the present moment because I was recognizing...
40:24 Speaker 03 The basic element that was causing the suffering. It wasn't the fact of rittering the time. That was just what it was. And it was, and obviously it wasn't some great sin. But still, it was enough to create that feeling in myself. But as soon as I let go of the self-story, the I am story, through recognizing that, oh yeah, this is just conceit working. This is just this particular papancha. The whole thing released. And so there's a very practical application of this. Everything we're talking about is not just about Buddhist theory or Buddhist philosophy.
41:08 Speaker 03 It's really about understanding how suffering is created in our lives and how we can be free on a very precise level in terms of understanding how our mind is working.
41:22 Dan Harris? Well, that leads us nicely to these practices that you've laid out that can help us get little tastes of the freedom you're talking about. I believe you've got three practices, at least from what I've heard in your recent public utterances on this subject. Three practices that help us deal with the three proliferating factors of craving, conceit, and wrong view. And the first of these practices, you already kind of referenced, which is the, he's kind of using our language to reverse engineer an insight into our molecules.
42:04 Dan Harris? And the linguistic change you're suggesting is the passive voice. Can you talk about that?
42:10 Speaker 03 Yeah. Just a little sidebar here. I just finished listening to a really interesting book called The Codebreaker by Walter Isaacson. And it was all about the fairly recent discoveries of what's called CRISPR, which is basically a tool for gene editing, you know, and actually editing DNA.
42:36 Speaker 03 Which has tremendous implications for perhaps curing or preventing disease. And to be able to get in on, just as you said, on that cellular level, you know, and edit something that creates problems is now happening in biology. So I liked your... This is a kind of gene editing. You know, we're getting in there to see, okay, what's in the DNA of our understanding? And can we edit out those genes that create suffering? So, one way of editing, one little practice we can do, which could give a sense of that,
43:18 Speaker 03 is an application of a linguistic framework of how we are describing the world to ourselves in language. Now mostly, we use language in the active voice. There's a subject, you know, verb and object. So I'm walking to town, eating some food. Or just a very simple, basic grammatical construction of active voice, a subject performing an action. The passive voice does something very interesting. And that is, the passive voice takes the subject out of it.
44:02 Speaker 03 So just as an example, in the active voice, we might say, "I'm hearing a sound." "I am," right there, right there. We've built in the "I am"ness. We've built in the sense of self, just in our language, you know, ordinary, conventional language. To begin to play in the passive voice, we would say, "A sound is being heard," or "A sound is being known." And so, the passive voice takes the subject "I" out of the equation.
44:40 Speaker 03 And I have found this to be an extremely valuable frame for meditation for a whole variety of reasons. One is, it puts us more in alignment...
44:55 Speaker 03 With the actual state of affairs, right? We're not positing a designation, a conventional designation, to be an essential element of the experience, which is what we're usually doing, just in our ordinary use of language. So when we use the passive voice in framing our meditative experience, and then all of our experience, oh, things are being known, it's a way of really touching into the effortless nature of meditation. If there's an I that is trying to do something,
45:39 Speaker 03 so then there's an efforting involved for that I, you know? And especially at the beginning of people's practice, but even later on as well, that efforting quality, which is different than arousing energy, that's a different thing. I'm talking about an unskillful efforting, or forcing, or expecting. All those are rooted in the I. As soon as we drop into the passive voice of things being known, we can really settle back. We've taken the I out of it,
46:17 Speaker 03 and new experiences are arising by themselves in each moment. There's no one there doing anything. There's not an I there. The All, you know, those six things are just arising one after another. Sight, a sound, a smell. And so, a very simple meditative exercise, which I think would give people a real, immediate sense of what this means, is just to spend five minutes, 10 minutes, not a long time, just a short period of time, either in sitting, or in going for a walk.
47:02 Speaker 03 This could be done in any time. Holding the question, just holding the frame of the question.
47:11 Speaker 03 Moment after moment, what's being known? And then settling back and just recognizing what is being known moment after moment. Oh, a sight, a sound, a sensation, a thought, sound, sensation, thought, sound. So it's all happening by itself. It's all just flowing along by itself. And things are being known if we have set that intention to pay attention in this way. We set that frame, what's being known? And then settle back and see how effortless it is. And it also really highlights the impermanent nature. Because when we're settled back in that way and just aware of what's being known moment
47:56 Speaker 03 after moment, without an attempt to control it in any way, or even to direct it, it's immediately obvious how things are just appearing and disappearing moment after moment.
