Pod Insights 10% Happier with Dan Harris How To Suffer Less: Joseph Goldstein, Sam Harris, and Dan Harris on the Buddha's Eightfold Path About this episode One of the foundational Buddhist lists—a kind of GPS for enlightenment.
Joseph Goldstein https://www.dharma.org/teacher/joseph-goldstein/ is a cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society https://www.dharma.org/ and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/, both in Barre, Massachusetts. He is the author of many books including, most recently, Dreamscapes of the Mind http://give.dharma.org/JGpoetry.
Sam Harris https://www.samharris.org/ is a neuroscientist, author, podcaster and the proprietor of the Waking Up app.
This episode is the first installment of a new series on the Eightfold Path. The rest of the series is available on Waking Up, a top-notch meditation app with amazing teachers and a ton of courses for all levels. If you subscribe via this link: wakingup.com/tenpercent http://wakingup.com/tenpercent, you'll get a 30-day free trial—and you'll be supporting the 10% Happier team, too. Full and partial scholarships are available.
In this episode we talk about:
The Eightfold Path, your GPS to enlightenment Generosity The importance of faith The wisdom of "I don't know" mind Various kinds of right view Unpacking right view on the Buddhist path Practical tips for cultivating right view
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Transcript 17,772 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Dan Harris? It's the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, everybody. How we doing? One of the most common questions I get, especially from subscribers over on my Substack, is, "How do I go deeper into meditation? Specifically, how do I learn more about Buddhism? What is Buddhism exactly? What are the fundamental concepts? And how do I fit it into my everyday life?" Up until now, I've not had a great answer. There are some books I like, of course, but especially in audio, there really hasn't been an easy solution for an on-ramp to Buddhism.
0:48 Dan Harris? Now, though, I have an excellent answer at the ready. Over on the Waking Up app, they just posted a four-part conversation, roughly eight hours in audio, featuring Joseph Goldstein, the eminent Buddhist teacher, Sam Harris, the neuroscientist, author, and podcaster, who is the proprietor of the Waking Up app, and me. In this audio extravaganza, Sam and I pepper Joseph with questions about all aspects of the Buddha's Eightfold Path. As you're about to hear Joseph explain in today's episode, the Eightfold Path is one of the foundational Buddhist lists. It's a kind of GPS for enlightenment. Eight crucial ways to train and orient your mind in meditation, in your worldview, and
1:32 Dan Harris? how you act in the world. Today, here on this podcast, we're going to play you the first part of this four-part conversation. If you want to hear the rest of the sessions, as well as the guided meditations from Joseph that go along with those sessions, you need to download the Waking Up app. You can do so at wakingup.com/10%. That's wakingup.com/10%. I'll put a link in the show notes. Just so you know, if you buy a subscription via that URL, you will get a 30-day free trial, and you will be supporting me and my team as well, because we will get a portion of the proceeds from any of the subscriptions generated through that link. And just to say, if money's an issue, Sam offers scholarships.
2:17 Dan Harris? That's the same policy that I have over on danharris.com. If you can't afford it, we'll give it to you. I want to give you a little context on this episode before we dive in. As many of you know, I recently went through a rather wrenching separation from what used to be known as the 10% happier meditation app. In the process of this years-long divorce, I had many, many conversations with my great friend, Sam Harris, who was eager to have me make some content with him. So this is really the first content partnership experiment that we engaged in, and you'll be hearing a lot more about my relationship with Waking Up in the future. I think of Waking Up as a great complement to what I'm doing on Substack. If you're looking for a community vibe, a direct access to me, and the ad-free version
3:02 Dan Harris? of this podcast, go to my Substack. If you're looking for a traditional meditation app experience, I really think you can do no better than Waking Up. It's an amazing resource. Sam has recruited some of the best meditation teachers alive, including the aforementioned Joseph Goldstein. By the way, if you go to the app, you can also listen to an outstanding 30-part lecture series from Joseph that takes you even deeper into Buddhism. So again, check it out, wakingup.com/10%. I think you're going to really enjoy today's conversation. The three of us are old friends, so you're going to hear a lot of practical, actionable wisdom in here, but also a lot of laughs. We'll get started with Joseph Goldstein and Sam Harris right after this.
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4:41 Speaker 03 I just want to say at the outset, how happy I am to be doing this with both of you. I mean, this is just like, had I dreamt it, this would be a dream come true. I mean, we just came together very quickly, as you both know, but it's just crazy. Good fortune to be able to do this with both of you. So I'm in very good company with you guys. So, but so I think the idea here, Joseph, was because you are 80 years old, which sounds impossible. And I've known you-
5:08 Speaker 04 Those to me as well.
5:11 Speaker 03 I've known you since you were 46. And I know that because you're exactly 23 years older than me and I was 23. So I knew you were double my age at the time. We just want to get the most out of you. And we thought we would structure it based on the Eightfold Path. But, you know, obviously, we can follow any other line that is of interest. But we just want to get Joseph Goldstein's wisdom mind right here in the present.
5:35 Dan Harris? Just to say that I'm also really psyched to be here. And I was thinking about my slash our good fortune on the walk over to this nice little cottage we're in. And I was remembering the conversation that started this. You and I were out to breakfast. I was in your state and we were talking about what kind of work I could do with and for you. And you said, you know, you and Joseph should go on a retreat. And then every afternoon, just record some audio and see what you get. And then there was a pause. He looked down and said, I have to be there.
6:10 Speaker 03 Yeah, no, just the words came out of my mouth and the sentence wasn't finished. And I realized, wait a minute, what am I saying here?
6:17 Speaker 03 I'm giving away all the good stuff. So, yeah.
6:21 Speaker 04 Well, I do like the phrase, see what you get.
6:24 Speaker 04 We'll see what we get.
6:25 Speaker 03 Yeah.
6:26 Dan Harris? Meaning we could wind you up and you, we could end up-
6:29 Speaker 04 Who knows? Who knows?
6:33 Dan Harris? Maybe start by telling us a little bit about what the Eightfold Path is.
6:38 Speaker 04 Okay, so basically, the Eightfold Path is really clear instructions of or about the path leading to awakening. And at one point, somebody asked the Buddha, you know, are there still enlightened beings in the world? And his response was, as long as people are still practicing the Eightfold Path, there will be enlightened beings in the world. And so, pretty direct statement that it's a path, and it's a path that leads to someplace. And where it leads to is whatever we'd like to call it, enlightenment, awakening, freedom, liberation. But that's, that's the power of
7:21 Speaker 04 this particular framework. And it's pretty interesting, because the framework is not only about meditative insight, you know, the Eightfold Path includes so much about just living wisely in the world. It's a beautiful framework to unpack.
7:39 Dan Harris? Can I ask you a foundational question?
7:40 Speaker 04 Yeah.
7:40 Dan Harris? Because I think I've asked you this before, but I can't remember the answer, and I definitely haven't asked you recently. When Joseph says words like enlightenment and liberation, where do you, Mr. Skeptical Atheist, stand vis a vis all of that?
7:55 Speaker 03 I mean, there's probably some translation required based on some of the doctrines in Buddhism. But, I mean, I'm not, I have a very grandiose picture of what is possible as far as the far reaches of human well-being. So enlightenment, there's an enlightenment-shaped, you know, terminus to all these efforts that I'm totally happy to believe in, because it's something that I think we can experience, we can sort of sample along the way, too. So, I mean, we'll get into this topic at some point, but there are differences of opinion about what the final realization is. But if it were only a matter of stabilizing the thing that, you know, many of us have experienced along the way, in my view, that, you know, we could
8:38 Speaker 03 call that enlightenment, or, you know, realization, or whatever you want to talk about. It's so freeing psychologically with respect to what is normal in our default sense that it's many of the spooky sounding ideas in Buddhism, I think are just true, like the self being an illusion. Say that can become obvious and you can actually no longer overlook that that obvious fact of the mind. And that there's a psychological freedom that comes with that. But enlightenment, as we know, also there are doctrines that are attached to it like the enlightenment of the Buddha entails things like omniscience and magic powers. And that's where I begin to, but worse agnostic there.
9:20 Speaker 03 But you know, perhaps we'll talk about that spooky stuff as well.
9:24 Dan Harris? I love the spooky stuff, but just I think there are two points worth making. One is the Buddha was very clear. Don't take anything I say at face value. Check it out in the laboratory of your own mind. I don't think those were his exact words, but it was roughly, yeah, roughly speaking. So this is a tradition that skeptics, and I would count myself one of those, can I think safely explore. And then the second thing back on enlightenment is I believe the classical understanding of what enlightenment is, is the uprooting of greed, hatred and delusion. If I have that right, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong, that's a pretty big claim.
10:00 Speaker 04 Yeah, and I think that that particular way of framing what enlightenment means. I think it's really useful because it's very, it's not abstract. You know, it says very specifically what qualities in the mind, which creates suffering, are uprooted when one is awakened or enlightened. Because often the Buddha would refer to what he teaches as being teaching suffering and the end of suffering. So that's really the bottom line, you know, and he said that he knew much more about the nature of the world, the universe, perhaps the mysterious things, you know, his knowledge was vast.
10:42 Speaker 04 But what he taught was just that which led to the end of suffering. And so that becomes a, I think, a really pragmatic measure for us to assess our own practice. You know, even all along the way, are we suffering less or more? And it becomes pretty obvious through some degree of awareness and mindfulness and, you know, meditative insight that greed, hatred, delusion are causes of suffering.
11:11 Speaker 04 In generosity, love, wisdom, the causes of greater happiness. So this is now mystical. You know, and I think it's it's it's easily verifiable in one's own experience all along the way. So that's why I like that particular frame. There are other more ways of understanding enlightenment that are not so easily verifiable for most people. So that's why this one, I think, really serves that purpose.
11:39 Dan Harris? It might be worth saying a little bit about what suffering is, because I think to a lay ear, that sounds like, oh, I'm chained to a rock and crows are pecking at my innards, but there's a pretty specific.
11:51 Speaker 04 There is that.
11:51 Dan Harris? That's a that's a flavor that is on offer if you find the right person to tie you up. But the you talk about the constituents' hearts being great hatred and delusion. Maybe just unpack that a little bit.
