#751: Elizabeth Gilbert and Jack Kornfield

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0:05:01 At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
0:05:21 Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs.
0:05:22 This is Tim Ferriss.
0:05:25 Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is my
0:05:29 job to sit down with world-class performers from every field imaginable
0:05:32 to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books and so on that you
0:05:35 can apply and test in your own lives.
0:05:39 This episode is a two for one and that’s because the podcast recently
0:05:44 hit its 10th year anniversary, which is insane to think about and past one
0:05:46 billion downloads to celebrate.
0:05:51 I’ve curated some of the best of the best some of my favorites from
0:05:53 more than 700 episodes over the last decade.
0:05:57 I could not be more excited to give you these super combo episodes
0:06:00 and internally we’ve been calling these the super combo episodes
0:06:04 because my goal is to encourage you to yes, enjoy the household names
0:06:08 the super famous folks, but to also introduce you to lesser known
0:06:10 people I consider stars.
0:06:14 These are people who have transformed my life and I feel like they can
0:06:16 do the same for many of you.
0:06:19 Perhaps they got lost in a busy news cycle.
0:06:20 Perhaps you missed an episode.
0:06:22 Just trust me on this one.
0:06:26 We went to great pains to put these pairings together and for
0:06:32 the bios of all guests, you can find that and more at tim.log/combo.
0:06:37 And now without further ado, please enjoy and thank you for listening.
0:06:43 First up, Elizabeth Gilbert, the number one New York Times bestselling
0:06:49 author of 10 books, including Eat Pray Love and Big Magic, creative
0:06:54 living beyond fear, which together have sold more than 25 million
0:06:58 copies worldwide and her latest book, City of Girls.
0:07:02 You can find Elizabeth on Twitter at Gilbert Liz.
0:07:07 I thought I would begin with the alpha wolf.
0:07:12 If you don’t mind for those who don’t know, this is a moth talk
0:07:18 slash presentation story slash tear jerker slash laugh out loud at
0:07:20 moments tale.
0:07:29 And I saw that Ray’s birthday, her 60th birthday was just a few
0:07:29 days ago.
0:07:35 Could you speak to who Ray was a little bit of context and then
0:07:38 how to how you prepared for that?
0:07:41 There’s quite literally nothing I would rather talk about than
0:07:42 Reyes.
0:07:45 So you started in a good place for me.
0:07:50 So Reya Elias was quite simply the love of my life.
0:07:56 She and I were friends for 17 years.
0:08:01 I was married for most of that and just very slowly and very
0:08:04 quietly over the years fell in love with her.
0:08:12 She was a lesbian Syrian Detroit raised rock and roll hairdresser,
0:08:19 filmmaker, author, musician who had always wanted to live just
0:08:20 right on the edge of life.
0:08:23 She had been a speedball heroin junkie on the Lower East Side
0:08:28 New York City in the 1980s was in Rikers Island was in Bellevue
0:08:31 was in various rehabs and rehabilitations.
0:08:34 This homeless was Oh God, she’d had such a storied life.
0:08:39 And then she finally put it all down and she spent 19 years clean
0:08:39 and sober.
0:08:42 And when I met her, she was on the other side of that recovery
0:08:46 and she was the strongest most extraordinary person I ever met.
0:08:50 And as I said in that speech that I gave in that talk that I gave
0:08:53 at the moth about her, which I shared a year after she died.
0:08:56 She was the most powerful person in every room that she ever
0:08:59 walked into and I adored her.
0:09:00 She was my guide.
0:09:01 She was my teacher.
0:09:04 She was the rock, the ground underneath my feet.
0:09:08 She was the one person in the world who always made me feel safe
0:09:10 and she didn’t just make me feel safe.
0:09:14 The feeling that everyone had when Ray walked into the room was
0:09:16 Oh, thank God Ray is here.
0:09:17 Everybody is safe.
0:09:20 You know, that’s what the alpha is, right?
0:09:23 The alpha is the person who keeps the entire pack safe.
0:09:26 And because she was the most powerful person in the room.
0:09:30 What I always knew when she walked in was not only would she make
0:09:31 sure I was okay.
0:09:36 If anybody was praying on me in any way, she would make sure
0:09:37 the predator was okay too.
0:09:41 Like she had everybody under her wing to make sure that people
0:09:42 were all right.
0:09:46 You know, she just had this way of handling humans like nothing
0:09:47 I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
0:09:52 And I absolutely adored her and I was a loyal wife and I loved
0:09:55 my husband and the three of us were really good friends.
0:09:58 And there was no way in the world that I was ever going to cross
0:09:58 that line.
0:10:02 I just kept that love very quietly in my heart and we all
0:10:05 just had a beautiful life together until the day that she
0:10:08 was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic and liver cancer.
0:10:11 And I got a phone call from her saying that she’d gotten this
0:10:14 diagnosis and that they said she had six months to live.
0:10:17 And from that point forward, it was no longer possible for me
0:10:21 to keep that love hidden and very swiftly after that, I had a
0:10:24 conversation with my husband and said, I need to go and be with
0:10:27 Rhea and no one was surprised with this.
0:10:29 He wasn’t surprised by it.
0:10:32 He’d seen it for years and he very in one of the greatest
0:10:36 acts of courage and dignity I’ve ever seen anybody do.
0:10:41 He very graciously stepped out of the way and we separated and
0:10:43 I went to be with her and I was with her until the end of her
0:10:43 life.
0:10:47 So that’s who Rhea was and that’s who she was to me.
0:10:51 As for that speech that I gave at the moth that talk, what I
0:10:56 was challenged to do in 12 minutes was to try to get over
0:10:59 the net who that person was, the most epic human being I’d
0:11:00 ever met.
0:11:04 And I decided the way to do that was to tell a few stories
0:11:07 about the experience of her death and dying, which were mostly
0:11:11 based on ideas that I had about how she was going to become
0:11:15 very helpless and I was going to have to be her hero and protect
0:11:19 her versus the reality of the situation, which is that she
0:11:21 never became helpless.
0:11:24 She remained the alpha in the entire situation.
0:11:27 She was a really hard patient to take care of for that reason.
0:11:31 She absolutely refused to cooperate with my version of some
0:11:35 airy fairy soft hippie dab that I wanted to give to her.
0:11:39 And instead she died the way she lived like the badass, the
0:11:43 year’s unrelenting warrior that she was and it was brutal and
0:11:47 it was beautiful and she never stopped taking us by surprise
0:11:48 right even up till the last second.
0:11:51 And the point is going to come where that truth is going to
0:11:55 become bigger than your plans and that extended into the way
0:11:56 that I tried to manage.
0:12:00 I’m using air quotes now, managed Rea’s death.
0:12:02 I also went into her death with a plan.
0:12:03 We’re going to have an enlightened death.
0:12:05 We’re going to have a real hospice death.
0:12:09 We’re going to bring grief bereavement experts in here to talk.
0:12:12 I mean, I laugh now because it’s like, you know, just Rea like
0:12:13 who’s such a biker chick.
0:12:16 It’s like you’re going to bring a fucking grief bereavement
0:12:20 expert in here like to talk to me, you know, like give me a
0:12:20 break.
0:12:23 I’m going to go down watching football, eating chicken wings
0:12:24 and smoking.
0:12:26 You know, like this is like of no interest in that.
0:12:30 So she just way laid that plan completely and died on her
0:12:30 own terms.
0:12:33 I’m just thinking of something that a hospice nurse said to
0:12:35 me because we were cracking up one day.
0:12:38 I can’t remember what it was about, but there’s a lot of
0:12:39 anybody who’s ever been by it.
0:12:43 You know, there’s a lot of humor that shows up and it is
0:12:44 literally gallows humor.
0:12:48 You know, it really is like, I’ve got a picture of me and Rea’s
0:12:51 ex-wife and Rea’s ex-girlfriend who were the two women who
0:12:54 showed up like champions at the end of her life to help to
0:12:57 take care of me and help to take care of her because they they
0:12:58 loved her so much.
0:13:01 It was also just such a factor of what a boss Mac Daddy Rea
0:13:04 was that she had like every woman who’d ever loved her came
0:13:07 back to take care of her when she was dying, you know, and to
0:13:08 take care of each other.
0:13:10 And there was a lot of laughter between the three of us about
0:13:14 just like handling this force of nature as she was dying.
0:13:15 Like, can we survive it?
0:13:16 Right.
0:13:18 She’s the opposite of a good patient, you know, and so there
0:13:20 was a lot of humor in there and the hospice nurse was laughing
0:13:23 with this one day and I said to her, it’s amazing that you can
0:13:25 laugh given the line of work that you’re in.
0:13:28 She spends her life working with people at the worst, most
0:13:30 painful parts of their lives at the end of their lives.
0:13:32 And she said, we have a little motto.
0:13:35 We say, if you can’t laugh at death, get out of show business.
0:13:38 You shouldn’t be a hospice nurse.
0:13:40 If you can’t let you won’t survive.
0:13:42 And I’m sure that’s what you and I are talking right now in
0:13:43 the midst of the COVID crisis.
0:13:44 And I’ve been thinking about that.
0:13:47 I’ve been thinking about the nurses that I know and I’m
0:13:51 imagining that you know, there’s some dark ass humor happening
0:13:53 in those hospitals right now.
0:13:56 There has to be in the same way that soldiers would tell you
0:13:59 about the humor that happens when you’re under fire.
0:14:03 Like, there absolutely has to be or you simply won’t be able
0:14:03 to survive it.
0:14:06 So I will say that the humor is there in those moments.
0:14:09 I mean, right after Rhea died.
0:14:13 I mean, we had been through such hell with her and her death
0:14:15 was not as I say, it was it was brutal.
0:14:18 You know, one minute after she took her last breath, her last
0:14:23 horrible breath, Gigi, her ex-wife, stood up, brushed off
0:14:25 her hands and goes, okay, so that’s done.
0:14:27 I’m going to be on the next flight out of here like at 2 o’clock.
0:14:30 You know, we just, it was hilarious, but it was also
0:14:32 just like what Rhea would have done, you know.
0:14:33 Okay, you guys good?
0:14:33 We good?
0:14:34 We done here?
0:14:39 You know, we just all like rolled over laughing in the middle
0:14:42 of our tears, you know, and I feel like that humor has to
0:14:45 be shot through the entirety of your life or else you really
0:14:47 are not going to make it through Earth School because Earth
0:14:50 School is a hard, hard school and it’s a hard assignment.
0:14:53 And I think the humor is quite literally grace.
0:14:58 Let’s pair stillness with awe for a moment.
0:15:03 I’ve also read that there are times when you’ll love a
0:15:08 sentence so much that you read that you’ll start clapping by
0:15:12 yourself where you happen to be reading.
0:15:18 And I would love to know what type of writing what writers
0:15:19 have done that for you.
0:15:23 If you could name even a few of them and what it is, what are
0:15:27 the ingredients that lead to that one woman standing ovation?
0:15:28 Often in the backups.
0:15:32 Well, they say that great art has to contain two features.
0:15:36 It has to be both surprising and inevitable.
0:15:37 So that’s the great thing.
0:15:38 That’s good.
0:15:39 That’s good.
0:15:39 Right.
0:15:39 Yeah.
0:15:42 That’s paradox is that you have to go.
0:15:44 Oh my God, I didn’t see that coming.
0:15:46 And that is the only way that could go.
0:15:51 I’m thinking of the ending of Breaking Bad, that whole show,
0:15:52 but like the last moments of Breaking Bad.
0:15:53 Spoiler alert.
0:15:56 You’ve had many years to watch it now, people.
0:15:57 I won’t tell you the ending.
0:16:00 I will just tell you that I also stood up and applauded at
0:16:03 that because it felt both surprising and inevitable.
0:16:06 So that’s the feeling you want your whole nervous system to
0:16:09 kind of be like, oh my God, I didn’t know that could be.
0:16:13 And yes, of course, you know, it had to be.
0:16:16 And now it’s rearranged my DNA in a certain way where I can’t
0:16:17 be the same now.
0:16:19 Poetry tends to do it.
0:16:24 The poets have this amazing ability to put that into such a
0:16:28 tiny space where it’s like the encapsulation of inevitability
0:16:29 and surprise.
0:16:34 So I’ll give you an example of one piece that I love, which
0:16:39 is a poem by TS Eliot called East Coker that has gotten me
0:16:41 through some of the darkest times in my life.
0:16:44 Some of those moments in your life where you don’t know what
0:16:44 to do, right?
0:16:47 Where a human being, and this is where I think human life
0:16:48 gets really interesting.
0:16:51 What happens to people when they reach the end of their power?
0:16:53 Because especially in this culture where we live in it, in
0:16:56 a culture that says you should be able to power through anything,
0:16:59 life will very generously remind you that you cannot.
0:17:03 And it will very generously break you at times and very
0:17:05 generously show you as we’re seeing right now in the COVID
0:17:05 virus.
0:17:08 We’re like, oh, actually, there’s a limit to our powers
0:17:10 here and it’s very humbling.
0:17:12 And what do you do when you’re at the end of your power?
0:17:15 So the poem East Coker is one and it gets me every little
0:17:16 time.
0:17:17 How do you spell Coker?
0:17:19 C-O-K-E-R.
0:17:22 C-K-E-R, yeah, East Coker.
0:17:26 And there’s a part of the poem where TS Eliot writes, weight
0:17:28 without hope for hope would be hope of the wrong thing.
0:17:32 Weight without love for love would be love of the wrong thing.
0:17:36 There is yet faith, but the faith and the hope and the love
0:17:37 are all in the waiting.
0:17:41 Weight without thought for you are not ready for thought.
0:17:44 And so the darkness shall be light and the stillness,
0:17:45 the dancing.
0:17:47 That’s a stand up and applause moment.
0:17:49 Yeah, that is a stand up and applause moment.
0:17:54 And sometimes when people I know are grieving or they’re stuck
0:17:57 or they’re broken or everything has been taken away,
0:18:00 I will give them that poem because that says what I don’t
0:18:04 know how to say better than that, which is right now you’re
0:18:08 being asked to weight without hope for anything that you hope
0:18:09 for would be the wrong thing.
0:18:12 And weight without love, anybody who’s been going through a
0:18:14 horrible breakup, I’ll give them that poem.
0:18:17 Like you’re being asked to weight without love right now
0:18:19 because love would be love of the wrong thing.
0:18:22 And anybody who’s a beginning meditator, I give them that
0:18:25 poem because of the line weight without thought for you are
0:18:26 not ready for thought.
0:18:31 You don’t have the wisdom right now to have the correct
0:18:31 thoughts.
0:18:36 So you need to weight without thought and then you will see
0:18:37 if you do that.
0:18:41 And there’s still faith, but the faith is in the waiting.
0:18:44 The faith is in waiting without hope, waiting without love,
0:18:45 waiting without thought.
0:18:49 That’s the definition of faith sitting in the darkness in that
0:18:49 waiting.
0:18:52 And then you will see how the darkness becomes light and the
0:18:55 stillness becomes dancing, but only every time in order to
0:18:57 have it, you’ve got to give up hope and you’ve got to give up
0:19:00 love and you’ve got to have faith only in the waiting.
0:19:02 So that’s a line that makes me applaud.
0:19:06 Another author who gets me is another poet who gets me is
0:19:10 Walt Whitman and Walt Whitman saying describing himself in
0:19:14 a song of myself, describing himself as standing both in
0:19:17 and out of the game, watching and wondering at it and also
0:19:18 being involved in it.
0:19:24 That description of he watching himself walk through life both
0:19:27 in and out of the game is again something that I think of as
0:19:29 the highest point of enlightenment.
0:19:32 Can you engage with your life?
0:19:34 Can you be involved with your life?
0:19:36 Can you feel all of the feelings?
0:19:37 Can you fall in love?
0:19:38 Can you lose?
0:19:39 Can you fail?
0:19:39 Can you grow?
0:19:40 Can you succeed?
0:19:41 Can you fuck up?
0:19:45 And also watch it from a little bit of a detached distance
0:19:47 and marvel at the game itself.
0:19:49 So that line gets me.
0:19:52 And then as far as fiction writers go, I’m so in love with
0:19:57 Hilary Mantell who wrote the Wolf Hall trilogy about Henry
0:20:00 the Eighth and won the Booker Prize for the first two
0:20:00 installments of it.
0:20:03 And then the third one just came out and the way that I’ve
0:20:07 been describing it to people is imagine if all three Godfather
0:20:09 movies were as good as the first two.
0:20:12 Imagine if Godfather Part Three was just as good as one
0:20:13 and two.