48:11 Dan Harris? I don't know how much weight this will carry, but just to give it some, an endorsement here, but I struggled so much in the early stages of my practice and to this day with over-efforting and the intensity and duration of those struggles has been really reduced by using the passive voice. What is being known? Just asking myself that question and watch what happens. And it's not, I am trying so hard to be all over my breath like a rabid dog. It's more like I'm feeling the breath and the breath is being felt and there's nothing for me to do. It's already happening.
48:52 Dan Harris? And yes, maybe distraction comes up, but I see that and then you can go back to things being known on their own. It's incredibly helpful. And I know we've got a couple of other techniques to help us with the papancha factors. And I want to take a quick break and when we come back, we'll talk about those. Much more of my conversation with Joseph Goldstein right after this.
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50:19 Dan Harris? Okay. The process known as Dan is back.
50:26 Speaker 03 Before we go on, something occurred to me in the break that I thought might be helpful to mention. When people are both first beginning the practice, but also sometimes well into the practice, it can sometimes feel a little discouraging as we watch our minds to see, you know, what in the Buddhist terminology are called the defilements, or kind of those unskillful patterns of mind that just cause suffering, you know, in one way or another for ourselves or others. And I remember when I first began practice in India, and I was seeing my mind, you know, with greater clarity than I had seen before I started meditating.
51:08 Speaker 03 And I saw all these unskillful patterns, you know, of different manifestations of desire, or wanting, or greed, or aversion, you know, or annoyance, or whatever, whatever it may be. And I remember running to my teacher, I'm in Indriji. I don't think I expressed it this way, but basically, the sense was, I'm such a terrible person. I'm, you know, look at all these terrible things that are arising in my mind. And so it can lead to a lot of self judgment or discouragement, you know, about the practice. Why do I want to sit and see all this stuff?
51:48 Speaker 03 Well, something really interesting happens, and it can happen either quicker or slower, depending how quickly one understands this. But we can get to a place in the practice where we're actually delighted to see all this stuff because we would rather see it than not see it. So for example, now, when I see a manifestation of conceit, of I am-ing, one way or another, I am delighted. It's like, ah, I see you. I caught you. You know, you're not going to seduce me anymore.
52:27 Speaker 03 So it's actually uplifting and encouraging and joyful, you know, to be seeing the workings of our mind with clarity and with mindfulness. I just wanted to put out to the listeners that even though we may be seeing things which, you know, are problematic in one way or another, that the very seeing of them is enlightening. And it's a way that we get lighter and lighter and lighter. Because as we see them, we are not so caught by them. If we don't see them, then they just run riot in our lives.
53:07 Dan Harris? I've heard you mention this before, and I've seen it play out in my own mind, and I really agree. It just got me thinking again, just to get back to these challenging questions I was asking you before about the idea of the illusion of the self, or the not-self doctrine in Buddhism, that are there no aspects of the self that are useful? In other words, what if you catch the thought of, "I, Joseph, am gonna reach out to a friend who's suffering. I, Joseph, am going to write a book that might help a lot of people. I, Joseph, am gonna write a Dharma talk that might teach people important concepts that they could use to improve their own life." Is there no mana that is good mana?
53:52 Speaker 03 This goes back to something we were talking about earlier. Using that language conventionally is completely fine. That's how we communicate. And, you know, I could very well say, and have said many times, "Oh, I have this project I'm really excited about. I really wanna get involved in it." All of that's fine, to use that kind of language just for ease of communication, because this is how things are conventionally understood. No problem at all. We do do that.
54:32 Speaker 03 It's just to understand that even as we're using that language, we don't wanna be caught by it, or seduced in the belief, or in our minds, construct a substantial reality to what is in itself just a designation for part of the process. So the designation is helpful, and we use it. But what happens is we take the word, we take the concept, the designation, to be the reality itself.
55:10 Speaker 03 Instead of seeing, oh yeah, this is just a shorthand way of saying, "An idea arose in the mind. Energy came to act on it." We could describe the same thing without the use of that language, but it's just very awkward.
55:30 Speaker 03 So the use of the language is fine. The "I am" language. But we want to understand that it's just conventional. It doesn't really refer to anything in and of itself. But mostly, people don't make that second step. Mostly, we're lost in the world of concept and convention. And we haven't really understood the building blocks of experience. So it'd be, for example, in science. Like, just as we look at the physical world, take any simple physical object, like a glass or anything. And so conventionally, we think a glass exists.