12:03 Speaker 04 Well, in a way, those are two different questions, or they're related, but somewhat different. I came across online someplace, I don't remember where, for me, the perfect definition of suffering. And suffering is the translation of the Pali word dukkha. And it's not a very good translation, because generally, we think of suffering when we're in pain, you know, and so there's a very tangible aspect to suffering. But dukkha means something much greater. And the the definition, which I have come to love, because it feels so comprehensive,
12:47 Speaker 04 is the inevitability of unwanted experiences. The inevitability of unwanted experiences. And these unwanted experiences can take, you know, many forms. And this particular phrase highlights some of the other insights of practice.
13:10 Speaker 04 Why is there the inevitability of unwanted experiences? Because everything is unstable. Everything is continually changing. And there's another phrase in the text, which, again, I've really come to love because it's a little unusual in English, but it it just makes the truth of impermanence very vivid. You know, it says, things always becoming otherwise. It says, in every moment, things are becoming otherwise. And because that's not a usual expression for us. When I first came across that, yes. And it really helps to remember that. Just a couple of examples.
13:55 Speaker 04 I could be going for a walk. And then, I don't know, my knee starts to hurt. So now my first thought, oh, becoming otherwise. You know, so it's just a reminder, yeah, this is the nature. Things are unstable, they're changing, they're becoming otherwise. And so to have the idea that they should be stable, or they should stay the same way, is a cause of dukkha. So there's a lot, there's a lot in there.
14:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, that cuts through a common misconception about what the Buddha taught, because many people think that the punchline of Buddhism is life is suffering, right? And as though they're, everything sucks, you know, and there's no acknowledgement of of real happiness or pleasure. But at least in one sutta, I think it's the Mahamungala Sutta, where he talks about kind of a hierarchy of happiness, acknowledging that, you know, having a healthy body is a form of happiness, having a healthy family is a form of happiness. But, yeah, it's the instability of all that. If you're clinging, and this connects to greed, hatred, and delusion. If you're trying to hold on to something that's intrinsically unstable, it just, you just have to wait around long enough and you will begin to feel the dissatisfaction of dukkha.
15:07 Speaker 04 And likewise, if you're Pushing away what's unpleasant, you have a virgin to it. That very resistance to it is suffering.
15:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
15:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, so maybe we can drill down on this point here a little more. How do you think of clinging in this spot? Clinging as the root of the problem?
15:29 Speaker 04 This was an image that somebody on retreat. They came in for meditation interview, you know, and they were describing their experience. And they said, you know, suffering is like rope burn. You know, if you're holding on tightly to a rope and it's being pulled through your hand, the tighter you hold on, the more rope burn is there going to be? Well, the rope being pulled through one's hand is the truth of things always becoming otherwise. Then the more we hold on tightly, the tighter we hold on, of course, it's suffering. It's painful. And so the release is really in letting go. There are a million images for this.
16:12 Speaker 04 Another, another one of my favorite images is describes a monkey trap that they use in Sri Lanka. You know, where they tie a coconut, a hollowed out coconut to a tree. And there's a hole, they put some sweet food in the coconut with a hole big enough for the monkey to slide its hand in when it's open, but not big enough for it to withdraw its hand when it's in a fist. Okay, monkey comes along, smells the food, puts his hand, puts his hand in it, grabs the food. He's caught. The hunter's coming, you know, he's getting frantic perhaps.
16:51 Speaker 04 All he has to do, or she, his open hand, slip out and be free. But it's a very rare monkey that can do that because of the force, the habit, the deeply conditioned habit of grasping to what's pleasant, you know, holding on.
17:12 Speaker 04 So yeah, so there are a lot of aspects.
17:15 Speaker 03 So to link up to Dan's question earlier about the goal of all this and just how far it reaches. How far do you think the ordinary forms of suffering can be mitigated through this thing we're calling enlightenment? Or awakening? I mean, just what, what is, you know, if you, if you imagine, I guess we could throw out some terminology here because I'm sure it'll come up. You know, Buddha is the kind of the ultimate example of enlightenment historically and within the teachings of Buddhism. But there are more minor examples, which in your tradition are called arhants or arhats, which have uprooted all the greed, hatred, delusion, but then don't have all the magic qualities associated with a Buddha.
17:59 Speaker 03 I think we can, you know, the agnostic in me wants to table all of that, but you know, it come back around. But when you imagine fully untying the knot of clinging in yourself, what is that synonymous with in terms of suffering and the, the absence of suffering? Can you get surgery without anesthesia and that's just as good as, as an experience as any other? Or is there some, I mean, how, how do you think about it?
18:28 Speaker 04 So there are a lot of different ways to think about it. So one image I like to use, if I'm thinking about the awakening of the Buddha, and I'm just projecting that, or the awakening of, you know, an arhat, a fully enlightened being, but who's not the Buddha. One of the things that becomes obvious in our meditation practice, and I think this is true of everyone, is that we all find ourselves in a comfort zone of what's okay, what we can easily be with. And it could be feelings in the body, different emotions, thought patterns, whatever. We have our comfort zone. Then in the course of practice and pasana, we come to the edges of our comfort zone.
19:12 Speaker 04 When we're just sitting and undistracted and not moving away from things, you know, and not trying to avoid the edges. When we're just sitting and practicing being mindful, we get to the edges. Maybe it's a certain level of discomfort in the body. Maybe it's a really painful emotion. Okay, so we're at the edge, which is where we want to be in the practice. And this might be an interesting point to emphasize, that the point of the practice is not to avoid that. The practice is actually, it's a benefit when it leads us to that place, because then we can play at the edge
19:51 Speaker 04 and learn how to relax into whatever that experience might be without holding on to it and without pushing it away. And so we get to the edge, maybe discomfort or emotion. Okay, it's okay, it's okay. Let me feel it. And so we relax into it, we relax into that experience. And in that relaxation, we are seeing the impermanent, impersonal nature of it. And so our comfort zone gets a little bigger. But that's now, that's now within our comfort zone. Go on, go on, go on, come to a few more retreats to our practice.
20:33 Speaker 04 We come to another edge, go through the same process. And so I see the practice of freedom, the gradual process of it unfolding, is that we are enlarging our comfort zone. And my projection of the fully enlightened mind is a mind without edges. There's no edge. And so whatever it is that arises, the mind is relating to it from a place of greater freedom. So this is one way of.
21:11 Speaker 03 Okay, can I ask you a question about that without derailing you?
21:13 Speaker 04 As long as it's an easy one.
21:15 Speaker 03 Yeah. You seem to have linked seeing the impersonal, impermanent nature of phenomenon there with the expansion of the comfort zone. I'm not sure that's intuitive for everybody. I mean, how does seeing the impersonal nature of it? I guess people could understand how impermanence may give one a sense of more comfort because you see that, you know, the moment something's there, let's say, pain, it's disappearing, you know, before you can even really make contact with it. But how is an insight into selflessness or the impersonal nature of phenomenon at all helpful here when you've got a pain in the knee?
21:55 Speaker 04 Well, it is very different not taking it personally. And so I'll just give you an example, kind of a meditative, meditative progression. Okay, we're sitting or walking and all of a sudden our knee hurts. You know, and very often the first reaction is, I don't like it. You know, it's painful. My knee is killing me. Right? Then, in the course of meditation, it's like we drop underneath the level of the concept knee. Because we actually don't feel a knee. There's no sensation called knee. So we don't feel knee.
22:37 Speaker 04 Knee is a concept which we're overlaying on a certain experience of certain sensations.
22:46 Speaker 04 The problem is that the concept reifies it as if the knee is something stable there, more or less permanent. So on that level of concept, we are not seeing the changing nature of what's really going on. So through the practice, even though our first reaction is, oh, my knee, my knee really hurts. But then with some understanding, we drop that and drop into the level of the element sensations. You know, the tightness, the burning, the stabbing, the this and that. As we drop into that level, not only are we seeing the impermanence of what's going on,
23:31 Speaker 04 it gives pretty direct access to at least the beginning understanding of selflessness. Because while we might very easily go from knee to my knee, it's not very likely that we would go from vibration to my vibration. Right? Or heat, my heat.
23:57 Speaker 03 Yeah.
23:57 Speaker 04 And so just in the more classical Buddhist teachings, those sensations are described in terms of, you know, four basic elements. You know, earth, air, fire, water, which is, you know, a classical framework from those years. But actually, I've been, I've been told that there is a modern equivalent of those four elements. Solidity, what are the four states of matter? Plasma.
24:29 Speaker 03 Gas.
24:30 Speaker 04 Gas.
24:30 Speaker 03 Liquid, solid.
24:31 Speaker 04 Yeah. Even though earth, air, fire, water is kind of a, you know, the ancient, the ancient terminology. I think there is, you know, the more modern vocabulary.
24:41 Speaker 03 If you find any plasma in there, I'll, I'll want to hear about it.
24:44 Speaker 04 Well, I'm not even sure what plasma is, but anyway.
24:49 Speaker 03 It's unlikely to be in your knee.
24:53 Speaker 04 It's just that this, when we're on that level, it's not so likely to claim it as being I in mind. And that's why one of the key, the key turning points in the meditation practice is when people gradually go from the level of their concepts about what's happening to the direct experience, whether to the physical elements or the mind elements. Because it's on that level that we begin to see the impermanent impersonal nature.
25:27 Speaker 03 But do you think that all of the suffering of, let's say, physical pain here, because it's the most concrete, is a matter of the psychological resistance to it, born of aversion and clinging? A mind without any clinging in the presence of still objectively excruciatingly unpleasant sensation in the body, do you actually imagine that to be a mind that is indifferent to those sensations compared to any other thing that's on the menu? Or is it just most of the suffering is reduced?
26:07 Speaker 04 So this may stretch most people's view of what's possible. But there is a story from, from the Buddha's time, which I'm a little hesitant to share because it seems so far out of the range of possibility for most people. But if we're willing to consider the possibility that a truly free mind may be experiencing things very differently than we do, it might give some indication. So after the Buddha was enlightened, he was walking around with the monks and the
26:49 Speaker 04 nuns, and he told them, he recounted a story from one of his previous lives when he was known as a Bodhisattva practicing. And he was a hermit living in the forest. And the queen of the country and some of her following, you know, were walking through the forest. They came upon him and they were really interested in the teachings. And so he would be giving them teachings. Anyway, the king was very upset that his queen had gone off and become, you know, a devotee of this hermit.
27:32 Speaker 04 And so the king, who was not a very nice fellow, ordered his guards or whatever to go to go the hermit. Here's where it gets a little gruesome.
27:42 Speaker 03 We like to start all these sessions with stories of torture and dismemberment. Feel free, Justin.
27:48 Speaker 04 But this is a story. I'm not making this up.