0:20:16 That’s how good Hilary Mantell is that the third installment
0:20:19 and I’m reading that right now and I’m just it’s just a bowdown
0:20:19 moment.
0:20:22 You know, as an artist, there are a lot of writers who
0:20:26 I look at their work and I admire them, but I see how they did
0:20:29 it because it’s almost like a carpenter looking at another
0:20:31 carpenter’s work and being like, oh, okay, see how you did the
0:20:34 joints there and you hid that hinge there.
0:20:34 And that’s cool.
0:20:36 I see it well done, you know.
0:20:38 And then there are people I look at their work and I’m like,
0:20:41 I literally don’t believe that you’re human.
0:20:47 I don’t understand how you can even do this.
0:20:49 And that’s how I feel about Hilary Mantell writing about
0:20:54 16th century England in a way that is so intimate and so you
0:20:57 cannot read that book without thinking, this is exactly how
0:20:59 it happened and I don’t know how she does it.
0:21:02 I’m happy to never be able to do that.
0:21:04 I’m just lucky to live on earth at the same time as somebody
0:21:05 who can.
0:21:10 I would push back a little bit and I would say that you have
0:21:17 a rare ability to blend readability with wordsmithing
0:21:22 sentences that are very memorable and really strike a chord.
0:21:23 I don’t think that is easy to do.
0:21:29 And I would say Kurt Vonnegut is one who comes to mind, but
0:21:32 it’s not easy to combine those two things.
0:21:36 And it made me crack a smile when I was reading about you
0:21:38 appreciating sentences.
0:21:42 The quote from you at the end of this portion of the interview
0:21:45 was it’s part of the reason that the arts are around to remind
0:21:47 us that we’re not just here to pay bills and die that we’re
0:21:50 also here to get excited and feel wonder and to feel awe.
0:21:54 That’s easy to read, but it is something that makes me go fuck.
0:21:56 God damn, you’re totally right.
0:21:59 It’s like I need more wonder and awe.
0:22:01 I’m paying too many bills.
0:22:07 So I do want to applaud that ability and I’d love for you to
0:22:12 speak to what else you’ve learned from Martha Beck and what
0:22:15 are some of the other things that have really stuck for you.
0:22:17 I’ll give you one more Martha Beck line that I love.
0:22:20 She says, there are certain moments of your life where you’re
0:22:23 standing in front of a bonfire and you have to jump.
0:22:27 You just have to jump into it and you have to be willing to
0:22:31 burn away everything that you’ve been taught and everything
0:22:32 that you’re afraid of and just do it.
0:22:35 And she said, and I remember her telling me this was such
0:22:35 glee.
0:22:38 She goes, it’s such a cool moment that you’re in.
0:22:41 And she said this to me as I was leaving my marriage and going
0:22:41 to be with Rayette.
0:22:45 She said that these bonfire moments are so fantastic
0:22:48 because there’s only two things that can happen when you jump
0:22:49 into a bonfire.
0:22:52 One of them is that you find out that it wasn’t actually a
0:22:55 bonfire that you were afraid that it was going to burn you
0:22:56 to pieces and it actually didn’t.
0:22:59 It wasn’t as scary as you thought you did it.
0:22:59 You took the weep.
0:23:03 It turned out to be kind of like warm and soft and easy.
0:23:04 So it was no big deal.
0:23:08 The other thing that can happen is that it is a bonfire and
0:23:13 you are incinerated and your entire life is incinerated by
0:23:16 it. And that’s even better because then you get to be
0:23:18 reborn as a Phoenix on the other side completely new.
0:23:19 So either way you win.
0:23:22 So there’s no reason not to either jump in and find out it
0:23:24 was nothing or you’ll jump in and you’ll be destroyed and
0:23:25 that’s awesome too.
0:23:28 When I say Martha doesn’t play by the game.
0:23:29 That’s what I mean.
0:23:30 Like that’s what I mean about.
0:23:34 She’s not even in the arena that we would call any sort of
0:23:35 normal way of living.
0:23:39 And that reason she’s then one of the top three most influential
0:23:40 people in my entire life.
0:23:44 You’re like Martha do we go left left right or straight.
0:23:45 She’s like we go up.
0:23:47 You’re like what’s how do we do that?
0:23:49 That’s incredible.
0:23:55 Let’s talk about the integrity check that sternum to naval
0:24:00 area will have to come up with some sort of premium like label
0:24:02 that makes it a little easier to their expense.
0:24:04 I think is it the inner compass.
0:24:05 There we go.
0:24:06 That’s where it’s located.
0:24:06 Yeah.
0:24:10 When you do say an integrity check and I had read that
0:24:12 when Ray was sick.
0:24:15 For instance, you began deleting or archiving emails without
0:24:20 responding as a bit of a treat to yourself and not having to
0:24:20 okay.
0:24:22 Deleting goodbye.
0:24:31 And when you say now check in with yourself and decide to
0:24:32 say no to something.
0:24:35 Let’s just to make it easy or make it concrete via email.
0:24:38 You get an invitation from a friend.
0:24:41 You do actually really like with something that could plausibly
0:24:44 advance your career or be fun, but you check in with yourself
0:24:46 and it’s like, no, this isn’t a yes.
0:24:50 How do you phrase your nose or declines?
0:24:54 Do you have any particular go to language that you like to use?
0:24:56 I just want to make sure everybody knows that this is not
0:24:57 easy.
0:25:00 I don’t want to have any illusions for anybody that this is
0:25:03 simple and the closer the relationship, the harder it is
0:25:06 the closer and more intimately I’m involved with somebody.
0:25:10 The more stakes there are for me and the harder it is for me
0:25:11 to tell the truth.
0:25:15 And that feels like it should be, you know, there’s a paradox.
0:25:17 The people you love the most should be the people that you
0:25:19 are able to be the most honest with.
0:25:21 Well, no, because they’re the people who you want to hurt
0:25:22 the least.
0:25:24 That’s where it’s really, really hard.
0:25:25 There’s a couple layers of it.
0:25:29 I now treat my inbox like it’s my home because I think it’s
0:25:30 an extension of my home.
0:25:34 So if somebody walks into my home uninvited and announces
0:25:37 themselves and doesn’t say how they got a key and asks for
0:25:39 something, I delete that email.
0:25:41 I’m just like, I didn’t invite you in.
0:25:43 There are proper channels, you know what they are.
0:25:46 I don’t know how you got my personal email and I just delete
0:25:46 it.
0:25:51 And if I feel a sense in my sternum of a fence of feeling
0:25:54 like this person has taken the liberty, I don’t believe that
0:25:55 I owe them anything.
0:25:58 I don’t believe that I owe them anything anymore than if I came
0:26:01 down to my kitchen and saw people sitting at my table who
0:26:03 I didn’t know eating breakfast.
0:26:06 I wouldn’t believe that I owed them to make them a cup of
0:26:10 coffee. I’d be like, get out of my house.
0:26:13 I don’t even think I owe them a polite response.
0:26:15 I owe them nothing.
0:26:16 I didn’t ask you to come into my house.
0:26:17 I don’t owe you anything.
0:26:18 So that’s the easiest.
0:26:19 Those are ones are easy.
0:26:21 And I now treat myself to doing that.
0:26:22 I mean, I do that every day.
0:26:25 I clear my inbox out very quickly now.
0:26:27 And then it’s very, I’m entertained when they come back
0:26:29 later and they’re like just circling back and I’m like,
0:26:31 yeah, just deleting you again.
0:26:32 Circle back as many times as you want.
0:26:33 You are not coming in.
0:26:34 So that’s simple.
0:26:36 If it’s just bumping this up.
0:26:37 Pixar, are you?
0:26:39 Yeah, I’m just bumping you back.
0:26:41 And I’m just, it’s like whack-a-moles.
0:26:42 It’s like, I can do this all day.
0:26:43 Delete, delete, delete.
0:26:47 If it’s somebody who I care about.
0:26:50 If it’s something that I’m interested in, but I’m just
0:26:53 not going to do it because I don’t want to.
0:26:56 I will write back and say, thank you so much.
0:26:59 And I’m really honored that you invited me to this, but
0:27:01 I’m not going to be able to do this at this time.
0:27:03 And I don’t feel any to give a reason.
0:27:07 I think a simple no is really, really good.
0:27:10 And the reason sometimes the reason it’s good not to give
0:27:14 an explanation is that if that person is an expert manipulator
0:27:18 as many of us are, that explanation will not suffice.
0:27:22 So it won’t matter what you give as an explanation because
0:27:24 they can come back and be like, well, we can do it by audio.
0:27:27 You know, we can do, oh, if you’re, oh, well, we can do it
0:27:28 a different weekend.
0:27:30 Just no.
0:27:32 And I learned a lot about this from my teacher, Byron
0:27:35 Katie, who, who teaches an amazing thing called the school
0:27:35 for the work.
0:27:39 She’s a whole another, another being who’s not, not at all
0:27:40 living by the rules.
0:27:42 Extra terrestrial for sure.
0:27:43 Extra terrestrial.
0:27:47 She is not, she is the only fully enlightened human being
0:27:48 I can, I believe I have ever met.
0:27:52 And as such, she does not have any trouble saying an honest
0:27:53 yes and no to people.
0:27:56 Just to underscore that, cause I did a, an in-person training
0:27:57 with her.
0:28:07 I mean, literally no hesitation, no struggle, no conflict.
0:28:11 It’s bizarre and mesmerizing to watch.
0:28:12 And she loves you.
0:28:13 And she loves her.
0:28:14 There’s also no hostility.
0:28:18 So no offense, no hostility to her.
0:28:20 Somebody came up to her to an event, handed her a book that
0:28:23 they’d written, which people do to me all the time too.
0:28:24 So I really marveled at this.
0:28:26 They said, I wrote this and I want to share it with you.
0:28:28 And she said, oh sweetheart, I’m never going to read that.
0:28:31 She said, true, it’s just true.
0:28:31 I’m never going to read that.
0:28:34 And I’m like, oh my God, I didn’t know you could say that.
0:28:36 So that’s amazing.
0:28:39 And she said it so lovingly, like, oh, oh no, I’m no
0:28:39 interested in reading that.
0:28:42 So she teaches, I don’t know if you did, when you took her
0:28:45 training, did you do where she teaches a simple no?
0:28:49 And she does training on how to give a simple no.
0:28:52 I don’t think we actually spent much time on that.
0:28:54 So I would love to hear you say more.
0:28:58 We worked on the emotional one-pages and the turnarounds.
0:29:01 We did a lot on the turnarounds, which is probably it.
0:29:03 We could do a whole episode just on that.
0:29:06 Everybody look up Byron Katie for this amazing, but and if
0:29:08 you have the means and if you have the chance to ever take
0:29:11 her nine day school for the work, it’s the most important
0:29:12 thing I’ve ever done for myself.
0:29:15 So I would say that quite simply, but she has a whole day
0:29:18 in the nine day school for work, which is about the simple
0:29:21 no and the simple no is ways to say no.
0:29:26 And it always begins with thank you and there’s never a but
0:29:30 because she feels that the word but is very cruel and it’s
0:29:33 just an and so it’s thank you and no.
0:29:34 And that’s it.
0:29:35 That’s a simple no.
0:29:37 And then if they come back, you can say, well, hold on.
0:29:38 Just to pause for a second.
0:29:41 Is that literally the phrasing or is it just?
0:29:41 Yeah.
0:29:42 Okay.
0:29:43 No, yeah, that’s it.
0:29:44 That’s it.
0:29:46 And it just it still makes my stomach it because I’m like,
0:29:47 Oh my God, you can’t just do that.
0:29:49 You’ve got to give you’ve got to like do the dance and she’s
0:29:51 like, you don’t have to do the dance.
0:29:53 And she’s the one who taught me if the person is a good
0:29:55 enough manipulator, it doesn’t matter what you bring.
0:29:57 They’re going to manipulate it.
0:30:00 And the beautiful thing about a simple no is that it gives in
0:30:03 the jujitsu game, it gives somebody no weapon that they can
0:30:04 take and bring back to you.
0:30:08 They can say you’re being incredibly selfish and you can
0:30:11 say, I hear that and you might be right about that.
0:30:12 That’s another one.
0:30:14 She always says you might be right about that.
0:30:16 You might be right about that and no.
0:30:21 And you just keep adding and no after the statement.
0:30:24 So then there’s, but you know, I really, I need you to do
0:30:24 this.
0:30:26 I’m desperate and you say, I see that.
0:30:28 I see your desperation and no.
0:30:32 And one other thing she’ll add is you can say, if I change
0:30:34 my mind about this, I’ll let you know and no.
0:30:37 And that’s been a game changer for me.
0:30:42 So I just did one last week, somebody who I have a professional
0:30:45 relationship said, I want you to do this one hour video interview
0:30:48 to promote this thing that I’m doing.
0:30:52 And old Liz would have thought I owe her that because she
0:30:54 did this other thing for me that time.
0:30:59 And I checked in with my inter compass and I was like,
0:31:01 nothing in me wants to do this.
0:31:02 And so I just wrote back to her.
0:31:03 I said, I’m so sorry.
0:31:05 And I’m not going to be able to do this at this time.
0:31:09 And she wrote back and pushed in and said, oh, let me clarify.
0:31:11 I wasn’t clear about why we need it.
0:31:14 We really need it because right now it’s really hard for us
0:31:16 to sell things because of COVID-19.
0:31:17 And that’s why we need it.
0:31:20 And I wrote back and said, I hear you and I understand you and
0:31:22 no, and it goes away.
0:31:25 They don’t tend to come back a third time.
0:31:30 You know, it really does just stop and let it sit at the no.
0:31:35 The more words you add after that, the more entangled you get.
0:31:36 But again, I want to make clear.
0:31:40 It’s hardest closest to home and it’s hardest with family.
0:31:43 And with family, I find if I anticipate that I’m going to be
0:31:45 asked something, I really have to practice.
0:31:49 I really, because it’s scary and I have to really practice and be
0:31:53 like, and just practice saying, I’m not doing that right now.
0:31:54 I’m not coming this year.
0:31:57 And I’ll say a thousand times, just go for a long walk and
0:31:59 I’ll just practice it and practice it and practice it.
0:32:01 Because as I say, the closer the people are to you, the more
0:32:02 difficult it is.
0:32:05 It has a bit of personal digression here.
0:32:09 I was working on a book, an entire book about saying no this
0:32:12 past summer and the great irony of course is that I came up
0:32:14 with all the reasons why I shouldn’t write the book in the
0:32:16 process of putting it together.
0:32:21 But what I noticed as I was practicing different ways of
0:32:28 saying no is that it’s an incredibly clarifying exercise
0:32:34 because it in a sense, it kind of brings to surface the true
0:32:37 character of many people, you know, or people who are attempting
0:32:38 to reach you.
0:32:41 And what I found surprising and maybe I shouldn’t have found
0:32:46 surprising is that many of my close friends who I anticipated
0:32:51 might be upset would respond with, dude, good for you for
0:32:52 respecting your boundaries.
0:32:53 That’s a great line.
0:32:53 Right.
0:32:55 Rock on.
0:32:59 And they got it and they were just like, oh, I wish, you know,
0:33:01 I could say that more myself like good for you.
0:33:05 And it was the bonfire that wasn’t a bonfire in those cases.
0:33:09 Did you ever run into a bonfire that was one?
0:33:10 Oh, for sure.
0:33:11 Absolutely.
0:33:15 And then I’m like, oh, wow, because if you, what I like about
0:33:21 what you said about the or the sort of jiu-jitsu analogy is
0:33:25 that if you provide really specific reasons for why you
0:33:29 can’t do it and you elaborate, you’ve just created a potential
0:33:30 negotiation.
0:33:30 Right.
0:33:37 But if you don’t provide that grip, that toll hold, then one
0:33:40 of the few responses someone can give you if they’re upset
0:33:44 and still want to push is some type of personal ad hominem
0:33:46 attack or an accusation.
0:33:48 And then you’re like, oh, wow.
0:33:48 Okay.
0:33:50 Now it’s that kind of party.
0:33:51 Okay.
0:33:55 This is good to know before we’re on stage having a public tiff
0:33:55 at God knows what.
0:33:57 I mean, this is valuable information.
0:34:01 So there were definitely some bonfires and basically people
0:34:05 just self-immolated because I was like, oh, wow, you’ve just
0:34:08 proved my internal compass to be extremely accurate.
0:34:09 And right.
0:34:10 This is the reason.
0:34:14 And here is the reason I’m not working with you, but you don’t
0:34:15 even just say that.
0:34:20 You just know it because the body knows first, the body knows
0:34:23 first, but only always, only always.