56:12 Speaker 03 And for a lot of practical purposes, there's no problem with that. You know, we use a glass. But if scientists got caught by that, they would never have been motivated to look, "Okay, well, what is it that we're actually calling glass?" Right? And developing the tools to investigate that question. "What is it that we mean by these designations?" And then, whole new worlds open up. Imagine the excitement of the first person to look through a microscope. And then, nowadays, of course, it's even incredibly more sophisticated than that. Whole new dimensions of reality open up
56:56 Speaker 03 when we're not imprisoned by our attachment to the concept glass, even though on a conventional level, it's a useful designation. So it's the same thing, you know? So we use it, but we don't want to be limited by that concept. And this is really what the Buddhist teaching is all about. It's, "Okay, what's underneath it all? What are the basic elements of experience, and how do they function?"
57:27 Dan Harris? You used the word "elements" right there. We're in the middle of going through three little pieces of Joseph homework that we can all do to get under the hood here, to go beyond these kind of limits that are pretty deep in our wiring, in our DNA, these pahuncha factors. And so there's, one of the practices is built around a Buddhist concept of the elements. Tell us about that.
57:52 Speaker 03 Okay. So, each of these topics could be hour-long talks, so I'm gonna try to kind of abbreviate it all. First, just need a little explanation of the Buddhist framework for understanding the elements. Because when we think of physical elements, we might think of our chemistry class, you know, and the periodic table of the different elements. The Buddha, in that time, whether he actually knew all of that or not, of course, I don't know. But in those times, they used a very simple framework for describing the elements.
58:35 Speaker 03 So just a different designation for the physical elements. And it was fairly common in ancient times to think of the elements in terms of earth, air, fire, water. That's how they would describe the elements. Now, obviously, there are certain limitations in that, in terms of the understanding of chemistry, but they are very practical in terms of having a simple designation for how we experience different physical phenomena.
59:13 Speaker 03 So, for example, the earth element is a designation for just the experience, the sensation of hardness, hardness or softness. So that's an immediate felt experience, which we all have. So the Buddha just designated that as, oh, that's the earth element. Or movement, right, would be the air element. Or warmth or coolness would be the fire element. So that's what the terms earth, air, fire, water refer to, right? And they're helpful because it's just a very simple shorthand.
59:53 Speaker 03 For describing our physical experience free of popancha, of desire and craving and conceit and wrong view. So this is the way that I was playing with it on retreat, and it was really quite amazing to me. And again, it points to the power of language, whether it's spoken language or the language in our own minds. As we're describing or interpreting to ourselves what we're experiencing, the words we use are going to condition how we experience it.
1:00:36 Speaker 03 So again, this is something that normally we're not paying attention to. We think, oh yeah, we're experiencing the truth of what's there, not realizing that whatever language we're using to describe it is affecting how we're experiencing it. Okay, so all of that is background. I was just outside, just doing walking meditation. And again, this was not in a very slow pace. It was just kind of a normal pace of walking, but it could be done at any speed.
1:01:09 Speaker 03 And as I said before, when I was describing the mind and belonging to me, you know, in walking, even though I was being mindful and I was feeling the sensations of the movement in touch,
1:01:24 Speaker 03 I was noticing that, I would say, almost subliminal sense of I'm walking or my leg. It wasn't an explicit statement in my mind, but I could feel it was like a translucent veneer on the experience, hardly noticeable. But having just read this one particular discourse of the Buddha to his son, Rahula, in which he was describing this very practice.
1:02:00 Speaker 03 As a way of counteracting the pa-pancha of I mean mine. He said, "Practice seeing the physical experience in terms of the elements." Okay, so I had just read that. So in the walking, I just started, every time I would move, you know, move the leg, I was just very lightly, oh, air element. And then when I touch the ground, earth element. Just that, that's all. I just changed the language. But connecting those words to the experience, so it wasn't just
1:02:43 Speaker 03 kind of words going through my mind unrelated to the walking. It's like really connecting the words to the experience. It was amazing what happened, just such a simple thing. Just simple change of language,
1:03:04 Speaker 03 moving, oh, air element, earth element. It became so clear that the earth element or the air element didn't belong to me.
1:03:18 Speaker 03 That the belonging to me, like my leg or my foot, completely fell away. It was just earth element. It was just air element. Doesn't belong to anybody. And the whole sense of "I am" fell away. Even though we might say, "I'm walking." "I am walking." Would we ever say, "I am the air element"?
1:03:50 Speaker 03 No. Just the change of language removed that veneer of I mean mine. And it dropped the whole experience into simply being the elements being known. That's all that was there. The I disappeared, the I am disappeared, the mine disappeared. And even if it's just for a few moments at a time. Right? So I suggest, you know, if people are interested, they might try this and play with it. It doesn't have to be a big project. It can be, take five minutes or 10 minutes, you know, of walking and just play with this and see
1:04:32 Speaker 03 if any of what I've just said, you know, resonates with your own experience. But for me, it was so striking and so immediate to see how the application of the understanding of the elements was the antidote to I mean mine. This might be just a good chance to give the background story to the Buddha's teaching to his son, in which he described exactly what I just said, you know, to use the elements. So they were going for arms round into a village to go collect food. And so the Buddha was walking ahead and Rahula, his son, was walking behind him.