27:52 Speaker 04 So the king, you know, ordered the guards. Basically, to kill the hermit by sawing off his arms and legs. Pretty gruesome, horrible story. The Buddha, in his lifetime as a Buddha, now he's fully awakened. He's recounting this story. And he said something which can make one sit up straight.
28:15 Speaker 04 He said, "Even then," and he was not even yet fully awakened. He was a bodhisattva, you know, working towards awakening. He said, "Even then, my mind harbored no ill will or aversion. And if you are truly following my teachings, you should emulate that."
28:38 Speaker 04 So that's a rather high bar.
28:40 Speaker 03 Yeah.
28:41 Speaker 04 And, but what's interesting, so even if we don't go to that extreme, which hopefully none of us will have to. But we can see it at work, even in more modest. You know, when we are feeling pain and even quite intense pain, and this happens, I think all of us, you know, have experienced that at times in our meditation. Where it can get pretty painful. And seeing the difference in our own minds when we're contracted in the face of it and when we can relax in the face of it. And so again, there's the, you know, the famous example of the two arrows. You know, somebody shoots you with an arrow. First arrow is the pain, painful sensation.
29:22 Speaker 04 The second arrow is all the mental suffering we might add to the physical pain from the first arrow. So that's all the second arrow. And the Buddha is pointing out that it's the second arrow that we can really work with. The first arrow hits, it's painful. But that's life.
29:42 Dan Harris? Yeah.
29:43 Speaker 04 But how we're relating to it is really up to us.
29:47 Dan Harris? Maybe worth saying, oh, sorry.
29:48 Speaker 04 No, I was just gonna.
29:49 Dan Harris? Shoot, Sam. I need a third arrow, Joseph. Two is not enough, Joseph. Just to get back to this term of letting go, I can imagine to if somebody's listening to this and hearing the Dharma or Buddhism for the first or among the first times, the question could come up like, where's this heading? Like, does this mean I don't give a shit about anything? I don't try at work. I don't try in my relationships. What does letting go look like in practicality?
30:17 Speaker 04 I think letting go, I don't think that's the best phrase, even though we use it a lot. But some time ago, I don't even know who first suggested it, but using the phrase letting be works for many people much better than letting go. Because when you hear letting go, oh, what am I supposed to do? And how do I let go? And it can feel complicated.
30:40 Speaker 03 But also, when something's unpleasant, it doesn't seem like you're holding on to it. It's not intuitive to say that letting go of this pain is, how do I do that?
30:48 Speaker 04 Right.
30:49 Speaker 03 But if you let it be, that's.
30:51 Speaker 04 And the letting be works because in the letting be, we're seeing the changing nature. We're seeing the flow. And so the letting go happens organically rather than by anything we're doing. So what was the question?
31:06 Speaker 03 Joseph's let go of even of your question.
31:08 Speaker 04 Yeah, well. Which happens quite a lot.
31:10 Dan Harris? This is the mind without edges. There are a lot of people, myself, I would put myself in this category, who care about peak performance and achievement in various spheres of our lives. And so the idea of not clinging, letting go, it might, maybe some further explication could help.
31:31 Speaker 04 One of the problems in.
31:34 Speaker 04 The transmission of Buddhism, but really anything else, from one culture to another. A lot of the problems come out of translation, linguistic translation. So the teachings that we've inherited in this tradition are basically in the Pali language, an ancient language of India, very related to Sanskrit, but the more vernacular version. And in Pali, it's a language that is very specifically geared in the way it was used by the Buddha and the teachers of that time.
32:10 Speaker 04 It has very specific vocabulary for the nuances of different mind qualities and factors and sensations in the body. So for example, and yet when it's translated into English, very often it's not the same precision. So a very common example is the word desire. Because often in the teachings, they will be interpreted as the Buddha says to let go of desire. And so this speaks to your question. You know, what about desire for accomplishing things in the world or doing things in the world?
32:51 Speaker 04 The problem is that desire means a lot of different things, whereas in Pali there are different words for each of those meanings of desire. So for example, you know, if there's desire to get ahead in the world, you know, be number one, whatever. What's important or the way of assessing the particular meaning of desire, as we're using that word in English, would be to really have a very good and clear sense of the motivation associated with it.
33:31 Speaker 04 Right, and so, yeah, I have a desire to be number one. Okay, what's that motivation? Is it greed? Is it ambition? Is it selfing in some big way? Or desire to get ahead? Desire to do good in the world? There's another word in Pali to describe the desire of wholesome motivations. Right? And so it really depends on what's going on in the mind. What's the motivation in some of the situations you've described? People could be motivated a lot by greed and by self-aggrandizement and by, you know, wanting to be number one.
34:13 Speaker 04 But there are a lot of people doing fantastic things in the world. You know, motivated by compassion, motivated by love and doing hugely effective work, which is very different than the other, even though in English we use the same word. So that's why it can get confusing for people. Because generally in the Buddhist teachings with a superficial reading, we might read, oh, the point is to get rid of desire, but without drilling down into what that really means.
34:47 Speaker 03 How does that relate to the concept of craving though? So the desire for sense pleasure or just having preferences between like you, you know, you don't like broccoli, you like chocolate, you want more chocolate. Is there a enlightened version of that? Or does the non-clinging, non-craving goal that you're envisioning nullify those kinds of distinctions? I mean, I think we've spoken about this before, but you know, if you bring the Buddha to the, you know, the breakfast buffet on Maui, does he not want anything? Does he not know what he wants more than any other thing? Is he like a catatonic that you have to move out of the line there?
35:32 Speaker 03 Or is he, does he have all of the preferences that he had before his enlightenment, but they're just held in a very different psychological space?
35:43 Speaker 04 First, I have to say that although I can understand your inclination to have me speak for the Buddha.
35:50 Speaker 03 This is your chance.
35:51 Speaker 04 I do want to say that that's a little overreach. And so all I can do is express my limited understanding of what the Buddha mind would be like.
36:04 Speaker 03 Right.
36:05 Speaker 04 This is just to clean up my karmic, my potential karmic.
36:09 Speaker 03 All right.
36:09 Speaker 04 That having been said.
36:10 Speaker 03 You win Buddhist plaudits for being humble in that way, but based on your experience.
36:16 Speaker 04 No, I get the question.
36:17 Speaker 03 You have an expectation of what freedom will seem like.
36:20 Speaker 04 Yeah.
36:21 Speaker 03 So what will it seem like? And I bring you back to the breakfast buffet at the appropriate hotel.
36:28 Speaker 04 From my current level of understanding. So I'm leaving the door open for future revision. It's not not having preferences. It's not being attached to the preferences. So in this hypothetical Buddha going up to the buffet table. Oh, sweet buns. I've been wanting, I've been thinking about sweet buns all morning. And then there were no sweet buns. They're serving broccoli fritters.
36:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
37:01 Speaker 04 My imagination of the Buddha's mind is that it would not cause a ripple. Because there would be no attachment to the preference, even if there had been a preference.
37:14 Speaker 03 Right.
37:15 Speaker 04 And yes, I just want to reiterate that I really don't know whether the Buddha would have even had a preference or not. But I could imagine the scenario I just described.
37:26 Speaker 03 So to come back to our starting point, when you envision the path of practice as being more and more the ability to open, to expand the edges of our tolerance for dukkha on some level. Why not play the game very differently? Why not just, if the final result is just not being attached to the falsification of one's preferences? Why couldn't one practice keeping, you know, the sweet buns within arm's reach as much as possible? But noticing those times where they're not available and then that's the edge. But so for instance, to bring this back to a pain in the knee.
38:07 Speaker 03 Why not move mindfully every time there is a pain in the knee? Being just as aware of that. And the impermanence of all that. And all of one's efforts to be comfortable can be prosecuted with the full glare of mindfulness, presumably. So what failure mode do you imagine one's practice gets into there if one's constantly
38:30 Speaker 04 Just at the beginning of this conversation, I have to lay some ground rules. Don't string too many questions together. Because the second one will push out the first.
38:44 Speaker 04 So I'll address the last one you mentioned, because I already forgot the first.
38:50 Speaker 03 It was part of the last contain the first.
38:54 Speaker 04 Okay, so there's discomfort in the body. Why not just move every time? There are different ways we could address that question, but kind of the one that comes to mind most readily is because, given the truth of dukkha, the inevitability of unwanted experiences. So that's inevitable. That is going to come in all lives. And the fact that, yes, sometimes there may be a pain and we move and it goes away. But there will inevitably be times when we're experiencing pain in the body. And moving is not going to make it go away. That that is just the reality of whatever that situation is at the moment.
39:35 Speaker 04 So have we trained ourselves to be more accepting of that without resistance, without fear? Or when the pain is there and it's not going away, and we don't have the option just to change position to have it go away? Are we going to be with that pain? Could be with a wide range of second arrows, of things that create even more suffering, of fear, of resistance, of depression, of rage. It could be a lot of different things. So it's really, it's an important training. And this is part of the training in practice is to increase our capacity.
40:17 Speaker 04 To hold what's pleasant and unpleasant equally with equanimity. Because that's going to serve us in our lives of creating a life of greater ease. Because things are always becoming otherwise and often out of our control. So I see it as just a really important training. And the Buddha talked about this, an example of this, and something that's found a lot in the suttas. Where the Buddha would visit people who were sick and dying. And he would ask them, you know, he would say, oh, I hope you're, the pain is diminishing and in that vein. And the person would say, no, it's not diminishing.
41:02 Speaker 04 It's getting stronger and stronger and more intense. And they use some vivid images for that. And the Buddha's remark in almost all of these situations is, though your body is afflicted, may your mind remain unafflicted. So to me, that's one expression of the free mind. The body is going to be afflicted. It's the nature of the body. There's, there's no getting around that, one way or another. But then this, this is the power, I think, of the teachings and the practice. Is that we can actually train our minds over time. And increasingly so, not all at once.
41:43 Speaker 04 But even as the body is afflicted in one way or another, the mind remains unafflicted. And so this, this is the practice, and that's the purpose of working with pain when it's manageable. And even if we could move to alleviate it, we don't, at least for some time, to just practice. Okay, can I be with this? Can I relax into it?
42:06 Speaker 03 Well, that actually builds a bridge to my next question, which is, we've been, we've been talking a lot about physical pain. And the perhaps mitigation or total, total mitigation of attendant psychological suffering. But obviously meditation is mostly thought of not so much as an antidote for physical pain, but For mental suffering in all its forms, most of which have nothing to do with your body being uncomfortable, right? So there's, you know, the pain of sadness or disappointment or shame or, you know, terror. I mean, there's all these psychological states which are a kind of ethereal pain. I mean, they do, they do sort of map to the body and we, we feel them in the body as, as unpleasant as well.