0:34:25 One of the things that Martha says that I love is she’s like
0:34:29 because culture and civilization have overwritten the software
0:34:32 system of the body so much and told you that you don’t trust
0:34:37 that what you trust are the rules and the mores and the fear
0:34:40 based scarcity based grasping.
0:34:41 This is how you have to act.
0:34:43 This is what you have to be in order to be safe.
0:34:50 And meanwhile, our body’s like, ew, you know, gross or on
0:34:51 the opposite side, like yummy.
0:34:54 Like that’s that I want to be over there.
0:34:55 I want to be with those people.
0:34:57 You know, I don’t want to be with these people.
0:35:00 And if you think about it, the wisdom of the body is so
0:35:01 incredible.
0:35:05 How many people do you know who said I knew the night before
0:35:07 my wedding that this was a mistake?
0:35:08 How many people do you know say that?
0:35:10 And yet why did you do it?
0:35:13 Because you were 29 and it was time to get married because
0:35:15 you’d been raised in a culture that said this is what you do
0:35:18 now because the invitations had been sent out because 300
0:35:22 people had gathered because your family spent $30,000 on
0:35:26 the wedding, like whatever the reasons were, you knew somewhere
0:35:29 in that sternum area, you knew and how much you had to drink
0:35:33 that day in order to override that.
0:35:36 Whatever you had to do in order to shut down that compass
0:35:38 that was saying, uh-uh, it’s brutal.
0:35:41 That’s the work of the second half of my life.
0:35:43 I can say that now, but I’m 50.
0:35:48 That the only thing I’m interested anymore is that.
0:35:54 Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we’ll be right
0:35:54 back to the show.
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0:37:01 And now Jack Cornfield, one of the key teachers to introduce
0:37:05 mindfulness practice to the West, author of 16 books,
0:37:09 including Bringing Home the Dharma and Seeking the Heart
0:37:13 of Wisdom and a founding teacher of the Insight Meditation
0:37:17 Society in Massachusetts and Spirit Rock Meditation Center
0:37:18 in California.
0:37:23 You can find Jack on Instagram @jack_cornfield.
0:37:26 Jack, welcome to the show.
0:37:28 Oh, thank you, Tim.
0:37:29 Pleasure to reconnect.
0:37:33 I have wanted to have you on the show for some time now.
0:37:38 And you’ve had certainly a tremendous impact on my life,
0:37:42 both through your writing and through first-hand in-person
0:37:44 interaction, which I think we’ll touch upon.
0:37:49 But first, I wanted to ask you a complete non sequitur from
0:37:53 that, which is something that our mutual friend, Adam Gazali,
0:37:54 suggested I ask you about.
0:37:59 And Adam, for people who don’t know him, is an incredible PhD
0:38:03 MD neuroscientist based at UCSF.
0:38:08 And he suggested that I ask you about hang gliding.
0:38:11 And I have no idea why he suggested that.
0:38:13 But I’m going to start there.
0:38:16 And if it doesn’t go anywhere, we can change direction.
0:38:17 But I figured we would just start with that.
0:38:19 And then we’re going to rewind the clock.
0:38:22 But why did he suggest I ask you about hang gliding?
0:38:27 Well, it started many years ago when I crossed country with
0:38:31 a friend who had a hang glider and we would stop periodically
0:38:33 and go off different hills.
0:38:34 And it was fantastic.
0:38:38 And then I wanted to do paragliding and started to learn
0:38:41 it now because everything is developed.
0:38:43 And paragliding is a lot more official.
0:38:44 You need a license, which I don’t have.
0:38:50 But one of my favorite things is to tandem paraglide and go
0:38:55 off the top of places like Grindelwald in Switzerland where
0:38:59 you can take the ski lift up to 9,000 feet and then jump off
0:39:05 and float silently like you’re a bird among the clouds.
0:39:08 The birds actually do come by sometimes and like check out
0:39:09 what’s this big bird flying up here.
0:39:13 You can catch thermals and go way up above the glaciers.
0:39:17 It’s one of the most thrilling and delicious experiences that
0:39:18 I know.
0:39:20 That’s incredible.
0:39:23 So you first experienced that at what age?
0:39:27 Probably in my, you know, late 20s and did some and then
0:39:31 sort of put it aside and then I was traveling and teaching
0:39:34 in Europe and I saw a sign for paragliding and I said, oh,
0:39:38 gosh, I really want to do it and started and now each time
0:39:41 I go where there’s high mountains and paragliding.
0:39:44 That’s one of my things that I love doing.
0:39:46 Most people have these dreams once in a while.
0:39:49 If you’re lucky a dream of flying or maybe in your
0:39:52 meditation, you have this sense of not being limited to your
0:39:56 body and this is the closest thing that I know because it’s
0:39:59 absolutely silent and you’re floating there.
0:40:00 It’s quite fantastic.
0:40:02 And this is something you still do.
0:40:06 I hope to do it next summer when I’m back in the Alps.
0:40:08 And how old are you now?
0:40:09 72.
0:40:10 72, good man.
0:40:16 Well, we’re going to then go back a bit in chronology and ask
0:40:18 about childhood.
0:40:22 I would love to hear you describe your childhood.
0:40:24 What were you like as a child?
0:40:25 What was your upbringing like?
0:40:30 Well, first thing to say is I remember when I got to Dartmouth
0:40:36 College in 1963 and I called my mom from the pay phone in the
0:40:38 dorm sometime in that fall.
0:40:41 I didn’t call very often, but you know how it is.
0:40:44 And I said, mom, I said, guess what?
0:40:48 There are a lot of other really fucked up families beside
0:40:49 ours.
0:40:53 So that’s kind of where we start.
0:41:02 So I had three brothers and my father was a mixture of a tyrant
0:41:05 and a really abusive person and a brilliant guy.
0:41:08 I was born on the Marine base toward the end of World War
0:41:13 II and they didn’t send him overseas to do they put him in
0:41:17 the medical part of the Marines because he tested so high on
0:41:20 their tests that they, you know, okay, we’re going to use him
0:41:21 for something.
0:41:22 So he was brilliant in certain ways.
0:41:26 He was a biophysicist who helped design some of the first
0:41:29 artificial hearts and lungs worked on the space program,
0:41:35 but also did other kinds of weird stuff like work for the army
0:41:39 biological weapons people not making biological weapons,
0:41:43 but trying to design things that were kind of computer
0:41:46 biological interfaces, all kinds of creative stuff.
0:41:51 But he was, he had mental problems and so we didn’t know
0:41:53 when the car pulled in whether we were going to get Dr.
0:41:54 Jekyll or Mr.
0:41:59 Hyde, he would come in and you know, either he could shout
0:42:03 be abusive, throw my mother down the stairs, rant, chase
0:42:06 after us, try to hit us, whatever, or we’d get this
0:42:09 interesting creative person, but we hardly ever had people
0:42:12 come over when he was around during the daytime is the way
0:42:15 we would because he never knew what you would get.
0:42:19 And so our family life in my family life in some way was
0:42:23 also there were great parts of it because I had my brothers
0:42:24 and we were like our own gang.
0:42:28 We moved all the time, but we had each other and because he
0:42:30 was wacky as well as smart.
0:42:34 My father either quit or got fired every year or two and then
0:42:36 we would go from one place to another.
0:42:40 I went to, I don’t know, eight schools by the time I finished
0:42:40 high school.
0:42:44 So my childhood, partly it was the happy things of rough
0:42:48 housing and being a boy with three other boys and adventures.
0:42:52 And then in the basement, my father had all kinds of scientific
0:42:53 equipment.
0:42:57 He had all this stuff from World War II, this huge radio
0:43:01 from a battleship that you could tune into a thousand
0:43:05 different shortwave stations around the world and projects.
0:43:06 He was trying to design stuff.
0:43:08 And so we learned from him, you could pretty much take or
0:43:11 design or do anything in the physical world.
0:43:18 And at the same time, I felt like my whole childhood was also
0:43:25 colored with the fear of his violence and his unpredictability.
0:43:28 And I became kind of a peacemaker in the family.
0:43:32 We all sort of had our roles and now I do it as a profession,
0:43:34 right, trying to kind of make it a little smoother between
0:43:35 my parents.
0:43:37 So they’d kill each other.
0:43:39 And each of my brothers had their own strategy.
0:43:43 My twin brother, who was a lot bigger and much more outgoing,
0:43:45 played football, which I certainly didn’t.
0:43:49 I was skinnier and, you know, I was in the orchestra and he
0:43:50 was the football player.
0:43:55 I remember when he first got in a fist fight with my dad because
0:43:58 my father was abusing our mom.
0:44:01 My twin brother had been as young men sometimes too.
0:44:06 It was probably 13, 14 and he was pretty big and he was looking
0:44:09 in the mirror, making muscles in the mirror to see how strong
0:44:10 he’d become.
0:44:14 Anyway, he just got into a fist fight with my father and I
0:44:19 was both thrilled and terrified, but it worked in some way
0:44:22 because of the abuse settled down quite a lot after that.
0:44:26 So that was his strategy was just to get angry and then later
0:44:29 kind of to go his own way somewhat more although we’re
0:44:32 all of all have been very close as brothers.
0:44:34 So there was that at the same time.
0:44:37 There was a lot of interest, intellectual interest.
0:44:40 So we read and learned about all kinds of things.
0:44:44 Both my parents were really interested in the world around
0:44:44 us.
0:44:49 So it was sort of this next thing of the gift of being together
0:44:52 with my brothers and a mom who was basically pretty nurturing
0:44:57 although she kept trying to believe him and never got it
0:44:57 together.
0:45:01 I think it was too scary in the 50s to have four boys, you
0:45:02 know, no job.
0:45:05 And so we were in the middle of this and the kind of healing
0:45:09 that it took, it took a long time to do the inner healing
0:45:12 work from the pain of my family.
0:45:17 And I remember when I became a Buddhist monk and I was sitting
0:45:22 these first years with my teacher Ajahn Chah in the
0:45:26 forest monasteries of Thailand on the border of Thailand
0:45:30 in Laos and I’ve been sitting quietly and then some of these
0:45:34 memories or energy would come where I remember one monk who
0:45:38 had a pot near mine and the forest did something that annoyed
0:45:41 me and I just got enraged inside.
0:45:45 And I said when I went to the teacher and I said, I’m really
0:45:49 getting angry here and he smiled.
0:45:51 He said, yeah, where do you think that comes from or
0:45:52 something like that?
0:45:54 And I said, well, I don’t know.
0:45:56 I said, I thought I was a peaceful guy.
0:45:58 I was never going to be like my father.
0:46:00 I won’t, you know, I’ll be peaceful.
0:46:03 But it turned out I just stuffed all that stuff.
0:46:06 And so when I told it, my teacher about it, he said, good.
0:46:07 She’d go back in your hut.
0:46:08 It’s the hot season.
0:46:11 You get a little tin roof and close the doors and windows
0:46:13 and put all your robes on.
0:46:14 And if you’re going to be angry, do it right.
0:46:17 Sit in the middle of that, you know, and sit in the middle
0:46:20 of the fire and don’t be so afraid of it because you’re
0:46:21 afraid of it.
0:46:22 You’re just going to keep stuffing it.
0:46:25 And on the other hand, or if you’re afraid of it, it’ll
0:46:26 just explode.
0:46:27 There’s another way to be with it.
0:46:31 And so that was the beginning of some healing just to realize
0:46:36 that I could actually tolerate the suffering and the energy
0:46:39 that was in my still carried from trauma in my body and heart.
0:46:43 So we’re going to absolutely come back to Ajahn Shabbi
0:46:48 because I have many questions on that chapter in your life.
0:46:50 But just so that I can create the proper visual in my
0:46:54 own head. So you sat there in your hut in the sweltering heat
0:46:55 with all of your robes on.
0:46:58 Were you were you angry in silence?
0:46:59 Were you yelling?
0:47:02 Well, what I was I was pretty much angry in silence.
0:47:03 And that’s an interesting question.
0:47:07 You know, in the monastery, the culture was not much that
0:47:07 you would yell.
0:47:10 You could go somewhere out in the forest and yell.
0:47:12 It wasn’t decorous or something.
0:47:14 People with the hell’s wrong with that monk.
0:47:18 So mostly I was sitting in silence and then scenes would
0:47:23 come and I would realize, wow, I thought I was peaceful in
0:47:24 every cell of my body.
0:47:28 I also carry both the pain and anger of my childhood and my
0:47:31 father and just the anger that comes with being a human being
0:47:33 and human incarnation.
0:47:35 And I was never going to have that.
0:47:37 But of course there was and it lasted.
0:47:42 You know, this was I had days of and actually much longer
0:47:46 weeks or months of waves of this coming and learning how
0:47:49 to be present for it and not get overwhelmed by it.
0:47:52 So I want to backtrack and then connect those dots.
0:47:58 So between childhood and ending up in Thailand, you mentioned
0:48:02 Dartmouth earlier and from what I’ve read at least you were
0:48:05 initially pre-med and then ended up Asian studies.
0:48:10 Could you describe that experience in Dartmouth or how
0:48:13 you went from pre-med to Asian studies?
0:48:18 Well, you know, we all get turned in these mysterious ways
0:48:19 in our life.
0:48:23 We think we’re going in one direction and then something
0:48:27 happens unexpectedly and a gateway opens.
0:48:33 So I was coming from an organic chemistry class to the class
0:48:38 that I’d signed up for out of interest on Asian studies or
0:48:40 Asian philosophy or something.
0:48:44 And it was an old professor and Dr. Wingsit Chan who’d come
0:48:45 up from Harvard.
0:48:51 He was kind of emeritus there and even set cross-legged
0:48:54 sometimes, you know, on the front of the room and would talk
0:48:58 about Lao Tzu and Taoism and they talk about Buddhist
0:49:04 teachings and how the Buddha taught suffering and its causes
0:49:05 and its end.
0:49:09 And that really all of a sudden I sat up and there’s an end
0:49:12 to suffering and he said, “Oh, there’s all these teachings
0:49:15 and practices where you can transform your heart and mind.”
0:49:19 And I became thrilled about it and realized that whatever
0:49:23 impulse I had to go to medical school, probably part of it
0:49:25 came from wanting to heal myself.
0:49:28 And so I started to take more and more courses and then it
0:49:33 was the 60s and I became a card-carrying hippie, a card-carrying
0:49:37 LSD taking hippie as a matter of fact.
0:49:41 And at the end of when I was getting ready to graduate,
0:49:43 there was still the draft and I thought, “Well, I definitely
0:49:47 don’t want to go over and kill people in a war that I’ve been
0:49:48 protesting against.”
0:49:52 So I decided to go into the Peace Corps instead and ask them
0:49:55 to send me to a Buddhist country where maybe I could find
0:49:59 one of those old Zen masters that you read about and got
0:50:00 assigned to Thailand.
0:50:05 And when I got there, you could kind of request where you went
0:50:08 and I said, “Send me to the most remote place you can.”
0:50:11 I wanted adventure, but I also wanted to kind of reading
0:50:12 all those old Zen stories.
0:50:15 I wanted to see if that still existed.
0:50:18 You know, and there were little detours like being in
0:50:20 Hadeshpuri in the Summer of Love and things like that,
0:50:25 that definitely it changed my life also in a very deep way
0:50:29 because for at least for a time there was a window when people
0:50:30 were just giving things away.
0:50:34 There was such a sense that the world could be transformed.
0:50:37 Some of it, as we know, very, very naive.
0:50:42 But in the other hand, it also felt like a greater sense of
0:50:46 brotherhood and sisterhood than I had ever known except with
0:50:48 my own brothers who I love a lot and we’ve done a lot of
0:50:51 things together and I started to feel like there are other ways
0:50:55 for me and for the world to be and live and that was also
0:50:57 very wonderful.
0:50:59 You mentioned a three-letter acronym that we’re probably
0:51:02 not going to spend too, too much time on, but you and I
0:51:04 have had quite a number of conversations where I’ve wanted
0:51:08 to ask you about some of your experiences with psychedelics,
0:51:10 including LSD, but we’ve never really gotten into it.
0:51:12 So I figure why not do it in front of a few million people?
0:51:16 The LSD at that point, your experiences with that, did that
0:51:20 inform your decisions at all to then go into the Peace Corps
0:51:24 and end up in a remote area?