1:05:16 Speaker 03 And Rahula was looking at the beautiful form of the Buddha, you know, said to embody physical perfection as well as perfection of heart and mind. And Rahula was kind of taking pride in the fact that he had a resemblance to the Buddha. You know, he was his son. And of course, the Buddha, through his power of mind, knew what was in Rahula's mind. So he stopped, he turned around, Rahula. And that's when he gave this teaching.
1:05:56 Speaker 03 Everything should be seen with perfect wisdom. This is not mine, this is not I, this is not myself. So all the pride that Rahula was taking in his physical form, "My body looks like this and isn't this beautiful?" Right? Now the Buddha is saying, "See, everything with perfect wisdom, not mine, not I, not myself." And then he went on to explain, "One way of accomplishing that is through this meditation on the elements." Because as I just said, when we do that, the I, me mind just falls away. We're back just in the basic six elements of experience.
1:06:37 Speaker 03 That's all. It's just those six things being known moment after moment. So it's tremendously liberating and freeing. And even if we're not living in that space all the time, I think it's very powerful, even if we have brief moments of it. Because that's like planting the seeds in our ongoing flowing stream of a deeper understanding. And those seeds are really important because then we're not completely captured by the world of convention and concept. You know, we're kind of poking holes in that. And they're powerful. That really begins the process of liberation.
1:07:23 Dan Harris? In the time that remains here, let me prod you to describe the third exercise, which, if I recall, has to do with seeing how quickly everything that comes up in our mind passes away.
1:07:36 Speaker 03 We go through different stages in practice and even at any stage, you know, that we may be at, of course, one of the fundamental insights is that things arise and pass away. Right? Things come into being and vanish. So this is not difficult, either to understand or to see. I think a good part of the time, our minds are focused on what's arising.
1:08:08 Speaker 03 So each new arising experience captures our attention. Arising, arising. But we could as well focus on the disappearing side of things. Because, of course, they're doing both. But I think our minds have been very conditioned, in general, to always be captured by the newly arising object. But something very different happens when we start to focus on the disappearing aspect. Because when we're just focused on the arising aspect, that's very easy for us to
1:08:53 Speaker 03 get attached to, to have aversion to, to
1:08:58 Speaker 03 claim as being self. We do all kinds of things in relationship to seeing a new object arise.
1:09:07 Speaker 03 Something completely different happens when we're focusing on the disappearing. So how to do that in a way that's really vivid? So again, one time, I was just out for a walk. It was an ordinary walk, being as mindful as I could be. You know, but I wasn't, it wasn't like a slow meditative walk, it was just an ordinary walk.
1:09:32 Speaker 03 And the thought came to my mind, "Well, what happened to the step of five minutes ago?" "It's gone." I mean, it's completely gone, really gone. There was, there was nothing of it left. And then I said, "Well, what about one minute ago?" "Gone." "What about thirty seconds ago?" "Gone." "What about one second ago?" "It's gone." And so I just brought my mind up to the very lip of the flow of, it's like water over waterfall. Gone, gone, gone, gone, gone. So I brought my mind right to that point of things just disappearing, disappearing, disappearing. And it was quite amazing. It's like
1:10:18 Speaker 03 being in that experience of things disappearing, it's impossible to hold on.
1:10:27 Speaker 03 The thing is gone by the time we could even hold on to it. Right? And so the mind has let go of any kind of...
1:10:36 Speaker 03 Grasping or attachment or even wanting, right? Because things are just continually disappearing. And so we get into a kind of free flow, just a free flow of experience without getting caught up in any of the eddies that I mentioned, you know, of getting caught in some kind of attachment or reaction to the present moment experience and then circling around that and then building up all the papancha about it. No, it's just gone, gone. And the felt experience of that is so liberating. And interestingly enough,
1:11:18 Speaker 03 and this I don't really quite understand yet, it's somehow being in that space, activated what in the Buddhist terminology is called the heart center. You know, there are different energy centers in the body. You know, and each one has its own kind of manifestation. So I think we all have just an intuitive sense of what the heart center means, you know, the felt sense of an open heart. Interestingly enough, that's what was activated when I was just in that place of the continual disappearing, falling away,
1:11:57 Speaker 03 with its consequent lack of any clinging to anything. You know, so I think all of that contributed to that feeling of the heart space of it. You know, it was a very free space, even though in just hearing the words it might feel, I don't know, if people hear just, oh, falling away, falling away, falling away. You know, there's no stability. It might feel a little frightful. That was not the experience of it at that time.