42:49 Speaker 03 But their status as forms of unpleasantness is somewhat hard to get a hold of. And yet they really are the basis of most of human suffering. The states we get into based on our thoughts about past, present and future. And what I'm hearing is that basically all of that is optional. The real promise of meditation is though the first arrow of, you know, physical pain is, is inevitable. The arrow of mental suffering in all its forms, certainly suffering based on your thoughts about past, present and future. That is a dream from which it is possible to awaken.
43:29 Speaker 03 And that is on some level, I think to the average person, no less grandiose a promise than the promise that you could have your legs cut off and be a quantumist with that, right? So how do you think about mental suffering in this context?
43:45 Speaker 04 I mean, first to, to reiterate your point, the Buddha commented that actually mental suffering, I don't know if he used the word worse, but is much worse than physical suffering. And I think we know this because at least in my experience with physical suffering, even when it's intense, and maybe the mind is not perfectly equanimous. But in my experience, there's still a possibility of creating some sense of distance from it, you know, which mitigates the suffering a bit of it. But when there's mental suffering, that often feels all pervasive.
44:26 Speaker 04 You know, it often feels very hard to find some distance from it for, for an untrained mind. So it's in that sense, I think, that the Buddha said mental suffering is really more challenging.
44:40 Speaker 03 Hmm.
44:41 Speaker 04 Than physical suffering. But the whole teaching is about how to free ourselves from that mental suffering. And there's, there are just so many different specific ways, depending on what the particular mental suffering is. But one of the most transforming insights, which goes completely against our general conditioning. Okay, I just want to back up a minute.
45:12 Speaker 03 Hmm.
45:12 Speaker 04 We started this conversation saying we're going to talk about the Eightfold Path.
45:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, we haven't gotten to the first fold of the path.
45:18 Speaker 04 So I just want to reference it and then, yeah, if we can get back to it and then go deeper into it.
45:25 Speaker 03 Hmm.
45:25 Speaker 04 But the first step of the Eightfold Path is right view. And we can go into a longer discussion. That's, that's, that itself is a huge discussion. There are a lot of elements to it.
45:38 Speaker 03 Yeah.
45:39 Speaker 04 But I came across this one teaching, which described one very common expression of wrong view. And it's the feeling, or it's the experience of, I'm happy, I'm sad, I'm excited, I'm afraid, I'm depressed, I'm bored, I'm loving, da-da-da. Goes through a long list of all the different mind states. And of course, this is how we speak, and this is very often how we experience these things. Oh, I'm feeling happy. I'm feeling grief. So why is it wrong view? Because this is the common way we interpret our experience.
46:25 Speaker 04 The wrong view aspect is the claiming of that mind state to be self, to be I, which is so deeply embedded in our conditioning, you know? So the relief from that suffering.
46:43 Speaker 04 Is as we begin to be mindful enough and aware enough of the emotions themselves as being impersonal. Not I, not self. I can share a few stories. But first, an image. First, an image. There's one Tibetan teaching which says, "Thoughts and emotions wander through the mind like clouds in the sky. No roots, no home." And I love that image. And it's kind of amusing just to imagine the clouds going by with roots coming down from them, attaching them to the earth.
47:28 Speaker 04 It's a ridiculous image, right? And so clearly not the state of things. And yet, that's what we're doing with these emotions. So an emotion or a thought, we're rooting them to the view of self, right? And that's what is problematic. And when we see them for what they are, they're more like clouds in the sky. The emotions arise when the conditions are there for it to arise. Just like a cloud arises when the conditions are there for it. The conditions change, the cloud disperses, or it becomes otherwise. Exactly the same way with our emotions, you know? But what keeps us from seeing
48:13 Speaker 04 that ephemeral, we could say, empty nature of the emotion is because of our identification with them. We're rooting them in this view of self. And our practice is to, I don't know if we want to say, "cut the root", or not be identified with them.
48:35 Speaker 03 Can you say more about what identification is?
48:40 Speaker 04 Yeah, so I'll just, from my own experience. So this goes back quite a few years, early on in my practice. The emotion that was most difficult for me, the afflictive emotion that I was working with a lot over years and years and years, was fear.
49:04 Speaker 04 So of all the unpleasant emotions that can come, for me, that was the one that was most deeply conditioned.
49:12 Speaker 04 And I'm working with it in a lot of different ways over years by practice. And there were times when it was just so intense, particularly in the experience of intensive meditation. I would be sitting and afraid to stand up. I mean, it was completely irrational. You know, there was nothing fearful about standing up, but that's what was going on in my mind.
49:41 Speaker 04 So two things, there are two, two aspects of what helped me free myself from rooting that fear, you know, in myself. One was, and this is one of the most important, I don't know if teachings or, or changes in perspective that can really help to free the mind. So at one point I was doing walking meditation and the fear was there and it was strong. And I'm noting, noticing fear, fear, fear, fear. But I still felt really locked in.
50:23 Speaker 04 And then something happened in my mind. Something shifted in my mind. And that shift was expressed in the thought. If this fear is here for the rest of my life, it's okay. So it's okay became my magic mantra about everything. It's okay to feel it. And what was so instructive about that was that I thought I had been mindful all along because I had recognized the fear. Yeah, fear, fear. I was feeling it and noting it and recognizing it. But always through the filter of aversion, I wanted to get rid of it.
51:05 Speaker 03 Right, which technically is not mindfulness.
51:07 Speaker 04 Exactly.
51:08 Speaker 03 You're aware of it, but it's colored by your contraction around it.
51:12 Speaker 04 Exactly. And so just highlighting the difference between recognition and mindfulness, or recognition and awareness, these are two different things.
51:23 Speaker 03 So is it true to say that mindfulness contains equanimity? I mean, or presupposes equanimity or co arises with equanimity?
51:32 Speaker 04 And it was amazing, when my mind had that shift, it's okay. Here for the rest of my life, it's okay. What was amazing is that whole mass of fear that I'd been lodged and locked in in that moment, just washed through. It's like it was released from the grip of attachment. And it's not to say that fear never arises again, because it can still come up. But my relationship to it is completely different. Because from that experience, it's okay. It's okay. So that's story number one. Story number two, I'm teaching in Texas with my colleague Sharon Salzberg.
52:16 Speaker 04 We're going for a walk after lunch. And I'm going on and on, and I think this was before the experience I just described. I'm going on and on, oh, I have all this fear and it's so deeply conditioned. I'm gonna need thirty years of therapy to unwind this. And I was going on, I was building a whole superstructure of self on top of this emotion. You know, I'm such a fearful person, da, da, da, da, da. And Sharon just turned to me and said, Joseph, it's just a mind state. And you know, when the conditions are right, somebody can just say a few words.
52:57 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah, it's just the mind. Why do you, why do you creating this whole big self story about it? And so that's another by the acceptance and then seeing the impersonal selfless nature. It's just like a, it's just like a summer thundercloud. You know, it's there and it's intense and then it passes away. So our relationship to kind of emotional suffering that you described, there is every potential to free ourselves from the contraction of them. However, some is very deeply, deeply conditioned from a lot of different causes.
53:42 Speaker 04 For those emotions that are not just kind of more typical ones passing through, but the deeply conditioned patterns, first, it may take some time, as it did with me for fear. I was working with this for years until that kind of change of understanding. But I think also particular people have had traumatic background. You know, so there's, there's some deep emotional conditioning and it may take different modalities to help loosen it up. Right? You know, very often, just the therapeutic approach is really valuable and sometimes the meditative approach and sometimes a combination.
54:26 Speaker 04 So it's not to think that there's one way that is going to serve in all situations. So it's good to have an open mind to say, okay, what will be most helpful?
54:38 Speaker 03 But is that actually the claim? Or is, would it be true to say that real mindfulness is always the right answer psychologically? Or are you saying that there are people for whom, given their conditioning, given the sources of their suffering, even real mindfulness is not an appropriate remedy? You see what I'm getting at? Some people, you might be saying that some people try as they might, won't be able to use the tool of mindfulness because of the nature of their suffering and they have to do something else. But are you saying that actually, in many cases, mindfulness is just not good enough?
55:21 Speaker 04 No, I'm saying that depending on the intensity and the level of the conditioning, people's capacity.
55:31 Speaker 03 To even get near mindfulness.
55:33 Speaker 04 Yeah, to be really mindful in the way that we've been describing.
55:36 Speaker 03 Right.
55:37 Speaker 04 Without attachment, without aversion, without identification.
55:40 Speaker 03 Right. It's asking too much.
55:42 Speaker 04 Yeah, it may not just at that time, I mean, the capacity might not be there. And very often it's necessary to go into the content to try to, okay, well, what are the causes? You know, what's the history and, and that begins to loosen things up enough. So that maybe one could then apply mindfulness directly to the emotion.
56:03 Speaker 03 The phrase to not be identified with thought, you know, I think for many people is very hard to parse. And many people also assume that the goal is to be without thought. Right. So like, it's, it'd be worth getting to that territory somehow.
56:17 Dan Harris? We might naturally get there through Right View.
56:19 Speaker 03 Yeah.
56:21 Dan Harris? I think it's actually been really helpful to kind of set the table in this way. And I know we'll, we'll want to work through the, the list, the Eightfold Path. But at least one last question for me, if, if I may. You talked a lot about the potential for freedom, the mind with no edges. And maybe I'm alone in this, but I, I think some non-trivial percentage of listeners are going to ask the question, well, how far can I get? You know, how many lifetimes does this take? Uh, how much meditation do I need to do in order I, to get like a, a taste of, you know, the anesthesia free surgery, et cetera, et cetera. So what say you?
57:01 Speaker 04 Well, so I do have a new favorite definition of enlightenment, which is lightening up. The whole process is about lightening up, which I think in a colloquial sense, we all have a sense of. You know, it's not taking ourselves so seriously. And we just are with things in a simpler and easier way. That our minds start to decondition some of the complicated. And suffering causes responses to things. So I'll, I'll give you another very mundane example. The fruit of the practice of.