0:51:28 It did and I’ve written a little bit about it in a couple
0:51:31 different of my books, chapters and books I’ve written because
0:51:36 most Buddhist teachers and Hindu teachers of my generation
0:51:40 also started psychedelics, you know, myself and almost all
0:51:44 my colleagues, you know, in the spiritual industry that I’m
0:51:49 in, that was a beginning and for me, it showed an incredible
0:51:52 possibility that all is created out of consciousness and the
0:51:56 possibilities of inner freedom and basically I was able, at
0:52:01 the best of it, to see my body and my personality and my
0:52:06 history and realize that that’s not who I am, to become much
0:52:11 more of the conscious witness of it all, to see yes, birth
0:52:14 and death and to go through those kind of death rebirth
0:52:17 experiences that can happen at times in a deep session with
0:52:22 LSD or death of ego or sense of self or removing and realizing
0:52:26 wow, there’s a freedom and a life force that’s what we’re
0:52:30 made of and that profoundly influenced my interest in
0:52:34 spirituality and also interested in what the world can be.
0:52:40 Now, just a few days ago, I was on Maui with my beloved wife
0:52:44 Trudy and we were visiting, spending time with Ramdas who
0:52:47 for listeners that don’t know was the author of this best
0:52:50 seller in the sixties called Be Here Now and now he’s in the
0:52:55 eighty six in a wheelchair but Ramdas who had been at Harvard
0:52:58 University and one of the early explorers of LSD before
0:53:03 he went to India and became a spiritual teacher in the living
0:53:07 room while we were there two days ago, Roland Fisher who is
0:53:11 one of the senior professors in psychopharmacologists at
0:53:14 Johns Hopkins University Medical School.
0:53:16 Oh, Roland Griffiths.
0:53:19 Roland Griffiths rather and Roland excuse me Roland Griffiths
0:53:24 and Roland laid out all the research that’s happening now
0:53:29 on the psilocybin that he’s been doing and its success for
0:53:34 people, turtle cancer patients, all of, losing a great deal
0:53:38 of their, the fears that they had working with people with
0:53:43 severe depression and it was a beautiful session because you
0:53:46 could hear how these sacred substances and these mind
0:53:50 altering substances when they’re used in the right context
0:53:55 and really transform human beings and NYU, Johns Hopkins,
0:53:58 there’s a whole series of studies that are happening now
0:54:02 that are finally bringing it back into the mainstream.
0:54:05 So I’d love to underscore just a few things that you mentioned.
0:54:10 Number one, Ramdas for those people who want to do additional
0:54:13 reading, formerly known as Richard Alpert if I’m getting
0:54:18 that right, also has a fascinating story coming full
0:54:23 circle with psychedelic research beginning I guess at Harvard
0:54:24 in some respects.
0:54:27 So it makes sense to me why Roland’s research would be so
0:54:31 meaningful to him and a number of other just quick comments
0:54:32 for people.
0:54:35 Number one is if you’re interested in looking into these
0:54:40 psilocybin which is considered the active psychoactive ingredient
0:54:43 in magic mushrooms at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere.
0:54:47 I’ve actually been involved with crowdfunding and funding
0:54:51 myself some of the research related to treatment resistant
0:54:54 depression at Johns Hopkins with Roland Griffith says the
0:54:57 senior investigator and I’ll be posting some updates to that
0:55:00 but fascinating work looking at everything from and this is
0:55:04 also as you mentioned NYU and at other very well regarded
0:55:10 universities, alcohol addiction, nicotine slash tobacco addiction
0:55:14 as you mentioned end of life anxiety in cancer patients.
0:55:17 The implications are really profound and the data very
0:55:18 very promising.
0:55:22 And I wanted to also mention to folks who are perhaps saying
0:55:25 to themselves while I’m not interested in taking psychedelics
0:55:29 myself that there are people I know good friends of mine who
0:55:34 do not currently use psychedelics but had the ego
0:55:39 dissolving experience of a non-ordinary reality through
0:55:42 psychedelics that then led them to become or contributed to
0:55:46 them becoming very very diligent meditators and Sam Harris
0:55:50 who’s a PhD in neuroscience and thought of are very well known
0:55:54 as an atheist or you know one of the four horsemen of the
0:55:59 atheist apocalypse along with Richard Dawkins and others is
0:56:02 a very close friend and extremely diligent meditator
0:56:05 and he’s he’s written about how his psychedelic experiences
0:56:09 which were in some respects very some of them uncontrolled
0:56:12 and you really have a coin flip there is in terms of which
0:56:16 direction you can go but showed him possibilities within his
0:56:19 own mind that then led to a very very I’m not going to call
0:56:22 it devout although I should just to bother me.
0:56:27 Illigent practice so I don’t want to take us too far off
0:56:31 the rails but you go to Southeast Asia.
0:56:35 Well I want to say one more sure we move on because we are
0:56:36 talking about this.
0:56:40 It turns out for those who are listening that set and setting
0:56:44 an intention are extremely important if one uses these
0:56:48 psychedelics like psilocybin or something to set the intention
0:56:51 to learn to open to have a quiet it’s not as a party
0:56:56 experience absolutely brings your attention inward and then
0:57:00 all the kind of discoveries become right in front of you
0:57:04 but the other thing is that whether it’s right for somebody
0:57:08 to use psychedelics or to use meditation these are all
0:57:14 invitations to step back and see the mystery of your wife
0:57:18 because we tend to live in the daily minutiae and checking
0:57:22 off our list of tasks that we have to do in completing them
0:57:25 our worker or you know or eating or all the kind of things
0:57:30 that make up a day and we go on to automatic and whether
0:57:34 it’s meditation and difference or other spiritual disciplines
0:57:38 or for some people it also can just be that they have what
0:57:42 in Greek is called a cut the boss a blow you know somebody
0:57:47 close to them gets cancer or or is dying or they have some
0:57:49 accident or something and all of a sudden you step back and
0:57:53 you realize whoa life is uncertain the way I’ve been
0:57:57 taking it it’s not just checking off the list it is a mystery
0:58:00 human incarnation and what am I going to do with it and wow
0:58:04 look at this how did I get in this body look at plants and
0:58:09 trees and language the air coming out of your mouth that you
0:58:12 shape it different ways and it vibrates a little drum in the
0:58:14 ear of someone else and I can say Golden Gate Bridge and they
0:58:17 can envision it and you start to realize that all of it is
0:58:22 alive and made of consciousness and then the whole sense of
0:58:26 who you are and what matters begins to shift and you start
0:58:30 to realize that life is not just getting through the hoops
0:58:35 but it actually also can be a celebration of the heart of
0:58:39 something that you have to bring to the world that you come
0:58:43 out of life and my friend Maladoma so may who’s a West
0:58:48 African shaman and medicine man also true PhD is a kind of
0:58:52 remarkable guy he says with the dog or a people in West Africa
0:58:56 that he’s from that they say that every child comes into the
0:59:01 world with a certain cargo is their metaphor like the cargo
0:59:05 ships that ply the rivers of West Africa and that they’re
0:59:11 given gifts to bring into the world and that we have gifts
0:59:15 to bring to this mystery which include opening to it and as
0:59:20 we do love grows connection grows and a whole different way
0:59:24 of being in the world happens that we need so much at this
0:59:28 time so that’s a little interlude there before we move on to
0:59:32 your next question I welcome as many interludes as you would
0:59:36 like to interject and I wanted to just ask you to say one more
0:59:40 time that it was I believe Greek word for Gothenbos which
0:59:44 means a blow it’s like something comes and it just sets your
0:59:46 life spinning in an entirely different direction right like
0:59:50 a catalyzing event and that’s exactly I’ve had a few of those
0:59:53 recently that I’d like to selfishly ask you about later but
0:59:58 so I can bookmark just so I can bookmark this name Stanislaus
1:00:02 gruff if I’m saying that yes that’s correct when just when did
1:00:07 you meet him roughly what age or what date just so I can come
1:00:09 back to it because this is another thing I’ve been meaning
1:00:11 to ask you about for a long time and get into but I haven’t had
1:00:16 the chance there’s two things to say when I came back from the
1:00:21 monastery and now it’s you know I guess the year that I can
1:00:25 echo the Stanislaus maybe 1973 I made two really important
1:00:29 connections I came back and start a psychology and graduate
1:00:32 school was in Boston and first really important connection
1:00:36 happened when I went to a meeting of the Massachusetts
1:00:41 psychological association and there was this guy who looked
1:00:45 like he didn’t look just like the straight psychologist and
1:00:47 in turn that he’d just come back from India not long before
1:00:51 named Dan Goldman who is a graduate student at Harvard and
1:00:55 he’d projected on the screen this Tibetan wheel of birth and
1:00:59 death that you see in the Tibetan Tonkas that normally would
1:01:04 be taken as some kind of primitive iconic symbol and he
1:01:07 said no this is a psychological diagram the Buddha was actually
1:01:12 more than anything else he was a scientist of the mind and a
1:01:17 profound psychologist and here is how craving turns into
1:01:20 contentment and here’s how aggression can be transformed
1:01:25 into powerful energy to heal yourself and others and he was
1:01:28 going through this diagram and I went and I talked to him and
1:01:31 he said oh you you come back from monastery you got to come
1:01:35 over and so he took me to David McClellan who had been the
1:01:40 chairman of the social science and psychology department at
1:01:44 Harvard at that time the one who hired Tim Leary and Ramdas
1:01:49 and then later had to fire them for their LSD work and his
1:01:54 house he and his wife Mary were Quakers his home was a kind
1:02:00 of Suare where Ramdas and Tibetan Lamas like Chobium Trumba
1:02:03 and I think Krishna Murdy and various spiritual figures would
1:02:07 come people were going to India and coming back and I connected
1:02:12 with this whole group of folks who now been friends for 45
1:02:15 years. Richie Davidson was another that I met there who’s now
1:02:19 one of the preeminent neuroscientists in the world on
1:02:23 studying contemplative neuroscience and affective emotional
1:02:26 neuroscience. It was a whole collective of people Dan Goldman
1:02:31 who wrote emotional intelligence that sold 10 million copies
1:02:36 and many others and then I got a job working for an excellent
1:02:39 like growth center in Boston at that time because I was excited
1:02:42 and all the new gestalt bioenergetics what are the
1:02:45 things that are transformative here and they asked me to help
1:02:48 set up programs and I thought well who do I want to meet.
1:02:52 So I set up a program with John Lilly and I set up a program
1:02:57 with Stan Groff who was still at Johns Hopkins and married at
1:03:01 that time just married to Joan Halifax, Joan Groff and we
1:03:05 became friends and so we have Stan and I have now worked
1:03:10 together for 45 years. I went out to join him that excellent
1:03:14 for many many years spending many months together helping
1:03:16 during his development of the whole tropic breath work that
1:03:21 said this powerful breath transformation and he has been
1:03:25 a partner in a in a heart friend for exploration and we’ve
1:03:30 traveled or we’ve taught in Russia and in places in Europe
1:03:35 and various places around the world so this is definitely a
1:03:41 path that we’re going to come down and dig further into but
1:03:46 I’m going to steer us to a job because I want to know how do
1:03:49 you land with the Peace Corps in remote well what most people
1:03:53 would consider remote corner of the world and end up finding
1:03:56 a living master. How does that actually happen? I don’t know
1:03:58 but I assume you didn’t speak Thai at the time.
1:04:04 I did actually because the Peace Corps and then I had to
1:04:09 learn Lao I did because the Peace Corps at that time it was
1:04:11 a very early in the Peace Corps had really good language
1:04:14 training they borrowed it from the Monterey Language Institute.
1:04:19 So you know initially I didn’t speak that well but because
1:04:23 I’d also studied Chinese at Dartmouth it came more easily
1:04:26 and I was there working in these in the health rural health
1:04:31 department on tropical medicine teams mostly malaria but also
1:04:34 typhoid and teams going out to different villages and taking
1:04:38 drawing blood and giving out medicine and things like that
1:04:41 and then somebody said there’s a Western Monk in this province
1:04:44 we heard about you want to meet and I said of course I do.
1:04:49 So I went to this little mountain and walked up 2,000
1:04:52 steps to the old Cambodian Temple ruin at the top and there
1:04:56 was this very interesting guy who had just finished a couple
1:05:00 years before the first Peace Corps I think in Borneo and then
1:05:04 got interested in Buddhism and common ordained as a monk and
1:05:08 I talked with him he’s now he’s named Ajahn Sumedo is his
1:05:11 monk’s name because he’s still a monk and he became quite famous
1:05:16 in Thailand and then became the abbot of a temple in England
1:05:20 and I became friends with him and he said oh I found a really
1:05:23 fine teacher he said you know a lot of them they kind of take
1:05:25 you you’re a Western and they treat you special he said this
1:05:28 guy doesn’t treat you any differently than anyone else
1:05:31 he just wants you to do the work you know and learn the
1:05:36 deepest way you can and he’s in this forest jungle and I said
1:05:37 I’m going there.
1:05:42 So having heard that I went like visited Ajahn Chah and he
1:05:47 was a little bit like the Dalai Lama he was funny and wise
1:05:51 and very warm hearted but also very strict and very demanding
1:05:55 but he did it in this loving way and I thought okay this is
1:05:58 the real deal this guy looks like what I was reading about
1:05:59 in all those and stories.
1:06:05 I read that he said to you and I’d love for you to tell us
1:06:07 when he said this to you.
1:06:11 I hope you’re not afraid to suffer if that’s true.
1:06:15 When did he say that and why did he say that so I visited him
1:06:18 a number of times and told him I was going to become a monk
1:06:22 and then I ordained in the village where I was living in
1:06:26 Peace Corps people wanted me to do that was a beautiful ritual
1:06:31 and then after some days made my way down to his temple that
1:06:32 was his opening gamut.
1:06:37 I’m walking in into the gates and I see him right now as I’m
1:06:43 here and he looks at me you know kind of leans back a little
1:06:45 little skeptic they said all right I hope you’re not afraid
1:06:46 to suffer welcome.
1:06:50 It was like you know you didn’t come here just to kind of do
1:06:54 some interesting cool anthropological experiment or
1:06:57 something like that if you’re going to do it we’re going to
1:07:00 put you through the training and he did but you know there
1:07:04 was like this little smile as he said it like okay are you up
1:07:09 for it all right dude come on in and what did the training
1:07:11 consist of what were some of the first things that you had
1:07:14 to do and then what was the suffering that he alluded to
1:07:16 what were some examples maybe some examples.
1:07:20 Okay so of course the first training was just how to walk
1:07:24 around and not have my robe you know fall on the ground and
1:07:27 embarrass me and everyone so they all loved it oh yeah right
1:07:31 look at the western he’s he can’t even chew gum and wear his
1:07:35 robes right or whatever so part of it was just the unfamiliarity
1:07:39 of it culturally and otherwise there were the two kinds of
1:07:42 suffering the big suffering of course was being alone with my
1:07:47 own mind I mean there you go you know having to do hours of
1:07:51 meditation when I didn’t know what the hell I was doing and
1:07:55 then as I talked about with anger or fear or confusion or
1:07:59 you know all those kind of states learning to deal in a
1:08:03 very conscious and mindful way and then more importantly in
1:08:08 a compassionate way in a kind and loving way with all the
1:08:12 energies that make up my humanity in our humanity and that
1:08:16 means when you sit and you get quiet anything unfinished in
1:08:19 your heart will also come up all the unfinished business.