1:12:31 Speaker 03 There's one image that might be helpful, also in understanding how we experience this greater awareness of things disappearing, of falling away. Because we can have different relationships to that, you know, or different felt experiences of that at different times. Somebody once told me of this example. It was of somebody free-falling out of a plane. You know, people do this kind of for sport. But this is not in a sports situation. So just imagine somebody falling out of a plane, one way or another.
1:13:14 Speaker 03 The circumstances are not really germane to the example. And then perhaps it's the first experience of exhilaration. You know, just the exhilaration of free fall. So this is very much like the first experience of things arising and passing quickly. As we continue in our meditation practice and it deepens, at a certain point, the mind really goes from emphasizing the content of what's arising, this, this, this, this, this, this, to the process, meaning the process of change.
1:13:55 Speaker 03 And so instead of the emphasis being on the "what", it really becomes an emphasis on the "how" it's happening. Things arising and passing, arising and passing. And that perception gets very refined. So we see this process of change very quickly. So that's a sense of exhilaration. Then going back to the image of the free fall. Then maybe the person realizes they don't have a parachute. They're in this free fall and there's no parachute. And then they get really frightened. Maybe a little fear or even terror arises. And they're falling, falling, you know, afraid of that.
1:14:37 Speaker 03 And so the equivalent of that in the meditative process would be, after the exhilaration of seeing things arise and pass, you know, so quickly, and then the mind begins to focus on just the disappearing, the rapid disappearance of everything.
1:14:55 Speaker 03 So then there's the felt sense of there's just no security anyplace. There's nothing to hold on to. And so that can be a challenging time in meditation, you know, of going through that feeling of it. But then, going back to the example of the free fall, so first there's the exhilaration, then there's the fear, but then at a certain point, the person realizes there's no ground. And so then they relax into an equanimity that simply is enjoying the whole experience of fall, of change, of flow. So this is quite similar to what happens in meditation,
1:15:38 Speaker 03 because after that kind of disturbing period of time when we are highlighting the fact of the insecurity, or there's nothing to hold on to, or the continual disappearance, at a certain point, we realize there's no ground, which is another way of saying, or analogous to the understanding of selflessness. This is just a natural process going on. And we fall into a place of tremendous equanimity. And the equanimity is so profound, and it's a very exquisite kind of happiness that comes.
1:16:22 Speaker 03 We really come to a place of peace. And at that point in practice, it's said, even for those people, you know, who are still on the path, but that place of equanimity is said to resemble the mind of a fully enlightened being. It's just a being that's not holding on to anything and is resting in the peace of that, the peace of non-clinging, the peace of non-grasping at that which is continually changing. So in the exercise that I mentioned of just going for a walk and maybe for a short period of time, just staying at that disappearing edge of things, seeing things continually fall away,
1:17:07 Speaker 03 I think it's very unlikely that you'll be experiencing the unsettling aspect of seeing this process of change. My sense is that you'll really begin to understand the liberating aspect of it.
1:17:23 Dan Harris? This has been great. I really appreciate this, and I really love the three homework assignments because these are things all of us can do. So, thank you, Joseph. Really appreciate it.
1:17:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, you're very welcome. As you know, I love talking about this stuff. See you next time, Dan.
1:17:39 Dan Harris? Yes, I'll see you next time. And I like that because that implies there will be a next time. I didn't do anything too bad this time.
1:17:45 Speaker 03 No, no, this is delightful.
1:17:51 Dan Harris? Thanks again to Joseph. Don't forget, IMS is launching a big fundraiser for this really important third center they're going to build on the grounds in Barre, Massachusetts. I'm really excited about this. Access to retreats is a huge problem, and I personally will be donating and encouraging everybody I know to donate. If you want to support this really important cause, go to dharma.org. There's a link in the show notes. Oh, by the way, super quickly, if you are a subscriber at danharris.com, just a heads up, this Tuesday, October 14th at 4:00 PM, I'll be doing a live guided meditation and Q&A session with my great friend Sebene Selassie, who's also, by the way, spent a lot of time at the Insight Meditation Society herself.
1:18:36 Dan Harris? Seb and I will be doing a live meditation and Q&A session on video as we do every Tuesday at 4:00 Eastern. Join the party. Finally, thank you to everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vassili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.
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