57:48 Speaker 04 Integrating the wisdom of impermanence really into how we're living our lives. So it's just totally normal, ordinary situation with a bunch of friends. And it goes back to actually what you was asking Sam about preferences and do you have preferences? You don't have preferences? And this happens to me a lot, you know, can be with a group of friends, planning to go out to dinner. Where do you want to go? I want Thai, I want Chinese, I want this, I want that. And for the most part, and even though, you know, I like everyone else has preferences, but for the most part in that kind of discussion, it really doesn't matter to me at all.
58:32 Speaker 04 Because I know from experience that 10 minutes, five minutes after the meal is done, it will not have made the slightest bit of difference. Right? And so having just experienced that over and over again, why get into a fight? And I'm exaggerating a little bit, but why get into a fight over which restaurant we go to? So again, that's, you know, that's a very trivial example, but one could extrapolate that. And so the lightening up aspect of becoming enlightened is a process that I think starts wherever we are.
59:13 Speaker 04 And we, everybody, you know, who really undertakes the practice in a somewhat consistent way, I think will experience this sense of lightening, lightening up, which is very, it's wonderful. You know, when we don't take ourselves so seriously. And so there's a lot, there's a lot freer energy, kind of we're dancing with things more than fighting with things or struggling with things. So this is a very kind of, we could say secular or mundane, understanding of the process, you know?
59:53 Speaker 04 And then of course it goes into many more profound aspects of what awakening means. But I think it gives an indication of what's possible for everybody. We're all moving along on this trajectory and we're all somewhere along the path.
1:00:11 Dan Harris? If we're practicing.
1:00:12 Speaker 04 Yes. And for almost all of us, there's more to do.
1:00:17 Dan Harris? You've known this guy for decades.
1:00:19 Speaker 03 He still cares what restaurant we go to.
1:00:22 Dan Harris? I was just kidding. I was thinking that same thing.
1:00:25 Speaker 03 I don't remember getting my free pick of cuisine every time I'm with Joseph.
1:00:31 Dan Harris? Is he lighter, though, than when he was 46?
1:00:35 Speaker 03 That's hard to say. I don't know. I mean, he was pretty light at 46. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been hanging out with him.
1:00:41 Speaker 04 I can definitely answer the question. Much more so. So just as an example, which you probably saw, as you mentioned, one of you mentioned, recently turned 80. And so IMS, our meditations, ended up put on a kind of an online 80th celebration. And somebody produced it, and it was really a lovely event. The woman who produced it, Lily Kushman, she dug up an old video of me teaching at Naropa in 1974. So I had just come back from India, and so I was a new teacher, and I was leading.
1:01:20 Speaker 03 Very big difference in new and old Joseph teaching, yeah.
1:01:23 Speaker 04 Yes. I mean, in that video, I mean, the teaching was the same, but I was so serious and so.
1:01:35 Speaker 03 Practically Burmese.
1:01:37 Speaker 04 Yeah, not much lightness there, but there was a trajectory from that to how I feel now. And to me, it's really noticeable in how I feel. I feel a lot lighter and more relaxed in teaching and in most things. So I think it really is possible, even just on that level.
1:02:01 Speaker 03 But is that actually the right way to measure things? I mean, so again, coming back to the goal and what you imagine to be, you know, the final fruition of practice, would you expect every arhaan or every Buddha to show up with the same kind of lighthearted attitude? Or because again, the obvious examples, I mean, someone like Mahase Sadao, who, you know, whether he was an arhaan or not, was obviously. An exemplar of taking the practice in quite some ways. And I mean, some of this could have been cultural, some of this could have been how, you know, he decided to behave in the role as a teacher, but I never met him. I obviously only met his student Upandita, but there was a very kind of formal, serious. I mean, I don't even think they smiled very much.
1:02:44 Speaker 03 I saw Upandita smile, but it's like even smiling was kind of taboo in the role of a teacher. I think they put their fans up to hide their smiles, but I don't know whether Mahasi ever smiled, but he was not the jolly teacher that, you know, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is, right? So how much are you expecting a person's personality to change based on stabilizing this?
1:03:09 Speaker 04 Yes, obviously, people are going to manifest very differently because of just their innate personalities. You know, and just with reference, for example, to Mahasi Sayadaw. What I've heard is certainly in his public persona, he was pretty, pretty serious,
1:03:30 Speaker 04 which is very Burmese culture.
1:03:32 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:03:32 Speaker 04 You know, for monastics to present in that way. But what I heard was that when he was just in the equivalent of the back room.
1:03:42 Speaker 03 He's a wild man.
1:03:43 Speaker 04 Well, I wouldn't say wild man, but that another whole side of him came out.
1:03:48 Speaker 03 Right.
1:03:49 Speaker 04 So it's hard to judge, you know, in what you're asking about without being, seeing somebody in the, in the fullness of their, the situations. But I think the deeper part is not so much the personality expression, but this is more subtle and sometimes hard to assess. But really how empty of self someone is, you know? And, and to some extent, we really can feel it. I mean, we know when even the English expression, very full of themselves. You know, when, when somebody is very full of themselves, it's apparent.
1:04:32 Speaker 04 Mahasi Sayadaw was one of the emptiest of self beings that I've ever met. So that, that's really the deeper meaning of that, of lightening up. Lightening up in that way is the more profound aspect. It's kind of the personality. For me, it was very noticeable, that more superficial level, you know, it was very apparent to me that that's what happened along with, you know, the deeper letting go of of selfing to whatever extent.
1:05:05 Speaker 03 Actually, I think it's an important point of confusion because just as consumers of the teachings, I think people can be misled by the personal characteristics of teachers. I mean, there are people who have lots of charisma, who are very comfortable in front of audiences, they're very energetic, they're super positive, they've got a very high baseline level of happiness. And I won't name any names, but I mean, there are people who check all those boxes, but there's a, you know, there's an 800 pound gorilla of an ego right at the center of it that is palpable, but it's not palpable in the sense of that they seem to be suffering, or they seem to be neurotic, at least not when they're functioning well.
1:05:45 Speaker 03 They can be very, again, charismatic and outward focused, you know, just they can be performing impeccably, and yet it's not the same thing as absence of self. But you wouldn't, you could point to that person and say, that person's very light, they're laughing, they're they're smiling, they're they're very entertaining, they're very attractive of people's attention, you know, they're, they could be great performers, you know, they could be great stand up comedians, or or just performers in all kinds of modes. And yet, there's a kind of self-actualization that has nothing to do with what we're talking about. Right. But I think people might think that if I could only untie the knot of self
1:06:27 Speaker 03 through meditation, I would be like, you know, Jamie Foxx, right? Like, like just free to to dance and sing and so.
1:06:36 Speaker 04 I think one of one of the, I don't think this is really a.
1:06:40 Speaker 03 You don't think it's a common misunderstanding? They somehow optimizing the personality through these this practice?
1:06:46 Speaker 04 I don't think I don't think it's really a critical point. But now I will make a critical point.
1:06:53 Speaker 03 Thank you for getting us back on track.
1:07:00 Speaker 04 I think this is one of the really beautiful things about practicing with different teachers. Because when you practice with different, who you really respect and you know, feel have a lot of wisdom. And you see them manifesting through many different personalities. That is a great teaching is that in that there is no one way to be. It's not that there's one persona that is going to manifest as we become more, as we become freer.
1:07:30 Speaker 03 But what have you have made of the examples of teachers who can seem to be angry? Right? So like, one way of describing the path is to get rid of disturbing emotion like anger. Surely you've seen some great teachers seem to get annoyed or angry or frustrated or something. And so do you just, do you just view that as synonymous with them not being done? Or is there a way of actually displaying in the same way that you could reach for the mango as opposed to the papaya? At a buffet and that's not tantamount to unenlightened craving. That's just a conditioned preference that need not mean anything. Could you see someone, I mean, I remember so for, for instance, we were with Tulku Oregon in Nepal.
1:08:11 Speaker 03 And we had bought a bunch of Buddha statues and bells and other artifacts for him to bless. And so, but he was keenly interested in where we bought this stuff and what, how much we paid for it. And when he heard what one thing cost, I think it was a bell or he just, he looked horrified. It's like, like we, like we tourists had just been, you know, shamefully taken advantage of it like, and paid 10 times too much for something. And he was clearly, by outward appearances, he seemed to be annoyed or, you know, something. Now, if you sample his, your impression of what it's like to be him at that moment, is it just,
1:08:52 Speaker 03 okay, he's lost in thought in exactly the same way that any ordinary person is lost in thought and he's contracted? Or can that variation show up in even a totally free mind? I mean, what are you expecting?
1:09:09 Speaker 03 Again, you think this is not, you don't think a person's conception of the goal is important?
1:09:15 Speaker 04 I think in the example you're giving, you would really have to know what was in his mind. You know, and you know, there is this expression in Tibetan wrathful compassion, where people manifest in what could be called a wrathful way. But actually, the motivation and the energy is one of compassion. And one could say compassion to help wake people up, or where they see that as the skillful means in that particular situation. And it's very hard to judge, like in the example you gave. I don't know what's in his mind, you know.
1:09:59 Speaker 04 As you were telling the story, I interpreted, but of course, this was just my projection of, I could well imagine going there with all chachkas, Buddha chachkas. And he's reacting with disbelief that anybody could be so stupid.
1:10:21 Speaker 03 That was not the, they're very indulgent of that kind of thing.
1:10:25 Speaker 04 No, I'm just, I'm just saying that it could be, there could be just a whole range of what was in his mind, and so.
1:10:32 Speaker 03 Okay, but you do judge, I mean, this is, first of all, the wrathful wisdom, you know, and every variant of that, while possibly psychologically true, you know, that's a get out of jail free card for every guru who's ever exploited the role of guru. So like, we know, we know it's hard to actually know that you found that when you've seemed to have found that. And when the effects are obviously not good, you do judge. You know, when you hear that Sohul Rinpoche is just beating people up. You basically wash your hands of him as an example of what the Dharma is supposed to be, right? Like, there's a line that somebody crosses. And in the literature, we accept these stories that we would never accept in real life, right?
1:11:17 Speaker 03 Like, the disciple holds up his finger and who is it? Bodhidharma or who cut off the finger?
1:11:24 Speaker 04 Some Zen teacher.
1:11:25 Speaker 03 Right, so, you know, it's like, yeah, if you're cutting off the fingers of your students, you know, you're not, you're not going to survive long in the current Dharma circles. And for good reason, but it is thought that everything potentially could be skillful means in the...