1:08:24 So you know relationships that I’ve had that ended badly in
1:08:29 college or certainly stuff from my childhood and family dreams
1:08:32 that I carry things fulfilled and not all that comes up it’s
1:08:37 yeah my friend Annie the Mott humorist and writer says my
1:08:40 mind is like a bad neighborhood I try not to go there alone
1:08:44 and there’s some way in which in community sitting together
1:08:47 with others in meditation and then sitting in my hot it was
1:08:52 really facing myself and my full humanity that was probably
1:08:56 the most difficult thing because then you get insanely bored
1:08:59 or insanely restless or and then how do you deal with all
1:09:01 those energies normally when we’re restless or bored what
1:09:05 do we do we open the refrigerator or you know go online or
1:09:08 something because we can’t be with our own loneliness or
1:09:11 our own fear so that was the inner and then there’s the
1:09:15 outer ones water in the outer one yeah the other ones were
1:09:21 things like getting up the bell would ring at 3 30 in the
1:09:24 morning and I’m not an early riser by nature I go oh God here
1:09:28 we go and we walk through it was actually very beautiful then
1:09:32 we’d walk through the forest at night either by moonlight or
1:09:36 sometimes you’d have a tiny little flashlight and one of
1:09:38 the forest monasteries where there were a lot of cobras we’d
1:09:42 have a little stick and you’d tap the path so that the snakes
1:09:45 would know you were feel you coming and move out of the
1:09:49 way wouldn’t step on them and then we would sit silently for
1:09:53 a couple of hours and then do an hour of chanting on a hard
1:09:56 stone floor mind you or everybody else seemed comfortable
1:10:00 and my body was killing me and then at least once a week we
1:10:03 would sit up all night with the teacher and he would sit there
1:10:07 comfortably meditating maybe talking with another colleague
1:10:10 that it would come and we’d just be sitting and meditating
1:10:13 and he would kind of peak over at us like how are you doing
1:10:15 I go oh God it’s been for four hours when is he going to let
1:10:19 us go back to sleep and he didn’t you know so sitting up
1:10:24 all night it got very cold in the cold season and it got
1:10:31 insanely hot in the hot season and somehow learning to live
1:10:35 extremely simply with a set of sandals and a set of robes
1:10:39 and an alms bowl and then you would eat what you got offered
1:10:42 in the village and we would share it in that monastery
1:10:46 with others around us and sometimes you’d get nice food
1:10:51 and a lot of times in the dry season you’d get really really
1:10:55 sleepy food and there wasn’t that much to eat and so picture
1:10:58 a day where you get up at 330 in the morning you sit for a
1:11:02 couple of hours in meditation and do long than an hour long
1:11:06 chanting on a stone floor then it’s getting dawn and you walk
1:11:10 barefoot three miles five miles 10 miles with a alms bowl and
1:11:13 a handful of other monks and get your food and come back
1:11:16 whatever you’ve been offered and that’s the food for the day
1:11:20 and then you go back to your meditation or to the work of
1:11:23 the monastery of serving robes or drawing water from the
1:11:30 well and it’s muggy and 105 degrees hot season then you go
1:11:33 back and you join in the community for more meditation
1:11:36 and then the teacher smiles and say how are you doing you
1:11:39 know and then other kinds of practices for example we had a
1:11:43 charnel ground there and so sorry on what ground a charnel
1:11:47 ground which is where a cremation ground where people
1:11:52 bodies would be burned and so on occasion would go to a
1:11:56 cremation and then sit up all night and contemplate death
1:12:00 look at the body and then watch as it burned and then do
1:12:03 these meditations where you would reflect on well this is
1:12:05 going to happen to the body that you’re inhabiting as well
1:12:08 who do you think you are do you think you’re this physical
1:12:12 body made of hamburgers or you know lettuce or whatever you
1:12:15 happen to eat is that you are you hamburgers and lettuce you
1:12:20 know or or are you your feelings or are you your thoughts
1:12:26 who are you really born into this body like go on so anyways
1:12:32 and the alms bowl so you would be did you eat whatever you
1:12:37 gathered in one meal was it spread throughout one meal one
1:12:40 meal you eat one meal a day which makes you very easy to
1:12:43 makes your life easy and it’s the same that that monastery
1:12:46 things were shared there was other monasteries I stayed in
1:12:49 where you would just eat what was put in your own bowl and
1:12:51 you didn’t have to eat everything that was given to you
1:12:55 there were some things that were you know in the dry poor
1:13:00 season there would be curries that were too hot for me to eat
1:13:03 because they use the chilies to kind of preserve the preserve
1:13:07 preserve the food but you know when it was a really poor
1:13:09 village or something you know they would have to make curries
1:13:14 out of field mice or field or bat or bats or you know I
1:13:17 remember eating there was a curry that was made out of
1:13:22 basically grasshoppers that had come swept through and there
1:13:26 was this whole big insect wave of insects that were eating
1:13:29 the crops and they they collected them all made a curry out
1:13:32 of them so you know okay this is this is where you get for
1:13:35 your food today dude I think I might take the grasshoppers
1:13:40 over the over the bats but yeah yeah when it’s really highly
1:13:43 spice you can’t tell what is mystery that’s true we all have
1:13:46 mystery meat in middle school anyway this was like mystery
1:13:51 meat on steroids exotic mystery mean what was the longest
1:13:54 period of time that you spent in silence during that time in
1:13:57 Thailand well then I went to a Burmese monastery because I
1:14:02 wanted to do this very intense meditative training and I
1:14:06 spent about 500 days so less than a year and a half in
1:14:09 silence with the exception that I would talk to the teacher
1:14:13 every couple days I’d have a little 10 minute conversation
1:14:16 about what was happening my meditation and the rest I was
1:14:21 just sitting and walking 18 hours a day when I could or
1:14:27 or so sleeping a little bit and I remember at one point it
1:14:30 was relatively early on I’ve been sitting and walking and
1:14:33 pushing it this young men do you know I’m going to get
1:14:37 enlightened and all of that not moving sitting with a lot of
1:14:41 pain which is also part of what happened at the forest monastery
1:14:46 sitting on a stone floor for hours without moving really had
1:14:49 to learn how to deal with your own physical pain and I was
1:14:53 exhausted from sitting and walking in my little hot that I
1:14:58 had for that long retreat and after a couple months I thought
1:15:02 I’m really tired I got to lie down but then I thought well
1:15:05 but I’m not going to nap for very long because I’m I’m on
1:15:08 my way to enlightenment whenever I’m going to do this
1:15:10 right so I said all right I’ll lie down on the wooden floor
1:15:13 rather than on the little map that I had and that way I won’t
1:15:19 sleep so long and I’m lying there and then I wake up and I
1:15:23 get up and I walk very slowly doing this mindful slow walking
1:15:27 to the end of the hot and look out the window toward where
1:15:31 some of the other monks and the teachers live some way down
1:15:34 through the trees and then I turn around and I start walking
1:15:38 the other direction in this meditation hot that I had that
1:15:42 you could walk probably it was maybe 15 18 feet long was long
1:15:49 and narrow and I see this body lying on the floor and all
1:15:54 of a sudden I go oh that’s me and I realized that I’m having
1:15:57 it out of the body experience and what had happened is that I
1:16:01 was so intent I’m not going to sleep long I’ll get up very
1:16:04 soon that intention was really strong but my body didn’t want
1:16:09 to get up so I got up but it was it wasn’t in my body and I
1:16:12 walk very slowly and I peered down on my body and I turned
1:16:14 around walk the other walk back and then the second time I
1:16:18 walk back I got closer and then I fell into my body and I woke
1:16:22 up and I said oh wow that’s interesting but what I saw out
1:16:26 the window wasn’t just like a dream because I was watching
1:16:29 you know my teacher and talking to these other monks and then
1:16:32 I got up again and that’s exactly what was happening and
1:16:36 that was the first of a series of all kinds of very interesting
1:16:39 experiences that happen. What would other examples of those
1:16:44 types of unusual experiences be and was it your time in
1:16:47 Burma that found you experiencing these for the
1:16:50 first time. First of all the first experiences even though
1:16:55 I had experiment with meditation back in college and so forth
1:16:58 were experiences again that came through psychedelics and
1:17:04 so I was familiar with all kinds of weird and powerful and
1:17:07 mysterious or mystical kind of experiences but there’s something
1:17:12 about learning how to navigate it without taking a substance
1:17:16 and learning that your own consciousness is the field that
1:17:22 you can learn to navigate first all the personality and emotions
1:17:24 and history and so forth but then you start to realize that
1:17:28 you’re bigger than that that who you are is not just your
1:17:31 thoughts and feelings in your mind and so whether it’s out of
1:17:35 body experience or the experience of vastness of becoming
1:17:39 the sky within which everything arises and passes or the
1:17:44 experience of profound silence or of the void where you enter
1:17:49 the best stillness before experience even arises or the
1:17:52 experience of luminosity where my body would dissolve into
1:17:56 light their time sitting as you get concentrated and somebody
1:18:00 or concentration builds that your whole body in mind open up
1:18:03 and you know first you get the elements your body can feel
1:18:08 heavy like a stone the earth element or can feel so light
1:18:10 that you have to open your eyes and make sure you’re not
1:18:13 floating because it feels like you’re floating in the air or
1:18:15 can be filled with fire and you feel like you’re in the middle
1:18:20 of a raging fire or can get icy cold you know or all kinds
1:18:23 of vibrations and Kundalini energies and chakras start to
1:18:27 open and sometimes it’s pleasant sometimes it’s not you
1:18:31 know as deep energies start to move through your body they
1:18:35 also kind of push open the places that are held closed so
1:18:40 that when your heart starts to open in deep meditation sometimes
1:18:43 it feels like you’re having a heart attack the physically
1:18:46 painful because all the things that you’ve held around your
1:18:50 heart to protect yourself start to loosen or when the energy
1:18:54 hits your throat and it starts to open weird sounds come out
1:18:58 you know and then you get to visions that come in the brow
1:19:02 chakra and you start to see all kinds of colors and visions
1:19:06 and hear things that all possibilities of the play of
1:19:11 consciousness can start to open after both period of silence
1:19:15 but also really deeply training attention and concentration
1:19:20 these experiences just to put them in or at least part of
1:19:24 what you said in context for people listening there are a
1:19:28 number of things you mentioned but one in particular that
1:19:32 opening in the chest that I experienced in the ten day
1:19:37 retreat done it spirit rock for which you are one of the
1:19:41 the instructors of the lead instructor and it was an
1:19:45 incredibly powerful experience and listening to your
1:19:49 description of some of the feelings it makes me want to
1:19:52 go to the jungle and spend time doing this type of training
1:19:55 however the ten day retreat as you know from firsthand
1:19:58 observation and interacting with me was incredibly difficult
1:20:01 for me and terrifying it a number of points where I felt
1:20:06 like I had crossed a boundary into maybe even madness right
1:20:10 I was fearful I wouldn’t be able to return from so I’m
1:20:15 curious to know during that period of time in Thailand and
1:20:19 Burma could be afterwards as well but when you were in the
1:20:22 jungle and doing this very intense work were there any
1:20:25 particular points when you wanted to quit to go home how
1:20:30 do I have a salute Lee and then I remember I got what I think
1:20:33 was malaria really high fever and I was sick as a dog and
1:20:38 I’m lying in the bottom of my little hut there high fever
1:20:42 and shivering and Ajahn Chah came to visit me and in the
1:20:45 Lao language and he was also funny and quite blunt and the
1:20:49 Lao language is a very straightforward kind of the
1:20:52 sentence structures are really simple so he looked at me and
1:20:57 he said sick huh and I said yeah and he said hurts all over
1:21:01 huh I said it’s your test he said hot and cold yeah he said
1:21:04 makes you afraid I not he said makes you want to go home and
1:21:08 see your mother doesn’t it and I’m nodding there and then he
1:21:11 looked at me and he said you know this is the jungle fever
1:21:15 this is malaria we’ve all had it but now there’s some good
1:21:17 medicine I’ll send the medicine month over and in a couple
1:21:20 days you’ll be fine and then he looked at me and he said you
1:21:24 can do this you know you can do this so I mean that was an
1:21:29 example of wanting to show him what am I doing what kept you
1:21:32 going I mean I don’t want to interrupt but like what kept
1:21:35 you going I’m imagining 500 days of silence I could barely
1:21:40 handle 10 days you know Tim I mean what’s kept you going
1:21:43 what keeps any of us going about things that we care about
1:21:48 I had somehow I don’t know kind of wacky but I think also
1:21:53 important kind of passion to say I want to understand
1:21:56 or I’ve started down this road and I want to see where it
1:22:00 goes and I think all of us find at a certain point in our
1:22:03 life that they’re or if we’re lucky that something really
1:22:06 matters and you’ve done it in your work and your travel you
1:22:10 want to explore what your human capacity is and I’ve read
1:22:13 these old Zen stories and I want to see if this is true I
1:22:16 want to find out and then as I started things started to
1:22:19 happen like that out of the body experience and rapture and
1:22:23 changes and openings and I realized there’s really something
1:22:26 to learn here but there are a couple of the things that I
1:22:31 want to add to this one of them that’s the most important is
1:22:35 that it turns out that it wasn’t and it isn’t so much about
1:22:41 the actual experiences so Jen Cha my teacher talked about
1:22:45 how in his own training for the first eight years in the
1:22:49 jungle he had been a very ardent meditator and had all kinds
1:22:52 of insights and dissolving and some body and John experiences
1:22:57 all kinds of some body is awakening some body is yeah or
1:23:01 it’s how would you found some bodies it has a lot of meanings
1:23:04 as a word but it it can mean profound states of
1:23:09 concentration in which the mind dissolves into light or into
1:23:13 joy or bliss or becomes absorbed with any one of all kinds
1:23:17 of states so we went to the most famous teacher of that time
1:23:21 another adjun adjunman and told him about all these experiences
1:23:24 in the the master looked back and said Cha you missed the
1:23:28 point these are just experiences you know it’s like going to
1:23:30 the movies and you have a romantic comedy and you have a
1:23:35 war movie and you have a documentary and you have you
1:23:38 know a Disney movies and they’re just movies on the screen
1:23:43 some pleasant some unpleasant the only question is to whom do
1:23:50 they happen turn your attention back and ask look to see who
1:23:54 is the witness of these what is the consciousness that is
1:23:58 knowing these ever changing experiences this is where your
1:24:03 liberation will come he said become his language if I
1:24:07 translate it is the one who knows become the knowing rather
1:24:10 than the experiences and then you can tolerate anything and
1:24:15 you can respond with love and understanding because you rest
1:24:19 in the timeless consciousness which is your true nature so
1:24:24 part of what I also learned in meditation and teach is that
1:24:27 it’s not so much about the experiences oh I want to have
1:24:31 this or that experience but it’s this profound turning back
1:24:36 to ask who am I what is this consciousness itself and that
1:24:39 was born into this body that will leave it we can talk about
1:24:43 death at some point if you want what is this mysterious
1:24:48 consciousness itself so there is that and then then I’ve also
1:24:53 had the opportunity of being with a few other teachers and
1:24:58 one of the people that I was very close to and inspired me
1:25:02 profoundly was a Cambodian monk named maha go Senanda who
1:25:06 was the Gandhi of Cambodia and when I met him we were living
1:25:09 and training together in a forest monastery in Thailand
1:25:12 and it was during the time that Khmer Rouge came to power
1:25:17 and eventually killed two million Cambodians in a kind of
1:25:22 genocide he survived because he wasn’t in country but all 19
1:25:26 of his family members were killed his temple burned all the
1:25:30 Buddhist texts and so forth were destroyed and when he was
1:25:34 able to he went to the refugee camps refugees were pouring
1:25:38 out of Cambodia by the hundreds of thousands and he went to
1:25:41 the refugee camps on the border of Thailand and Cambodia
1:25:46 and I was able to go with him at a certain point and he decided
1:25:50 to open a temple in the middle of one of the biggest refugee
1:25:54 camps here’s 50 or 100,000 people these tiny little bamboo
1:25:59 huts and got permission from the UN HCR high commissioner
1:26:03 of refugees and built a platform with a little roof over it
1:26:07 and put an altar with the traditional Cambodian Buddha
1:26:10 on it and so forth but it was a camp with the Khmer Rouge
1:26:14 underground lots of them and so they put the word out that
1:26:19 if anyone went to be with this monk when they got out of the
1:26:23 camp back to Cambodia they would all be shot so we wondered
1:26:28 who would if anyone would come and went through the camp the
1:26:32 day the opening day with a big kind of temple gong ringing it
1:26:38 and 25,000 people poured into the central square around this
1:26:42 little temple my god and he my go send on this out there and
1:26:47 he was a scholar he spoke 15 languages and he was a you
1:26:52 know extremely kind hearted human being who had suffered
1:26:56 enormously and had transformed it into the kind of compassion
1:26:59 that we think of with the Dalai Lama or something like that
1:27:02 in fact they became friends and go send on to became the head
1:27:06 of all Cambodian booze and but there he was at this point
1:27:12 she looking out at 25,000 people who had suffered immense