1:11:42 Speaker 04 Yeah, but I think that's a misunderstanding, a misconception. And it's one of the reasons why in most Buddhist traditions, although there's some variation of how it's held or how it's expressed, but how the foundation, the foundation of the whole journey is ethical behavior. The ethics of non-harming. And to me, that's why that foundation is so important. Because people, and people in teaching roles can so easily rationalize behavior as if they have in some belief, "Well, I've had this realization,
1:12:26 Speaker 04 or I've had this level of enlightenment or whatever, so that everything I do therefore is expressive of that." That's the get out of jail free card. But that is dissociative, and it's dangerous. And we've seen lots of examples in spiritual scenes where people in teaching roles end up sometimes doing really unskillful, harmful things.
1:12:50 Speaker 03 And frankly, it feels like we've seen that more in traditions that have this teaching around crazy wisdom or wrathful compassion. I mean, like, we've seen less of it, I think, in the Theravada. I'm sure it exists.
1:13:04 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah. Well, that's also because, like, in this tradition, there is a lot of emphasis on the teaching of ethics of non-harming. I mean... And in different traditions, I think it's there in all the traditions, but in some teachings, in some, it's really emphasized more than in others. You know, and from my perspective, I think that's why it's really important to emphasize it because it's provides a place of safety. You know, in fact, one of the, one of the gifts of undertaking following the basic precepts of non-harming, and I love this expression. It's, it talks about when we are committed to these
1:13:49 Speaker 04 precepts of ethical behavior, of non-harming behavior, we are giving the gift of fearlessness to everyone we meet. Because we're saying with our behavior, you need not fear me. I'm not going to harm you. And this, and the precepts are basic. It's not like, you know, we have to go off and become saints in order to follow the precepts. They're pretty basic ways of behaving. But sometimes if those teachings are not emphasized, teachers can go astray. Even teachers who may have some level of realization, but then misinterpret the extent of it. And then think, oh, well, I've had this realization
1:14:34 Speaker 04 and everything I do is enlightened behavior. That's a real danger and it has happened. We, we've seen it.
1:14:41 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's a good segue to the Eightfold Path.
1:14:43 Dan Harris? Yeah, I was gonna say. So should we start marching our way through this list?
1:14:48 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:14:52 Dan Harris? Coming up, Joseph and Sam talk about generosity, the importance of faith. And in this context, faith has a little bit of a different meaning. The wisdom of don't know mind and various kinds of right view.
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1:16:14 Dan Harris? So the first entry on the list of eight is right view. We talked about it a little bit, but let's go deeper. What does it mean technically, right view?
1:16:26 Speaker 04 So one kind of general way I think of understanding, in the most general way, right view sets the direction of our path, right? So it's like having a right view of the path and the goal. That sets a direction. So if we're on a journey and we know the right direction to get where we want to go, then if we keep walking on that path, we will inevitably get there because we're going in the right direction. If we're going in the wrong direction... We can be making all kinds of efforts in our practice, but it's not going to get us where we want to go.
1:17:11 Speaker 04 And so that's why the Buddha said that, and he started the Eightfold Path with right view. And he said, he sees nothing so conducive to the well-being of people as right view, and nothing as detrimental to the well-being of beings with wrong view. Because right view keeps us going on the direction of awakening, of freedom, of liberation, whatever word we want to use. Wrong view takes us away from that. So the setting of the direction is one way of understanding it. A way of taking a deeper dive into the meaning
1:17:54 Speaker 04 of right view and what it means to be setting the direction and how that manifests in all lives. There are two levels of it. And this is pretty interesting, I think, because it shows the comprehensive nature of the Buddhist teachings and how it touches so many different aspects of our lives. So the first level of right view is called sometimes mundane right view or worldly right view. And it has to do with the right view for developing greater ease and happiness in our lives. Not necessarily have to do with awakening or liberation,
1:18:37 Speaker 04 but just how do we live wisely in a way that reduces suffering, creates more ease, and basically aligns us or puts us in harmony with the way things are, rather than... Being out of sync with the truth of things. So there are a few elements of mundane right view, and they all circle around one crucial aspect of the Buddhist teaching. And that is the understanding that our actions have consequences. And in traditional Buddhist terms, this is talked about as the law of karma.
1:19:21 Speaker 04 You know, that all of our volitional actions will bear fruit at some point or another, depending on the motivation associated with the action. So this is, this is just central to the Buddhist teaching. So we said, when we act motivated by greed or motivated by aversion, hatred, motivated by delusion, that is like planting the karmic seed of some future unwanted experience. And likewise, when we act motivated by generosity or by love, by understanding of wisdom, that is planting the seed
1:20:05 Speaker 04 of some future desirable experiences. And this is such a powerful teaching in my mind, because when we understand it and explore it on deeper and deeper levels, it gives us a lot of agency in our lives. Because we're all conditioned in a lot of different ways. We have naturally a lot of wholesome, skillful motivations in our mind, but not completely. You know, we have a lot of unskilled and unwholesome motivations. I think mostly in the moment of taking an action or performing an action, for many people, we are not considering the karmic consequences of the act. You know, we're just carried or carried along
1:20:48 Speaker 04 in the busyness of what we're doing and in the reactivity of what's going on. And we just act. Without necessarily really taking the time, the few moments to look into our motivation. Okay, where is this act coming from? Where is it leading? And do I want to go where it's leading? So when we have this understanding of right view, mundane right view, that actions bring result, that karma is unfolding lawfully, that can align us on a path of happiness. We can start doing those things which will bring desirable karmic results in our lives.
1:21:33 Speaker 04 So it's a powerful teaching. Now here's where we may be getting into a little of the more mysterious aspects of the teachings. First, we can get a very pretty clear sense of how karma unfolds just based on our own experience. And there are so many simple examples of this. Generally, when we are loving and basically have goodwill towards people, how do we find people relating to us? Generally, they like to be with us. How do people respond if we're full of anger and hatred and judgment? How do people relate? Probably not so friendly.
1:22:14 Speaker 04 There is a karmic result in this very simple, mundane way. There's an effect of our actions. So we want to pay attention to that. Now, in the full scope of the Buddha's teachings.
1:22:29 Speaker 03 Actually, before you go to the full scope, you could also just add that whether or not we're getting immediate feedback from the world, the difference in intentions feels a certain way at the level of our own minds. It just feels much better to be loving than to be angry and hateful and impatient.
1:22:45 Speaker 04 Absolutely.
1:22:46 Dan Harris? Yeah, I wrote a chapter in a book once called "The Self-Interested Case for Not Being a Dick." And I mean, I just see that. I see that so often in my own life. That whatever the external results are, the internal results are really powerful.
1:23:03 Speaker 04 Yeah. Yeah. Good point, guys.
1:23:07 Speaker 03 Back to you.
1:23:08 Dan Harris? Now you're gonna launch into the stuff that will make Sam's head explode?
1:23:13 Speaker 03 That's all right, I'll be very mindful of my.
1:23:15 Speaker 04 Okay, but before I do it, there were a couple of other points mentioned in my Dainra view. I just, I just want to put in before. One is, and this is, this is right out of the text, but it's all related to karma. Emphasizing the value of generosity as a behavior to cultivate. Not only because it feels good in the moment, but it, it has very good karmic consequences. And so there's one little exercise I do. I really took, took that seriously. You know, when, when I understood that, yeah, this, this is part of my view. I really started making generosity a practice.
1:24:00 Speaker 04 Not just, yeah, that's a good thing to do and, you know, wait for it to happen. So the practice I've done, which I really has been transforming in a certain way. And I like to recommend it to people because it's been so uplifting for me. Is that when I have a thought to give, I just practice doing it. I don't second guess myself. I don't, should I, shouldn't I? You know, is that too much or whatever? If the thought comes, do it. And it's been amazing and it's, so, so I'm not, in this particular practice. And there are many ways to practice generosity. In this particular practice, I'm not looking for situations.
1:24:43 Speaker 04 It's just I'm responding to my own impulse. When the impulse arises in my mind, okay, do it. And it's been amazing and the range of what the impulses are is huge. Sometimes it's, it's a really small thing. Just some gesture of friendliness or, you know, really simple thing. Sometimes the thought maybe to give something really big, way out of what even would be conventionally. And people are like, are you crazy?
1:25:14 Speaker 04 You know, so there's the whole range of the kind of impulses. And I just found I've never regretted it and it always brings joy. So I just put this out as a one example of a practical way of cultivating that mindset, that it can be a practice. Okay, so generosity is included in the description of mundane right view. A second aspect, which this one can get complex. The Buddha emphasized the karmic responsibility we have to our parents.
1:25:53 Speaker 04 Right, and so the classic image that's used, the Buddha said, "We could carry our parents around on our shoulders for our entire lifetime and not repay the debt of them having brought us into this world." Okay, so that's a pretty powerful exhortation. I don't know how it is in other cultures, but certainly in the West, sometimes relationships with one's parents can be very complex, you know, or fraught in one way or another. So I realize there's a lot of complexity to this.
1:26:34 Speaker 04 But I think it's good to keep in mind as something to strive for, even if the relationship is difficult or challenging, just to hold it in some way of recognizing that there is a karmic connection and in whatever way we can to try to establish a wholesome, skillful relationship to our parents. And sometimes, I would say mostly it's possible, but there are some situations where, for this life anyway, it doesn't seem to be possible. But I just want to tell one story from teaching.
1:27:15 Speaker 04 Every year, as you know, we teach a three-month retreat at IMS. And we've been doing it now for almost 50 years. So there was one meditator who came to many, many, many three-month courses. I don't know how many, but a lot. 10, 12, 15, every year they would be coming. And the core psychological issue for this person was this incredible conflict with her mother. And so a lot of the meditation, year after year after year, come in for the meditation interviews, and it would be around that issue.
1:28:00 Speaker 04 And it seemed so stuck. It's just every year for years, and these are three-month retreats. And, you know, other things were happening, but this remained a core knot. And then it was amazing. One year she came, and somehow the whole knot had begun to release. And she reestablished the connection with her mother and opened up a channel of communication. And to me, it was really inspiring, you know, to see that even when something is so deeply conditioned or knotted, just with patience and perseverance,
1:28:45 Speaker 04 even these deep knots can begin to unwind. And my first teacher, Manindraji, said something which can be a huge help for people on the path. And it was a real help for me, and this story illustrates it. He said, "On the spiritual path, time is not a factor." But we, especially in the West, are so... We're in such a hurry. You know, we want results now. But this path is not like that. You know, it takes time, and time is not a factor. If we're doing the praxis, and this is where right view is setting the right direction,
1:29:27 Speaker 04 if we're on the path, going in the right direction, in whatever method we use it, but right view has set the direction, then time is not a factor. We just keep walking, and the path will unfold.
1:29:43 Dan Harris? Didn't Munindra also say, "The thought of your mother is not your mother"?
1:29:49 Speaker 04 He did, and sometimes that works. It didn't work for this particular person until way down the road, because the reactivity was just so strong to begin with. Okay, so there's the generosity, this relationship to one's parents, the part of extending this scope of right view, mundane right view. The Buddha talked about karma not only playing out within this lifetime, but playing out over many lifetimes. So of course, this has to do with the whole idea of rebirth in different planes of existence, which for most people is outside the realm of their personal experience.
1:30:33 Speaker 04 And in the West, it's not even part of our... I'm not sure if I'm going to be using this word correctly. It's not part of our zeitgeist. You know, we have a very... The way we understand things generally in this society, generally, not completely, but it's basically a scientific paradigm, you know, of how we understand the world. Rebirth doesn't really fit into that. And so quite naturally, people, either skeptical, or just disbelieve it, or, "Oh, this is just, you know, some superstition from 2,600 years ago."
1:31:14 Speaker 03 So there's a lot of
1:31:15 Speaker 04 At best skepticism about this whole idea of rebirth.
1:31:18 Speaker 03 Also, a lot of people come from an alternate religious paradigm, which is just as spooky, but it's different.
1:31:25 Speaker 04 Right, right.
1:31:26 Speaker 03 You know, there is
1:31:27 Speaker 04 Right.
1:31:28 Speaker 03 There's an after-death condition.
1:31:29 Speaker 04 Heaven, hell.
1:31:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, but rebirth is not part of the story. Right, right. So it's, you know, that serves as a counterpoint. And the people who get, who leave that behind them and move into a proper secular physicalist worldview, then see this eastern variant on offer. And it's like, why would I adopt that one having left the god of Abraham?
1:31:50 Speaker 04 Yeah. No, that's all part of it. And why this particular aspect of the teachings is often not easily either understood or believed. And for myself, I certainly didn't begin this with any belief. I didn't know anything about Buddhism. I didn't know anything about rebirth or karma. Or I studied Western philosophy, you know, in college. And that was, that was my background. But over the many years of practice, I can track, I can track the trajectory of how I slowly became more open to considering it. And there's an expression, a phrase, and I think it was by the poet Coleridge.
1:32:32 Speaker 04 He used the expression, "the willing suspension of disbelief." Because we can be attached to our disbeliefs as well as attached to our beliefs. And so with something like rebirth, I think for many people, the most honest answer would be, "I don't know." I don't know. You know, it's not in my experience. But in the "I don't know," that's very different than saying, "it's not true." And this goes back to the connection to right view. To say it's not true is wrong view in the Buddhist context.
1:33:16 Speaker 04 To say, "I don't know," is not wrong view. And "I don't know" is actually more accurate as a description of our current state, unless one has had a definitive experience one way or the other. And so I think that's a very good way to hold many aspects of the teachings, which are beyond our current level of understanding.
1:33:42 Speaker 04 It's to acknowledge that, okay. And for me, part of what led me to be open to these, there were many things, but but one is, well, so much of what the Buddha said, we can verify. You know, I can see, come and see, you know, and he says, don't believe, check it out. And so much of what he said, check that out. That really seems true. That works. I'm suffering less. And so for me, it tended, well, he was right about so much. There's just the possibility he might be right about this too. So again, it's not, it's not even going to believe in it, but to be open to the possibility.
1:34:25 Dan Harris? I know a guy, he wrote a book called The End of Faith. I'm very curious to hear what he has to say about all of this.
1:34:32 Speaker 03 Again, I think I am genuinely agnostic about this, which is the I don't know state. But I think I detect in you more belief than mere, this is not not truly in the shape of a mere question mark for you. I mean, for me, I honestly would not, given certain experiences I've had in meditation and psychedelics, and given the logic you just gave of, you know, these esoteric teachings have been right about so much, it's counterintuitive. The fact that they are traditionally framed with this metaphysical worldview, maybe that gives some credence to the whole picture as opposed to taking it a la carte. But so for me, it really is, I just recognize I don't know, like I actually, you know, it's the absence.
1:35:17 Speaker 04 That's a good step.
1:35:17 Speaker 03 Yeah. But I believe.
1:35:20 Dan Harris? Here we go.
1:35:21 Speaker 03 With all your lightheartedness, where you're busy not picking restaurants, you have moved further in the direction of positive commitment to it being true psychologically.
1:35:32 Speaker 04 No, the way I describe. My own sense of it is that I'm inclined to believe, but always with the addendum, and I don't know. So I am inclined to believe for a whole variety of reasons, some of which we talked about. So that that gives some energy to the inclination. But I can rest pretty easily, I do rest easily, in acknowledging that I don't know. You know, and I think that that, for me, is a really skillful way to hold it.
1:36:08 Speaker 03 Well, two questions. Do you think anything important hinges upon having a positive belief in it? Or something more than I don't know? And do the teachings say that something important hinges upon accepting this, these statements about the bigger picture to be true?
1:36:27 Speaker 04 I think that the inclination to incline to it, even if one doesn't know.
1:36:34 Speaker 03 To act as if it's true. And it's almost like Pascal's wager in some sense.
1:36:38 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, it is like that. In my experience, it tremendously supercharges the practice.
1:36:46 Speaker 03 You're more motivated to practice.
1:36:47 Speaker 04 Yeah, because the consequences are huge. If it is true, the consequences are huge. Because then it's realizing, yeah, that as karma unfolds, and we'll be experiencing the fruit of our skillful and unskillful actions, it's not that it just ends with this life, that within this other framework, it extends over countless lifetimes. And so then the import of our actions takes on much greater significance, even though it's significant even within this one lifetime. But if you consider, oh, this action may have ramifications for many lifetimes,
1:37:31 Speaker 04 maybe I should take care with my actions. You know, this is important, this is significant. So, yeah, however you want to express it, like considering the possibility or inclining to believe or however one frames it with the recognition that one still doesn't know, I think for me has really, it's just made the practice so.
1:37:53 Speaker 03 You're acting as if it's true. You decided to act as if it's true.
1:37:57 Speaker 04 Yeah, and to my mind, with very good consequences.
1:38:02 Speaker 04 And I don't see any discernible downside to it. You know, because it's just, it's like a reinforcement for doing what's skillful and for doing what's wholeful, wholesome, and for what brings happiness. So Munenjerji, he had this great line. So he was talking more, you know, future lives and other planes of existence, you know, the lower realms and higher realms and heaven realms. And he loved talking about the heaven realms. He would just go on and on. And I loved hearing about them. A lot of people were very skeptical, but I was in that space. Oh, yeah, that sounds nice. But he would always end these little talks.
1:38:45 Speaker 04 You don't have to believe this in order to awaken, in order to become enlightened. You don't have to believe it. It's true, but you don't have to believe it. So that was always his, his last, his last comment. So all of this is mundane right view. Because it's the right view of how to live with greater ease and greater happiness in all lives.
1:39:12 Dan Harris? Coming up, Joseph and Sam talk more about right view and some practical tips for cultivating right view.
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1:40:26 Speaker 04 The second part of Right View is be called super mundane Right View or the Right View of Liberation. And this Right View has to do with the essential aspects of the Buddhist teachings, formulated in the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path. So Right View is really learning about and experiencing to whatever level we can, the truth of dukkha, the inevitability of unwanted experiences. Right? The underlying cause of this round of rebirths is craving. You know, craving is the desire that keeps the whole machine going. And then the end of craving is the release.
1:41:10 Speaker 04 So I want to give an example of how we can move this from some abstract Buddhist philosophy to how, to some extent, we can experience it right in our own lives. For a long time in my practice, you know, being familiar with the Four Noble Truths and that liberation is the end of craving, you know, clinging, grasping. In my mind, it was always, okay, I'm practicing and someday, some years, somewhere down the road, I'll come to the end of craving. But it didn't seem very immediate to me. You know, there's still plenty of craving that I could see in my mind. And then at a certain point, it was so interesting.
1:41:55 Speaker 04 I was just, I was just sitting. I was on retreat. And I realized I don't have to wait till the final end of all craving. I can practice non-craving in the moment and really see the effect of it. And so one way of doing that, and you know, I really suggest this to people in their practice. So suppose you're sitting, and then some craving, some desire comes up in the mind. And it could be anything. It could be craving for food, or a sexual fantasy, or, I don't know, some ambition one has, some craving, you know, that's going on. So if it occurs to one to just be mindful of that mind state of wanting, which we're in the middle of at that time.
1:42:40 Speaker 04 You know, we can feel ourselves wanting whatever it is. And then, because of the truth of things always becoming otherwise, at some point, the wanting is going to go away. Without any, we don't have to do anything to make it go away. If we're just hanging out with it and watching, so they are there wanting, wanting, wanting. And at a certain point, it's going to disappear. Right in that moment, it can be so illuminating of the difference in the quality of the mind, of the wanting mind and the mind that's free of wanting. In that transition, right from moment to moment. And my experience and almost everybody
1:43:24 Speaker 04 who I've talked to about this, in the moment of the wanting disappearing, it feels like it's being let out of the grip of something. It feels, ah, that sense of release, that sense of ease, that sense of peace. So in a very, it can be in a very ordinary kind of wanting. You know, so it doesn't have to be some big mystical experience. It's just watching our minds when it's filled with that kind of craving or wanting, what it feels like, the suffering of it, and then the release from it. And so we can really get a sense of this more super mundane, right, view, the understanding of the Four Noble Truths,
1:44:07 Speaker 04 that the end of craving leads to freedom, leads to peace, to greater ease. So I think that that understanding, even if it's not completed, craving will come back again. But we have had a taste, genuinely, in our own experience. You know, so it's not just some abstract philosophic statement that we need to believe.
1:44:31 Dan Harris? Just to sum this up, the mundane right view is understanding that actions have results, what leads to what. Super mundane review, right view is to understand that awakening or liberation is possible and the root of all of the opposite, the root of suffering is craving. Am I in a zone of accuracy here?