1:27:16 traumas and you could see there was a grandmother and the only
1:27:20 two surviving grandchildren that she had or an uncle and one
1:27:25 niece and their faces were the faces of trauma and of survivors
1:27:28 and I thought alright what is he going to say to them and he
1:27:34 sat very quietly for a long time just in their presence and
1:27:39 then he put his hands together in this kind of modest way and
1:27:43 began to chant in the microphone yet a sound system in
1:27:48 Cambodian and in Sanskrit or Pali the Buddhist language one
1:27:53 of the first verses from the Buddhist texts that goes hatred
1:27:59 never ceases by hatred but by love alone is healed this is
1:28:04 the ancient and eternal law and he chanted it over and over
1:28:10 in Cambodian and in Sanskrit Pali and pretty soon the chant
1:28:16 was picked up and in a little while 25,000 people were chanting
1:28:20 this verse with him and I looked out and they were weeping
1:28:24 many of them because they hadn’t heard their sacred chants
1:28:30 for years but also because he was offering them a truth that
1:28:35 was even bigger than their sorrows that hatred never ends by
1:28:39 hatred but by love alone is healed this is the ancient and
1:28:43 eternal law and they were sitting in the middle of the
1:28:47 the healing energy of the Dharma of the teachings of the heart
1:28:52 that can liberate us later on go Sonanda who is nominated for
1:28:58 the Nobel Peace Prize a number of times spent 15 years walking
1:29:02 through the killing fields and the mind areas and so forth
1:29:06 leading people on foot back to their village and he said to
1:29:11 the refugees you can’t go back in a bus or the back of a truck
1:29:14 or something like that you have to reclaim your land with
1:29:18 love and so he would lead a thousand people and he’d be in
1:29:23 the front with a bell and a gong and a few other monks and
1:29:26 the whole way back they would be chanting the chants of loving
1:29:31 kindness so that by the time they got to their village whatever
1:29:34 had been destroyed there was a sense that they were reclaiming
1:29:39 not just the land but they were reclaiming their own hearts
1:29:43 that’s a beautiful really beautiful story and it prompts
1:29:48 me to ask a question that I struggle with answering myself
1:29:52 and it’s also a question many of my friends have asked themselves
1:29:58 and I’ll take a stab at it how do you decide when to do deep
1:30:04 inner work and take an extended period to do that versus being
1:30:10 in the world and trying to impact others and the world and to
1:30:14 just provide a little bit of background on that I have friends
1:30:18 who are building businesses or building careers of some type
1:30:23 or families and I at this point do not have wife kids or
1:30:26 company to build at least with a large organization and I’ve
1:30:31 come back from various experiments sojourns experiences
1:30:34 over weeks or months and shared these with them and they’ve
1:30:38 expressed this longing this deep yearning to do something
1:30:42 similar and then they ask this question like how do I how do
1:30:48 I best decide if and when to do the deep extended work versus
1:30:50 being in the world and I know it might be a false dichotomy
1:30:54 you might not have to choose but I’ll talk a little bit more
1:30:56 just to fill the space but I had this experience personally
1:30:59 not long ago when I was in South America and had someone
1:31:02 telling me in Spanish which was not their native language
1:31:06 this is an indigenous tribe but this apple this mayor
1:31:09 effectively who worked a lot with different plant medicines
1:31:14 and he said that he recommended one 15 month diet very very
1:31:19 strict 15 month period with many different restrictions no sex
1:31:24 no alcohol no pork etc to develop certain capacities and to
1:31:28 practice in effect I mean at certain types of meditative
1:31:31 practices so I struggle with this myself as well how do you
1:31:35 suggest someone think through so did you give up sex and pork
1:31:39 I’ve done it for short periods of time I’m not a year and a
1:31:42 half I’ve done it for weeks at a time but not for 15 months
1:31:46 but what appealed to me about that definitely not the lack
1:31:49 of sex and pork I like both of those things it was he said
1:31:51 that’s something you only have to do once in your life and it
1:31:56 opens doors and creates opportunities that are difficult
1:32:00 if not impossible to achieve otherwise so of course that’s
1:32:04 very tantalizing but 15 months is a really really long time to
1:32:06 opt out of everything else and I’m not saying it has to be
1:32:10 15 months for some people as you know setting aside even 10
1:32:13 days to do a silent tree is hard and I know there are things
1:32:16 that they can do on an ongoing basis like morning meditation
1:32:20 and so on but for those who are really drawn to this extended
1:32:23 deeper work how do you think about and that’s why it goes
1:32:25 and under brought it up for me because he spent so much time
1:32:28 outside of his country and then went back and was really on
1:32:31 the ground doing work with locals how do you think about
1:32:35 that or suggest someone think about it first my answer is
1:32:39 yes because all of the things that you say are true that yes
1:32:43 most cultures encourage at some point even beings most wise
1:32:47 cultures even beings to step out of their ordinary roles and
1:32:50 their ordinary routine whether you go to the mountains or the
1:32:54 ocean you know or a temple or a change how you’re living so
1:32:58 that you can open up to the mystery and so that you also
1:33:01 can open up to love because what I saw with my teachers and
1:33:05 also Nanda was one on Chincha another is that they were able
1:33:09 to love no matter what it was really because they inhabited
1:33:13 consciousness in a very different way than just a small
1:33:17 sense of self there was something a possibility that we
1:33:20 could live with forgiveness and love and be really effective
1:33:24 in the world at the same time so they’re not separate and
1:33:26 that’s sort of what your question is how do we live in the
1:33:29 world and at the same time you know what trainings and how
1:33:33 do we connect with something deeper and part of it is just
1:33:38 intuitive you know Tim if you have no more you know or young
1:33:41 children and so forth it’s not the time to go on a longer
1:33:45 treat your kids are your practice and in fact you can’t
1:33:50 get a Zen master who’s going to be more demanding than you
1:33:55 know an infant with colic right where you or you know or a
1:33:58 teenage you know certain teenage kids but with the young
1:34:01 ones you know your Zen master might say you got to get up
1:34:03 early in the morning and you know once in a while you might
1:34:07 roll over the kid is crying and sick you have to get up your
1:34:12 family needs tending and you know if you’re even vaguely a
1:34:18 responsible and caring parent as you that becomes your practice
1:34:21 and if you think well if only I could be in the great Zen
1:34:25 temple of Kyoto or an ashram and India or down in the Amazon
1:34:29 with Tim taking ayahuasca or whatever the plant medicine
1:34:34 they give you know your kid can be like ayahuasca on steroids
1:34:38 okay you want to face yourself and your own limitations and
1:34:42 your own you know you want to look at the small sense of
1:34:46 self and find out how to live with a freer and bigger spirit
1:34:49 here we’ve just hired someone to live with you and train you
1:34:53 full so it’s really and that’s an important thing but but what
1:34:59 makes it work is that you have that intention not just to
1:35:04 soldier through it but to say let this be a place where I
1:35:08 awaken graciousness and inner sense of freedom and peace as
1:35:12 things come and go where I awaken the possibility of
1:35:16 presence in pleasure and pain and joy and sorrow and gain and
1:35:20 loss and all that changes that I find an inviolable or a
1:35:25 timeless place of becoming the loving witness of it all
1:35:29 becoming the loving awareness that says yeah now I’m having
1:35:33 a family experience and this is the place to find freedom
1:35:37 because freedom is not in the Himalayas or in the Amazon
1:35:41 the only place it’s found is in your own heart exactly where
1:35:44 you are and that’s what goes in on the Todd and wonder what
1:35:48 Ajahn Chah that’s really what they wanted to communicate
1:35:51 now that being said if you have an opportunity and you’re
1:35:55 drawn to it like somebody you might do you know Jack Dorsey
1:35:59 I do I do know Jack. Yeah. So Jack just did his first 10
1:36:03 day meditation retreat. Good for him and he tweeted about I
1:36:07 wouldn’t say it otherwise but he tweeted about it and it was
1:36:10 you know one of the top transformative experiences of
1:36:13 his life and it’s not to say 10 day retreats are the be all
1:36:16 and end all day they’re very powerful and compelling even if
1:36:20 you have a company or even if you have a family there might
1:36:25 be a period of a week or some days where you can in fact get
1:36:30 away and step out of those roles and turn inward and that can
1:36:33 be tremendously valuable. So I think both are important you
1:36:36 just have to listen what when the time is right. There are
1:36:39 so many things that this brings up the first though is just
1:36:42 a housekeeping for people who may not recognize the name
1:36:47 Jack Dorsey. That’s Jack at Jack. I believe it is on Twitter
1:36:50 of you might then wonder how did he get that user handle.
1:36:54 Well he is one of the people behind Twitter. So he is of
1:36:57 Twitter and Square fame among many others. Fascinating
1:37:03 fascinating guy so people can check him out the comment on
1:37:07 the infant being the full time trainer working with you 24/7
1:37:10 reminded me also since you mentioned Ram Dass earlier of
1:37:14 a quote of his that I like and I’m going to paraphrase I’m
1:37:16 sure but if you think you’re enlightened to go spend a week
1:37:22 with your family. Which I think is a fantastic one and that’s
1:37:25 part of the reason and you know some of the backstory but we
1:37:28 all have I would imagine we all have tough things that happen
1:37:32 to us experience traumatic experiences as children have a
1:37:36 lot of triggers related to family members typically and for
1:37:40 me the force to break takes a number of different forms but
1:37:43 that includes a trip every six months and extended trip of
1:37:46 two to four weeks with my parents and my brother when he
1:37:51 can make it. So that’s only after being introduced to
1:37:54 meditation something that I would even consider as a practice
1:37:57 and the last point I’ll mention just out of my personal
1:38:00 experience is there’s a piece of paper I have in my wallet
1:38:02 and I’ve had my wallet for a few years now it’s getting bit
1:38:07 worn down. It’s a piece of construction paper and ex-girlfriend
1:38:10 gave it to me who knew me very well and it says the task
1:38:16 that hinders your task is your task beautiful beautiful and
1:38:20 that’s a good reminder for me. I wanted to ask you two
1:38:25 questions that are personally important but also may apply to
1:38:28 other people. The first is the question that I believe you
1:38:31 mentioned Ajahn Chah perhaps others have indicated is the
1:38:37 question versus the experiences or movies of these say out of
1:38:40 body experiences and so on to whom do they happen right to
1:38:44 whom do they happen is this a co on like what is the sound of
1:38:47 one hand clapping where there isn’t really an answer you’re
1:38:50 expected to arrive at is the value in contemplating the
1:38:57 question more than any answer. Yes both. No because yes both
1:39:02 and no. Yeah because it is it’s a profound contemplation for
1:39:07 us one of the great questions of human incarnation who are we
1:39:10 how do we get into that you get in this body with the wiggly
1:39:14 things on the end of your limbs you know and little bits of
1:39:18 claws that you have left you know his nails and a vestigial
1:39:21 tail and a hole at one end into which you stuff dead plants
1:39:24 and animals and glug them down through the tube. I mean the
1:39:28 whole incarnation thing is really pretty wild so who are we
1:39:31 and then what are what how do we make meaning of this is a
1:39:35 lifetime question in that way that it’s a co on but in another
1:39:39 way it also actually does have an answer and the answer of
1:39:43 course has to be found by each person. The answer to point
1:39:48 toward it it’s very clear that you’re not just your salad
1:39:51 and vegetables and hamburger body and you’re not just your
1:39:54 emotions I hope because they’re always changing and your
1:39:58 thoughts good God I hope you’re not your thoughts. So you start
1:40:03 to realize alright what is there then what is this self who
1:40:08 am I in neuroscience you know there was a time magazine issue
1:40:11 on modern neuroscience where it said neuroscience of search
1:40:15 throughout the brain over many decades now and come to the
1:40:19 conclusion that they cannot find the self located anywhere in
1:40:22 the neural mechanisms of the brain and that it simply does
1:40:27 not exist but what does exist is a sense of self that’s built
1:40:31 out of a sense of identification with our thoughts and body
1:40:35 and so forth it’s all wise and appropriate we should be but
1:40:41 we also know that it’s not the end of the story and you know
1:40:45 it from walking in the high mountains or listening to an
1:40:48 extraordinary piece of music or making love or taking some
1:40:53 sacred medicine you know we’re sitting at the bedside of someone
1:40:56 when they die that mysterious moment when spirit leaves the
1:41:01 body or when a child is born we have these moments where we
1:41:05 open to mystery and realize that who we are is not just our
1:41:10 personal history or our body and emotions that we become the
1:41:14 consciousness itself the witnessing awareness that we
1:41:18 are the loving awareness that was born into this body and
1:41:23 that becomes actually a direct knowing a direct experience so
1:41:28 there’s a way in which we also can come home to ourselves and
1:41:33 it brings a tremendous sense of freedom and well-being as all
1:41:38 the movies of ever changing life happen to us so that’s why
1:41:42 I said yes and no and both and there’s just a little aside
1:41:45 thinking about you going back to your family as a practice
1:41:49 and twice a year as you’re doing I just want to remind you
1:41:52 and the listeners that Buddha and Jesus both had a hard time
1:41:55 when they went back to their family so you know and don’t
1:41:59 think that you know there’s something wrong with you it’s
1:42:02 just part of it’s that’s why they call it nuclear family I
1:42:07 think I’m anyway there’s another I guess it’s a word more
1:42:10 than a question that I’d love to ask you to define and that
1:42:14 is compassion or compassionate when you use that word or
1:42:17 those words what do you mean exactly or what would you like
1:42:22 it to mean for people I would like to distinguish
1:42:28 compassion from empathy and I’ll use a simple illustration
1:42:32 if you’re on the playground and you see a kid being bullied
1:42:36 and you feel oh that must feel terrible that hurts right
1:42:41 that’s an empathy and empathy can be useful it also can be
1:42:43 you can get overwhelmed by empathy if you don’t know what
1:42:47 to do with it but there’s some way in which you start to feel
1:42:51 resonating you because we are not limited to these bodies
1:42:56 we are actually an interconnected system of consciousness
1:43:00 and I’ll talk about that a little bit more in a minute
1:43:04 but we all know whether it’s mirror neurons from neuroscience
1:43:09 or the field of presences you know scientists like Dan
1:43:13 Siegel talk about extended presence that we can feel empathy
1:43:16 with one another with someone sad someone’s angry someone’s
1:43:21 hurting compassion is the next step you see or recognize you
1:43:26 feel and then you care you care about it and you want to if
1:43:30 you can do something that helps so that you see the kid being
1:43:33 bullied and you realize I want to tell the teacher or the
1:43:36 principal or want to just walk over there and say something
1:43:41 or intervene to help stop it and so compassion it’s called
1:43:46 the quivering of the heart when it wants to move to alleviate
1:43:49 the suffering of yourself because you can self compassion
1:43:53 it’s very important or those around you and it’s born into
1:43:57 the earliest studies of the infants you know at Yale and
1:44:02 various places like that show that even very very very small
1:44:06 children have this resonance and this kind of care and so it’s
1:44:10 not shut down in us we’re a species that’s interconnected
1:44:13 and we care for one another and this is your birthright this
1:44:18 natural natural compassion and through practice and meditation
1:44:22 you can reawaken it you can extend it and it can become
1:44:27 your way of living and moving in the world as a little aside
1:44:31 and I’ll just bookmark this one just got back from a conference
1:44:35 with our dear friend Adam Bizali our mutual friend Richie
1:44:39 Davidson who’s another of the most famous neuroscientists
1:44:44 especially in this area and a number of other some contemplatives
1:44:48 and neuroscientists and some technologists from the valley
1:44:53 in VC talking about how to build compassion into our interface
1:44:57 with the technological world compassion tech starting from
1:45:00 the very simplest things of projects like can you build a fit
1:45:04 bit for compassion where instead of your body where you can
1:45:09 either note moments of care around you or in yourself or be
1:45:13 prompted to care for yourself you know or when you say to Siri
1:45:18 or Alexa you know I’m feeling lonely or and so forth what kind
1:45:22 of response do you get from the algorithms and all of that
1:45:27 because the UK England just pointed their first minister
1:45:30 of loneliness for the country like you think it was a joke
1:45:35 but it’s not like an old Beatles song on the lonely people
1:45:38 there are 10 million lonely people in England they’ve estimated
1:45:42 and it’s you know it’s for isolation and loss of capacity
1:45:45 and health and all kinds of reasons that loneliness makes
1:45:50 things way worse but there’s some way in which compassion is
1:45:53 that which connects us and it’s a beautiful thing even if you
1:45:56 walked on the street and you see someone you know who’s
1:45:59 struggling and so forth doesn’t mean you have to fix the whole
1:46:03 world that’s not your job that would be egotistical but you
1:46:06 can reach your hand out and mend the things that you can and
1:46:10 you can tend the things that you can and you can do it not
1:46:13 because oh you pity them those four people but because they’re
1:46:18 your family you recognize that we are common humanity we’re
1:46:23 in this together I’d like to build on that and preface it
1:46:26 with a comment on the text he mentioned collaborating with
1:46:30 Adam and he’s discussing the potential of combining or