1:44:56 Speaker 04 Yeah, no, that's right. There's one other aspect that's included in right view, which is related to this, but it's just highlighting one particular aspect. And that is, and there's some kind of little bit of technical language, Buddhist language, that does need a little unpacking, which you asked about before, Sam. It's called freeing oneself from, sometimes it's called identity view or personality view. And it really has to do with the experience of selflessness or non-self. And so you asked before about, okay, what does it mean not to be identified with a thought? So there are a lot, there are
1:45:40 Speaker 04 different ways we can explore this. And some of them are really, to my mind, really interesting. So one of the simplest ways, but doesn't necessarily get right to the heart of it, but it's the beginning of getting to the heart of it, is just seeing both, that we don't invite our thoughts to come. It's not like we're saying, okay, I'm going to think this now, although
1:46:04 Dan Harris? You can invite them.
1:46:05 Speaker 04 No, we can, we can. But most of the thoughts that are going through our mind are uninvited. And so just even seeing that begins, oh, where did these come from? And sometimes I'll suggest to people on retreat, why don't you just treat each thought as if it's coming from the person next to you? Just as a way of maybe getting a flavor of not being identified with them as one's own. And so seeing the impermanence of them in that way.
1:46:36 Speaker 04 But even more interesting to me, and I often suggest people do this in their practice, especially when there are a lot of thoughts arising in the mind. As the thoughts are there to ask the question, "What is a thought?" Not, "What is this thought saying?", which is what we usually do. You know, "What's a thought?", oh, and then people would tell the content, the story of it. This is different. This is, I don't know if this is the right word, it's more phenomenological. What is a thought as a phenomenon?
1:47:16 Speaker 04 And what I find incredibly amazing is that when we look directly at it as we're having a thought, but with that question, there's almost nothing there. It's little more than nothing. It's so ephemeral, so empty of any substance. But what's so amazing is that when we don't see the thought in that way, they have such tremendous power in our lives. I call them the little dictators of the mind. Thoughts, "Go here, go there, do this, do that, get married, get divorced, whatever." It's like our thoughts are driving us.
1:48:01 Speaker 04 And yet, when we look to see what a thought actually is, it's little more than nothing. So that, to me, is so extraordinary to see that. And seeing that empty nature of thought really begins to give us the experience of its selfless nature, because there's hardly anything there. So it's another way of... Beginning to understand what being identified with the thought is, which means really being identified with the content and not being identified is when we're not concerned with the content, but seeing the very nature of thought.
1:48:44 Dan Harris? Yeah, I mean, there's so much freedom on the other side of that. You're cutting the strings of a malevolent puppeteer.
1:48:49 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:48:50 Dan Harris? That being said, just a categorization question. Is what you're talking about here, this non-identification with thoughts, is that part of mundane right view or super mundane right view?
1:49:00 Speaker 04 No, that would be more in the super mundane. Because another part of this more super mundane, or I never mind call it liberative right view. One other aspect beside the Four Noble Truths, but contained within that are the three characteristics of impermanence, dukkha and selflessness, you know? And so to the degree that we're seeing the non-self aspect of phenomena, you know, the impersonality of them. So it becomes this on this level of right view. And it's tremendously freeing. As as one teacher expressed it, no self, no problem.
1:49:41 Speaker 04 You know, big self, big problem. So right view is just, it's foundational. And just one little kind of footnote to all this. In the Eightfold Path, you know, as you know, every one of the steps is, the prefix is right. Right view, right thought, right speech, right action and so forth. So what the right refers to in each of the other steps, like right mindfulness. And people might ask, well, what's wrong mindfulness? You know, if mindfulness means relating in a, you know, the skillful way.
1:50:23 Speaker 04 Well, the right, in terms of the steps of the Eightfold Path, always refers to, is that particular step in alignment with the right view? If it's in alignment with the right view, then all the other steps are right. But you could have concentration, for example, not in alignment with right view. Or effort, not in alignment. So then it's not right effort or right concentration. I didn't understand that for a long time. But that's what the right actually referred to. So the right view becomes the foundation for then really understanding more completely what each of the remaining steps on the path are about.
1:51:05 Dan Harris? And I just want to go back to mundane and super mundane. I apologize for continuing to beat this dead horse, but I want to make sure that I get it. And by extension, everybody listening mundane is really about, I mean, day to day, if I'm hearing you correctly.
1:51:22 Speaker 03 Also conditional, conventional.
1:51:24 Dan Harris? Yes.
1:51:24 Speaker 03 So like, what are the actual ways of producing ordinary states of happiness?
1:51:30 Dan Harris? Yes.
1:51:31 Speaker 03 Whereas. What are the causes and conditions for good experiences?
1:51:34 Dan Harris? And super mundane is about transcending all of that and, and waking up.
1:51:39 Speaker 04 Yeah. But there's, there's one other, the way the Buddha described mundane right view, which, and I wish I could remember it precisely, but so this kind of a paraphrase is best I can remember. But he describes right view associated with taints, associated with basically defilements of one kind or another, because there could be mundane right view still associated with greed, with wanting. You know, in the Buddhist, in the Buddhist world, there's quite
1:52:21 Speaker 04 a lot of emphasis on making merit, which is kind of a colloquial way of describing the law of karma. You know, recognizing, yes, certain things bring good results. And that process is colloquially called making merit. And making merit in English, it has a lot of connotations that can be problematic. But one of the, one of the ways it was characterized is creating provisions for the journey.
1:52:57 Speaker 04 And I love that. It's like, yeah, we're doing those actions. We're all on this journey, this long journey towards enlightenment through samsara. Do we want to be well provisioned on the journey or not? And that was the description of merit. Yeah. But you can see that, yeah, that can come with taints, with attachment. And that's why it's mundane right view. You know, it is right view because it will bring those good results, right? But there's still, there can still be a wanting in that. The super mundane right view cuts through the wanting,
1:53:35 Speaker 04 the craving. But to me, it was reassuring to read about right view with taints and right view without taints, because there was plenty of taints to be observed, you know, in even doing skillful acts, knowing, oh, this is, yeah, this is gonna have a good result.
1:53:54 Speaker 03 An act of generosity can be polluted by some attachment or some ulterior motive, but it's nevertheless better than no act of generosity.
1:54:03 Speaker 04 Exactly, exactly. So that, I think, is good for people to know, because sometimes they think, oh, unless their motivation is totally pure, then something's not worth doing. But this allows for every level of it. You know, so the description of right view really is, provides a great foundation for every other step on the path.
1:54:28 Speaker 03 Nice. Well, we got to, it feels like we got right view and we've got seven other folds of the path. So.
1:54:36 Dan Harris? I was just doing the math in my head. So two a day.
1:54:39 Speaker 03 Two a day leaves, leaves us with one more to do because we've only done one today.
1:54:43 Speaker 04 Well, some will be faster than right view is very full. And some of the others are really full, but this one has a lot in it.
1:54:54 Dan Harris? For an 80 year old, your energy levels in this conversation seem fantastic.
1:54:59 Speaker 04 Yeah. Where's the eight year old?
1:55:02 Dan Harris? I said four and eight year old, your energy.
1:55:04 Speaker 04 Oh, 80. Yeah, I thought you said eight.
1:55:06 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, for an eight year old, yeah, for an eight year old, you're terrible.
1:55:10 Dan Harris? For an eight year old, you are terrible.
1:55:13 Speaker 03 Hypoglycemic.
1:55:15 Speaker 04 For an eight year old, I didn't quite know how to interpret that.
1:55:20 Speaker 04 It is the magic of the Dharma. It really is. Like in teaching, I can be exhausted. And then thoughts coming through and it's amazing. And then the collapse with the gin-tonic.
1:55:36 Speaker 03 You did hit upon the, what I still think is the most astounding quality of the mind, which is unexamined thoughts are everything and examined, they're basically nothing.
1:55:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, exactly.
1:55:49 Speaker 03 Like that.
1:55:50 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:55:50 Speaker 03 And there's almost no tradition in the West, the philosophy or psychology, or nothing of actual hard science, that even acknowledges that fact. Right? Like, there's just like, that fact has gone unnoticed by the West.
1:56:06 Speaker 04 I've spoken at some conferences of basically therapist types and psychologists and so. And when I talk about this, like, you know, to look at what is a thought, not what is the thought saying, which of course, what the thought is saying is their whole world.
1:56:21 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
1:56:22 Speaker 04 For some few people, it really, it's like, whoa, you know, people have come, reflected back to me, boy, that's a whole different thing.
1:56:33 Speaker 03 It's everything.
1:56:34 Speaker 04 Absolutely, it is everything.
1:56:35 Speaker 03 This is the profound asymmetry between West and East on this contemplative point. It's like, most people in the West have never even thought about an alternative to just thinking about.
1:56:49 Speaker 04 Exactly, exactly. We're in our stories. We are completely in our stories.
1:56:54 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:56:55 Speaker 04 You know, as you know, there's this wonderful phrase in the Tibetan teachings, how with this kind of awareness, thoughts self-liberate.
1:57:06 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:57:06 Speaker 04 You know, that's just what it's like, you know, the thought is there and it's self-liberated.
1:57:11 Speaker 03 That's also my favorite image from the Tibetan teachings about this is that the three stages of self-liberation, the first is like writing on water, you know, it just vanishes the moment you do it. The second is the snake untying a knot, you know, the knotted snake untying itself. But the third is the image I actually like, which is thieves entering an empty house.
1:57:32 Speaker 04 Right.
1:57:33 Speaker 03 That just shows you that, like, recognize there's just no implication to their appearance.
1:57:42 Dan Harris? Thanks again to Joseph and Sam. If you want to hear the rest of this excellent series on the Eightfold Path, as well as the guided meditations that go along with it, go to wakingup.com/tenpercent. I put a link in the show notes. And just a reminder, if you buy a subscription via that URL, you'll get 30 days free and you will be doing me and my team a solid because we will get a portion of any proceeds from the subscriptions that are generated through that link. And as I said earlier, if money's an issue, don't worry about it. You can go to the Waking Up website and ask for a scholarship. That's the same policy I have over at danharris.com. If you can't afford it, we'll hook you up.
1:58:24 Dan Harris? And again, to be a little repetitive here, I really do think about waking up as a great compliment to my Substack. If you're looking for a community vibe, the ability to chat directly with me, the ability to listen to this podcast without ads, Substack is your spot. If you're looking for more of a traditional meditation app experience, Waking Up is awesome. As I said at the top, Sam has really brought together an amazing group of teachers over there, including Joseph. And don't forget that 30-part lecture series that you can listen to through wakingup.com/tenpercent. Just before I go here, I want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Podpeople.
1:59:09 Dan Harris? Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the Van Islands wrote our theme.
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