1:46:35 utilizing technology to help people to develop and harness
1:46:38 compassion and some folks listening might be like oh come on
1:46:41 that’s so pie in the sky but I’d like to point out that you
1:46:45 have already collaborated successfully with Adam on software
1:46:51 like Metatrain, M-E-D-I-T-R-A-I-N which was one of the tools
1:46:57 Adam has used in his N of 1 or N of 2 experiments in rejuvenating
1:47:01 his mental capacity to I want to say in his 20s and Adam’s
1:47:05 one of those guys you can’t tell if he’s 28 or 45 he’s just
1:47:07 a silver fox who always looks young so I don’t know how
1:47:11 old he is but he’s not 22 but the Metatrain was one of the
1:47:14 tools that he utilized I don’t remember the name that he used
1:47:17 for this run of experiments you might know the training that
1:47:21 he did Neuroman or something like that was very very successful
1:47:24 so that you already have a track record of collaborating
1:47:27 successfully with neuroscientists and technologists on the
1:47:33 compassion front I’d love to use that as a segue to loving
1:47:40 kindness and by way of personal example I failed well failed
1:47:45 as a strong word I quit I stopped meditating after many many
1:47:49 attempts had a very absurdly high number of false starts over
1:47:54 many years and it really stuck after a number of experiments
1:47:58 and experiences I had doing three or four day trainings with
1:48:00 say transnational meditation and having the social accountability
1:48:03 being accountable to someone else is very helpful but another
1:48:08 turning point was experimenting with loving kindness meditation
1:48:11 and I think in part it succeeded because it took the focus
1:48:17 off of me me me I I and allowed me to focus on others but I’d
1:48:24 like to read a brief paragraph from a profile of you in the
1:48:28 New York Times is from 2014 and feel free to correct anything
1:48:32 that is incorrect but I’ll give it a read first and I quote in
1:48:35 the West cornfield says quote we encounter a lot of intense
1:48:38 striving ambition and a lot of self criticism self judgment
1:48:42 and self hatred and quote concerned he initially turned to
1:48:44 the Dalai Lama for advice but self hatred was such a foreign
1:48:47 concept to the Tibetan Buddhist that he wasn’t able to offer
1:48:50 any real insight over time cornfield and his colleagues began
1:48:53 to believe that Americans need particular meditation practice
1:48:56 closely linked to the concepts of self forgiveness and loving
1:48:59 kindness a training in the unconditional acceptance of
1:49:02 imperfection without such a foundation says cornfield
1:49:04 meditation can easily become and this is the part that I
1:49:07 underlined and start without this foundation says cornfield
1:49:10 meditation can easily become yet another form of striving
1:49:13 quote another thing you do to make yourself better and quote
1:49:17 instead of a path to true contentment could you please
1:49:21 describe for folks what loving kindness meditation practice
1:49:24 looks like and elaborate in any way that you feel might be
1:49:28 useful or helpful for folks. Yeah that meeting which was some
1:49:32 decades ago with the Dalai Lama yeah he didn’t understand
1:49:34 when we talked about self hatred he couldn’t there’s no word
1:49:38 for it in the back and forth with this insider what does this
1:49:42 mean finally looked up he said but this is a mistake why would
1:49:45 anyone do this but then he asked how many of you there’s a
1:49:48 group of us who were teachers that experienced this and
1:49:52 almost everyone raised their hand so we see that when people
1:49:58 begin in our culture and in the West to meditate or to turn
1:50:04 inward really that it’s very common to encounter a lot of
1:50:09 self criticism self judgment or even self hatred and you know
1:50:12 they’re all the causes from our these are all kind of
1:50:15 conditioning that we got from from our childhood our
1:50:19 education and so forth but what it means is that you’re
1:50:21 sitting there saying I’m not doing it right I’m no good
1:50:24 you turn the meditation into one other one of the thing that
1:50:27 you don’t do right because you can’t control your mind the
1:50:30 truth is that you can’t control your mind easily that’s not
1:50:34 the point there’s a different way of approaching your mind
1:50:38 which gives you tremendous capacities but it’s not oh I
1:50:39 have to stop my thinking or I don’t want to have these
1:50:42 feelings and I hate having all these judgments I don’t want
1:50:46 to be so judgmental I was I hate this judging mind what is
1:50:51 it’s just more judgment so instead as you become first able
1:50:55 to become the loving witness the mindful loving awareness
1:50:59 that says oh this is the judging mind and it’s been trying
1:51:02 to protect me thank you for trying to protect me I don’t
1:51:05 need you now thank you all of a sudden there’s a distance
1:51:11 from the painful or destructive or self critical thoughts
1:51:14 simply by witnessing them with loving awareness and
1:51:18 acknowledging them this becomes a gateway to the practice
1:51:22 of loving kindness and self compassion and very often
1:51:25 people can’t do it for themselves they feel that’s too
1:51:29 much of a stretch like why would I wish myself well it
1:51:36 feels egotistical and so the way that this practice begins
1:51:41 in skillfully for such folks is instead to think of someone
1:51:45 that you really care about a lot and to picture them
1:51:48 remember them put them in your mind’s eye and feel the
1:51:51 kind of well-wishing you would want for them you know may
1:51:57 they be protected and safe from difficulty may they be held
1:52:03 in loving kindness may they be well healthy strong and you
1:52:07 wish them that may they be happy and you do this for a time
1:52:12 a kind of inner well-wishing and also maybe you feel as you
1:52:16 think of this person that you care about you let yourself
1:52:20 also turn into the measure of sorrows they have the struggles
1:52:24 that every human being has you know and it tenderizes your
1:52:27 heart as you think of them because you don’t want them
1:52:31 to suffer you feel a kind of rising of compassion and care
1:52:35 so may they hold themselves in compassion may they be safe
1:52:38 and protected and well you do that with one or two people
1:52:42 that you care about for a time and then you can imagine
1:52:46 even as I’m describing this and you following your own heart
1:52:51 you can imagine these two loved ones looking back at you
1:52:56 with the same kindness and saying just as you wish us
1:53:00 protection and safety and happiness and well-being
1:53:03 and you know and compassion they gaze at you and they say
1:53:09 you too may you be safe and protected and may you be filled
1:53:14 with tender compassion for yourself and kindness may you
1:53:20 to be healthy and well and may you be happy they want you
1:53:24 to be happy I think about when I’m doing this and visualizing
1:53:28 some loved ones I know that as I do it I can feel they want
1:53:33 that for me and then finally as you feel that from these
1:53:37 loved ones you can put your hand on your body or your heart
1:53:41 even if you like and take it in and then begin to realize
1:53:45 that you can wish this for yourself may I hold all of the
1:53:49 joys and sorrows of my life with tenderness and kindness may
1:53:53 I hold my struggles with compassion may I be filled with
1:53:58 loving kindness and loving awareness may I be safe and
1:54:05 protected may I be well strong or healed and as you repeat
1:54:08 these simple intentions that have been done for thousands
1:54:12 of years it’s as if your cells are listening and this is
1:54:16 the research of people like Liz Blackburn and the list
1:54:20 of Apple who Liz Blackburn got the Nobel Prize for discovering
1:54:24 the telomerase and the telomeres at the end of the caps and
1:54:29 the DNA it turns out that your cells listen to your heart
1:54:32 and that to your intention that consciousness of tax your
1:54:36 body and little by little even though it can bring up its
1:54:39 opposite I hate myself I’ve never been good enough and you
1:54:42 see all those and you say thank you for trying to protect
1:54:46 me I appreciate that may I be well may I be safe may I be
1:54:49 held in love and little by little like water on a stone it
1:54:55 starts to soften the places that are holding your lack of
1:54:59 self-forgiveness your lack of care and loving kindness starts
1:55:02 to grow in you and it’s a very beautiful practice there’s
1:55:06 lots of places you can find it on my in my work and teachers
1:55:10 like Sharon Salzburg and Emma Children and Tara Brock and
1:55:15 so forth do you have any guided loving kindness meditations
1:55:19 or audio that you can recommend people listen to I do they
1:55:22 are going by website Jack cornfield dot com I think they
1:55:26 will be on there I do know for sure have a whole series of
1:55:30 great programs with sounds true sounds true dot com that
1:55:35 include meditations on the mind vast as the sky meditations
1:55:38 on compassion and loving kindness and I did a book one of
1:55:42 the books I’ve done is called a lamp in the darkness and it
1:55:47 contains I think eight or nine different guided practices
1:55:50 that you can get either with it on a CD but if you can get
1:55:53 it to download basically and sounds true also has that and
1:55:58 has a compassion practice in a grounding practice in a vast
1:56:01 sky like mine practice and so forth so you can look for all
1:56:05 of those the beauty thing is that you can learn this and I
1:56:08 was a couple of years ago invited to be part of the first
1:56:12 White House Buddhist leadership gathering there were a hundred
1:56:15 and twenty Buddhist leaders from around the country from
1:56:17 different communities I don’t think that’s going to happen
1:56:23 again very soon but there it was one good hope and most of
1:56:26 the communities did beautiful things that were involved
1:56:30 in soup kitchens and tending the homeless and projects to
1:56:34 support healing for whether it was malaria or other other
1:56:37 diseases in different other parts of the world and so for
1:56:42 all kinds of great stuff and certainly meditation and when
1:56:46 I got to talk which was kind of a summary talk toward the end
1:56:51 of it I mentioned that in this historical record whether it’s
1:56:54 true or not the text and so forth described the Buddha meeting
1:56:57 with kings and princes and ministers and so forth and
1:57:00 probably if the Buddha were or around now you go to the
1:57:02 White House if you were invited he certainly would have met
1:57:06 with Obama and who knows now and he had advice about why
1:57:10 society which he would give to leaders and he’d say if you
1:57:15 can train your people to meet one another with respect to
1:57:19 listen with respect to differences and to come together
1:57:22 peacefully listening to one other then your society will
1:57:27 prosper and not decline and if your society tends the vulnerable
1:57:30 among them the the young people the old people those who are
1:57:33 sick it will prosper and not decline and if your society
1:57:37 tends to the environment around it in a healthy way it will
1:57:41 prosper and not decline these are principles of compassion
1:57:45 and why society that you could read perhaps in a number of
1:57:47 great traditions from the Iroquois nation or from the
1:57:53 Taoist sages but here’s the beautiful piece yes these are
1:57:56 good things meeting in harmony and discussing in harmony and
1:58:00 being respectful for one another and so forth there are
1:58:05 practices that you can teach and learn that develop this
1:58:10 capacity so that in our elementary schools now you
1:58:13 know through organizations like castle which is a consortium
1:58:17 for social emotional learning that’s worked in you know
1:58:21 ten thousand schools kids learn social and emotional
1:58:25 learning they learn compassion and it changes their lives
1:58:28 they’re better academically and all these kids carry the
1:58:32 troubles of our times they hear the news they see the trouble
1:58:35 even in their own family to teach you how to steward your own
1:58:39 heart from when you’re young and then these capacities are
1:58:42 now being incorporated as we know mindfulness based stress
1:58:45 reduction in clinics and hospitals and businesses and
1:58:50 there’s the mindfulness teachers when the Seattle Seahawks
1:58:53 won the championship or the Chicago Bulls in the L.A.
1:58:56 Lakers when there were championship teams they had a
1:58:59 meditation coach a mindfulness coach George Mumford a good
1:59:03 friend and that these capacities can be learned wherever we
1:59:07 are and they transform our life it’s not just by accident
1:59:09 or that you have this beautiful experience on the mountains
1:59:14 or making love but you can make that alive for you through
1:59:18 these trainings every day every part of your life Jack
1:59:21 there is a question I was planning on asking at some point
1:59:25 anyway and I think this is a good segue which is how can you
1:59:28 get a busy person hooked on mindfulness practice you know
1:59:31 what would be a first step or how to start and since we’re
1:59:34 talking about loving kindness I would like to give a bit of
1:59:37 a hard sell for loving kindness meditation is one option
1:59:42 because I recall perhaps it was two years ago I was really
1:59:45 beating myself up and for people who don’t know this about
1:59:49 me I’ve spent the majority of my life being my own worst enemy
1:59:53 in terms of inner dialogue extremely brutal and hyper
1:59:57 critical and load some of myself in so many different
2:00:00 respects and I was going through a particularly intense and
2:00:05 difficult time with that inner critic just ruthlessly beating
2:00:09 myself up and at that point another friend of mine Chad
2:00:14 Manktan who created the search inside yourself classic Google
2:00:18 he was a very early on engineer which became the most
2:00:21 over subscribed class for employees at Google recommended
2:00:24 that I take a look at loving kindness meditation and I didn’t
2:00:28 have any particularly sophisticated approach to it but I
2:00:31 decided with nothing to lose and that I was having so much
2:00:34 trouble during that period sitting still and trying to focus
2:00:38 on say the breath or anything like that that at night this
2:00:42 was happened to coincide with book deadline probably not pure
2:00:46 coincidence that my beating myself up was exacerbated during
2:00:50 that time that was a few years ago and I began at night in
2:00:54 my case when I would take a shower at night or sit in a sauna
2:00:58 I very often go to hotels to write which is something Maya Angelou
2:01:01 and a few others that convinced me might be a good idea that
2:01:04 I would consider two people just like you had mentioned two
2:01:08 people I really cared for and wish them well that’s all I did
2:01:11 and Chad had said to me man is usually what I would call him
2:01:15 that at one point a woman in one of his classes had done this
2:01:20 for one day at work every hour on the hour she would just look
2:01:23 out of her office and wish someone well that she could see
2:01:26 in her mind’s eye for 60 seconds or so and she said it was her
2:01:29 best day of work in seven years and I found that unbelievable
2:01:33 so I decided to try it myself and that week of just spending
2:01:37 maybe two to four minutes at night before going to bed
2:01:42 ended up being one of the most blissful weeks in memory
2:01:46 but certainly at that point in several years it was really profound
2:01:49 and I couldn’t pick out any other variable that had changed
2:01:52 so for me I just want to for people who are listening and saying
2:01:55 ah you know what I’m type A driven super hyper competitor
2:02:00 this doesn’t apply to me that it very well could apply to you
2:02:05 and that by taking a little bit of the harmful edge off
2:02:08 you don’t automatically remove your competitive edge
2:02:11 and in fact I would argue just as you mentioned that the bowls
2:02:16 that you used to have or still do it used to have a mindfulness coach
2:02:20 for competitive advantage that it can be another tool in your toolkit
2:02:23 and doesn’t take you out of the game so to speak
2:02:26 it just makes you more aware of the games that you’re playing
2:02:30 so that’s a long sort of infomercial sales pitch
2:02:34 that I wanted to just make sure I got in because I discounted
2:02:37 a lot of these practices for a very long time because I thought
2:02:41 it would at best be a waste of time and at worse take away
2:02:46 some of my skills or tendencies that allowed me to get to where I am
2:02:49 so that is more of a confessional than a question
2:02:52 but I would love to hear your thoughts any additional thoughts
2:02:55 on loving kindness meditation but also any additional thoughts
2:03:00 on how if you wanted to get a busy maybe even impatient person
2:03:06 hooked on mindfulness practice what first steps or approaches you might suggest
2:03:10 so a lot of different questions sort of woven into what you said
2:03:13 and the first is that there’s a kind of misunderstanding
2:03:17 in our culture that love is a weakness and it’s not
2:03:22 there is a way in which it’s the force that can
2:03:26 probably the only force that can meet the level of aggression
2:03:31 or violence and other such things that are happening in the world
2:03:35 it’s the power that lets mothers lift cars off their children
2:03:38 or lets somebody like Dr. Martin Luther King
2:03:42 stand after his church was bombed and children were killed
2:03:46 and say we will meet your physical violence with soul force
2:03:50 we will not harm you but we will love you so deeply
2:03:54 that we will not only transform ourselves but we will transform you
2:03:58 in the process and so the notion that love is somehow a weakness
2:04:01 I think we do everything out of love we want to be loved
2:04:05 even in our ambition and our desire for success
2:04:09 underneath it is you know we want to be well
2:04:13 we want to be fine to our happiness and that’s part of love
2:04:17 so it’s actually a power and my colleague and friend
2:04:21 Wes Nisker went to interview Gary Snyder a couple of years ago
2:04:26 Gary is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and environmentalist
2:04:30 for 50 years been writing about bioregionalism and one of our great
2:04:34 kind of elders in this environmental movement
2:04:38 he said Gary what do you have to say to us now that oceans are rising
2:04:42 the world climate is changing hotter and hotter
2:04:46 the species extinction and Gary looked back and he said don’t feel guilty
2:04:50 if you’re going to save it don’t save it out of guilt
2:04:55 or anger or fear those are the very things that are actually making the world worse
2:04:59 save it because you love it because it’s part of you
2:05:03 because it and that is the power whether you’re starting a company
2:05:07 but also it’s not just that you you know some vision okay
2:05:11 now I’m going to become this wealthy playboy or whatever
2:05:15 you know zillionaire then what is your life mean for you
2:05:19 and what do you really want and when you listen there is something
2:05:23 in you and it’s part of your birthright to both be able to
2:05:27 give your gifts but also to love and be loved in return and it turns
2:05:31 out that it’s a power so then what you talk about is that
2:05:35 it doesn’t take much to begin the training and you’re you know two minutes
2:05:39 or four minutes in the evening or this woman at her work taking
2:05:43 once an hour 30 seconds or a minute to look
2:05:47 at somebody there and offer a well-wishing
2:05:51 can transform everything for people who want the
2:05:55 practical support because it is hard to do on your own if you go
2:05:59 to sounds true dot com and look up the programs that I have
2:06:03 first there’s a 40 day program called mindfulness daily
2:06:07 which is 15 minutes a day or 12 minutes a day depend on the
2:06:11 segment that both gives instructions in mindfulness loving awareness
2:06:15 and loving kindness practice and it’s 12 or 15
2:06:19 minutes a day and by the end of those 40 days you really have learned the
2:06:23 inner skills and then it builds up there’s then a deeper training called
2:06:27 power of awareness and for those who are interested we’re about to open an online
2:06:31 teacher training for people interested in mindful passing along mindfulness
2:06:35 and loving kindness to others jet just interject for one second for people listening
2:06:39 I will also link to all of these resources in the show notes
2:06:43 which you can find at tim dot blog forward slash podcast so
2:06:47 you don’t necessarily have to remember all these things you can go to the URL and
2:06:51 have direct links to these resources sorry to interrupt Jack just wanted to mention
2:06:55 people listening and with it then there is also the programs
2:06:59 there there’s one called guided meditations that’s you know a download
2:07:03 it’s like ten bucks or something and it has a loving kindness practice
2:07:07 compassion practice a forgiveness practice I think it may even have a joy
2:07:11 practice and it’s really helpful to have guided meditations at first
2:07:15 because otherwise your attention we have a very short attention
2:07:19 span in modern society Albert Einstein at least according to scientific
2:07:23 American said if you can drive safely while kissing
2:07:27 a girl you’re simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves
2:07:31 and we are in this kind of multitasking
2:07:35 world with our devices and we’ve forgotten how to
2:07:39 tend our own hearts we’ve forgotten how in some ways to really be present
2:07:43 for one another and more importantly for our
2:07:47 own life and so getting guided meditations
2:07:51 is tremendously helpful and doing these little mini practices that
2:07:55 you talk about one minute two minutes several times a day
2:07:59 can transform you I was just going to mention to people also if you look at
2:08:03 behavioral change if you look at BJ fog formerly the persuasion laboratory
2:08:07 at Stanford you look at dietary change any of these things doing
2:08:11 less than you think you’re capable of doing is a really good long term
2:08:15 strategy in terms of starting off rigging
2:08:19 the game so that you can win in the beginning so that your past fail mark in your mind
2:08:23 is a really really low hurdle so I just wanted to reiterate guided
2:08:27 meditation don’t white knuckle in the beginning make it beautiful as easy as possible
2:08:31 the same principle from ancient you know texts
2:08:35 say that you start in the easiest way for some people
2:08:39 kindness for themselves seems impossible but then you pick a child you care about
2:08:43 someone else or even when you do go to yourself you think of yourself when you were
2:08:47 an innocent child and wish yourself well the game is to do
2:08:51 whatever naturally opens the gateway whatever is the
2:08:55 easiest for some people as their dog you come home and the most non judgmental
2:08:59 being in their life wags its tail and loves you and it doesn’t care you know
2:09:03 what’s going on in your head so you take the avenue that most naturally
2:09:07 opens your heart and then you do this just a little at a time
2:09:11 as you said and it doesn’t take long but the other thing that’s important
2:09:15 is that sometimes as you do it it can actually
2:09:19 display or show you the hypercritical nature of your mind
2:09:23 the shame that you carry the self judgment or
2:09:27 self loathing and so then you say well what do you do then
2:09:31 or it brings up its opposite is that’s the place that you just breathe
2:09:35 and hold all that stuff with kindness because this is our humanity
2:09:39 and we all have some of that and the point isn’t to get rid of it
2:09:43 or judge yourself for having it or try to fix it it’s almost as if you put your
2:09:47 hand on your heart and you say you know this is like mindful self compassion
2:09:51 or deep training this is part of the measure
2:09:55 of struggles that I’ve been given like every human being
2:09:59 these things have tried to protect me and now I can hold them with tenderness
2:10:03 and say alright you know thank you but I don’t need your help anymore I can
2:10:07 find to myself and in that way you’re not trying to fix yourself
2:10:11 or perfect yourself if anything you’re trying to perfect your love
2:10:15 Jack I wanted to give you a credit
2:10:19 for help that you gave me and also tactical advice that you gave me
2:10:23 during the 10 day silent retreat you gave me a lot but I want to highlight
2:10:27 one that’s related to what you just said I was going through a very very
2:10:31 difficult time particularly days 7, 8, 9
2:10:35 and you gave me the advice that you just mentioned
2:10:39 and there’s one component I want to really underscore for people and that is
2:10:43 when you’re for instance trying to do loving kindness
2:10:47 meditation and instead you get the opposite or you get this
2:10:51 self ridicule who are you to try to meditate
2:10:55 in this self indulgent way this is ridiculous or this voice starts to pop up
2:10:59 that is angry or hateful whatever it might be
2:11:03 the process of not simply dismissing it
2:11:07 or fighting against it but recognizing
2:11:11 it as a coping strategy that helped you in the past in some way
2:11:15 that you developed because in my case you know the rage
2:11:19 was a fuel that without which I probably would never have
2:11:23 left Long Island where I had friends who later overdosed on opiates and so on
2:11:27 so it was a gift in a way and a tool
2:11:31 and as you said you can thank that
2:11:35 response or that part of yourself and then
2:11:39 put it and I remember you recommended even visualizing
2:11:43 and please correct me if I’m wrong or elaborate but visualized taking that part
2:11:47 of you that is a coping strategy thanking it and then putting it say on a shelf
2:11:51 where you can use it later if needed be along with say
2:11:55 other icons or figures who whether it’s Buddha
2:11:59 that you recognize as wise and then continuing with the meditation
2:12:03 so that thanking that part of yourself for the function that it once served
2:12:07 even if it is not serving you now was such a key insight
2:12:11 for me that then helped me to manage
2:12:15 my internal states or observe and appreciate my internal
2:12:19 states for the next several days where I really felt like I was lost at that point
2:12:23 so that was a really direct tool that helped me tremendously
2:12:27 yeah thank you for bringing it up because it’s so important for people
2:12:31 when we come to that hypercritical shame place
2:12:35 we feel very vulnerable and we’ve been identified with it
2:12:39 and because you needed it I needed these things for survival
2:12:43 and if you try to get rid of this stuff you just end up in a fruitless battle
2:12:47 against yourself and it’s just more judgment so what you described it saying
2:12:51 thank you for helping me survive I appreciate it let me put it on the shelf
2:12:55 I’ll put it in the lap of the Buddha or whoever you know the
2:12:59 goddess of infinite compassion you hold it for me if I need it I’ll pull it back
2:13:03 and that sense that this isn’t who you are
2:13:07 it doesn’t describe who you are it isn’t who you are it was a strategy
2:13:11 because we’re vulnerable beings and you were tender as a child
2:13:15 and you had to make sure you could survive thank you for that and now
2:13:19 I have a different capacity and let me just talk about that capacity
2:13:23 a little bit because the capacity for presence
2:13:27 and the great heart of compassion that’s said to be your birthright
2:13:31 is a really mysterious thing talk about identity
2:13:35 and when my youngest brother’s wife Esta was dying of
2:13:39 cancer and she’s just a beautiful being
2:13:43 and I spent quite a bit of time with her and with my brother
2:13:47 she was close to dying I’ve gone home to sleep and I wanted to get up early and hurry back
2:13:51 so I was very close and I got my car
2:13:55 I had to stop the drugstore to pick up a prescription
2:13:59 hurriedly running dashing through the aisles and so forth and I’m at the checkout counter
2:14:03 and all of a sudden my whole body relaxed
2:14:07 and I thought oh Esta died and I got out to the car
2:14:11 and I called my brother I said how’s it going he said oh
2:14:15 Esta died a few minutes ago and I said I know
2:14:19 I’ll be there shortly we’ve all had these experiences if I ask
2:14:23 in a room how many have had this particular kind where you knew someone
2:14:27 died when they died you know a quarter of the hands will go up
2:14:31 why is this it’s because who we are is not
2:14:35 this body we are the consciousness itself and so
2:14:39 with all these practices what they allow us to do is
2:14:43 to step out of what’s called the small sense of self or the body of
2:14:47 fear and reconnect with the field of
2:14:51 connection and interdependence of compassion and to take our history
2:14:55 and to honor it but not be bound by it one of my favorite
2:14:59 stories is a Ram Das again this wonderful
2:15:03 spiritual teacher in the early years when he came back from
2:15:07 being with his guru in India he was sitting
2:15:11 up there and teaching you know
2:15:15 devotional practices and meditation practices and he had a beard
2:15:19 and white robes and beads and he was sort of in the guru
2:15:23 outfit and a woman in the front row raised her hand and said Ram Das Ram Das
2:15:27 aren’t you Jewish what’s with this Hindu stuff and Ram Das said well yes I am
2:15:31 actually I was bar mitzvahed as I was too and there are many things
2:15:35 I love about the Jewish spiritual tradition the generosity
2:15:39 of it the Kabbalah all the great teachings on the many
2:15:43 stages and states of consciousness the Hasidic masters who are like
2:15:47 Zen masters and then he paused and looked at and he said but remember
2:15:51 I’m only Jewish on my parent’s side
2:15:55 and there is something both witty which he was but also profound
2:15:59 about it because we are not just
2:16:03 our parental history or the historical
2:16:07 circumstances of this place and body that we were born into and something
2:16:11 less knows this so that when you look at the there’s a wonderful
2:16:15 book that came out last year the year before called the Book of Joy
2:16:19 which was a conversation between the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu
2:16:23 and both of them have marvelous laughs I think people go to
2:16:27 hear the Dalai Lama by the tens of thousands not just for the
2:16:31 Tibetan teachings some of which are actually hard to understand
2:16:35 or even the fact that he’s this Nobel Prize winning world figure
2:16:39 I think people go to hear him laugh that somebody who’s
2:16:43 carried so much suffering from the loss of his
2:16:47 country where he can’t return and the burning of temples
2:16:51 and texts and all those things and he and Tutu had a week together when they
2:16:55 were asked and this created this book how can you be joyful
2:16:59 how can you laugh like this when you live through apartheid and the death
2:17:03 of so many people around you and Dalai Lama
2:17:07 they banter back and forth and like brothers and Dalai Lama says
2:17:11 so much has been taken from me you know they’ve taken our sacred texts
2:17:15 they’ve taken our ability to make prayers in public they’ve
2:17:19 taken so much of our culture why should I let them take my
2:17:23 happiness and then Tutu starts to laugh and giggle and say
2:17:27 you know I’ve been through so much but I am not going to let myself live in
2:17:31 that place I’m gonna let myself live in that which affirms life
2:17:35 and in a kind of profound joy that we made it
2:17:39 we’re still alive that we can contribute that we can be here in this beautiful
2:17:43 earth and this shift of consciousness is what’s needed
2:17:47 for the world because if we look honestly no amount
2:17:51 of technology alone is going to save us
2:17:55 nanotechnology and space technology and biotechnology and worldwide
2:17:59 web internet computer or super computer technology is going to stop
2:18:03 continuing warfare and racism and
2:18:07 tribalism and environmental destruction those
2:18:11 are happening based on consciousness of the human heart
2:18:15 and so we are now you know these we’ve made these enormous
2:18:19 developments outwardly where you have the great library of Alexandria and your
2:18:23 smartphone in your pocket along with a million you know cat
2:18:27 YouTube’s or whatever but there it is it’s all in there
2:18:31 and then what we need is collectively
2:18:35 to develop a transformation inwardly
2:18:39 our inner life that is parallel to this enormous outer transformation
2:18:43 the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff some years ago said we are
2:18:47 a nation of nuclear giants and ethical
2:18:51 you know or you know I don’t know how old humanity is
2:18:55 but it’s time to grow up so that this work that we’re talking about
2:18:59 is both individual but as you learn to meet
2:19:03 your own life with greater understanding and compassion
2:19:07 it empowers you to move through the world in a different way
2:19:11 and to help others do the same and then you get the kind of joy
2:19:15 of tutu and the Dalai Lama that you’re somehow part of an awakening
2:19:19 that humanity now needs more than ever. Jack I’d love to
2:19:23 ask you these interviews are always
2:19:27 by some self interest I always have some issue or challenge or problem that I’m trying
2:19:31 to figure out so I reach out to someone like you to help me do it but I record the conversation
2:19:35 as we chatted about before we hit record and you know this already but the last
2:19:39 several years have been very very important for me in terms of
2:19:43 addressing certain traumas and the last eight weeks in particular
2:19:47 have been transformative in a lot of beautiful ways
2:19:51 and the duration of periods within which I don’t berate
2:19:55 or attack myself have become longer but
2:19:59 there are still times when the wheels fly off the car
2:20:03 and this last week has been one such example and I tend to
2:20:07 when I make a mistake or feel like I’m backsliding or relapsing
2:20:11 to compound the problem by beating myself up then I beat myself
2:20:15 up about beating myself up and you know where that goes so let me paint a picture
2:20:19 so I found out recently that my Japanese
2:20:23 host father and I’ve been in touch with this family since I was 15 I’m very
2:20:27 very close to them 40 now and I found out that he just
2:20:31 was admitted because the host mother sent me an email to the hospital
2:20:35 with liver cancer they don’t have the details yet I just sent a follow
2:20:39 up email they don’t know what the prognosis is exactly but
2:20:43 needless to say the worst case scenarios are certainly being conjured in my mind or the potential
2:20:47 of those and then simultaneously
2:20:51 have been contending with and I believe you have some experience with this
2:20:55 contending with a what should be a very
2:20:59 simple construction project of a cabin
2:21:03 up in the mountains and it has been delayed and delayed and delayed
2:21:07 and there have been cost overruns and cost overruns and cost overruns and promises made
2:21:11 promises broken expectations set expectations missed
2:21:15 and a friend of mine called with a whole new slew of problems yesterday related to this
2:21:19 place and I lost my shit for lack of a better term I mean there are many
2:21:23 other things going on simultaneously but I got really pissed and I was like you know what
2:21:27 this extending the olive branch being understanding can’t gambit is
2:21:31 not working with these people like I need to take out the baseball bat
2:21:35 and like pull old Tim off the shelf who is just this like juggernaut head through
2:21:39 brick walls and be like listen fuckface like if you don’t do ABCD&E
2:21:43 here well these are going to be the consequences and then I’m like well wait
2:21:47 I’m supposed to be compassionate but how do I not be a pushover
2:21:51 and it turns into this big dramatic play inside my
2:21:55 head and then I wait this is going to end soon I’m not going to keep going but what I then
2:21:59 often do is self medicate with caffeine
2:22:03 and I think it’s a way of feeling productive without
2:22:07 actually being productive and it also creates so much volume on the
2:22:11 noise I think I use it to tune out a lot of feelings
2:22:15 so when someone relapses or has
2:22:19 this kind of experience what do you suggest to them I mean is there
2:22:23 particular pattern interrupt or approach that you
2:22:27 found helpful for regaining footing oh so there’s a number of things
2:22:31 to say first of all you could call it relapsing or you could
2:22:35 just call it yeah being human
2:22:39 the most beloved poet in Japan was a Zen master named
2:22:43 Ryo Khan and there’s a two line verse of his
2:22:47 that I particularly find fitting for this where he wrote
2:22:51 last year a foolish monk this year no change
2:22:55 you know and you can sort of feel the humor
2:22:59 and the tenderness in it and there’s a way in which you see your personality
2:23:03 the point you know you have a body you have this particular body you’re born with and you can
2:23:07 transform it in certain ways within the limits of the body that you were given
2:23:11 and similarly you have a personality and anybody who has a number of
2:23:15 kids realizes that you don’t come in Tamblarasa that you actually this kid
2:23:19 is born and has this kind of temperament so you have a personality and just like you
2:23:23 don’t want to look too closely to the body sometimes you don’t want to look back closely
2:23:27 to personality either you know it has its foibles and its fears and all of
2:23:31 that and so you start to kind of look at and say oh now there’s
2:23:35 a really good example of how neurotic I can get thank you
2:23:39 for reminding me you know and then you get a little
2:23:43 like the keeper of the zoo a little more tender with those kind of creatures
2:23:47 it’s bringing in the non-judgment or the loving kindness for the
2:23:51 way that you actually are and not your ideal or bringing
2:23:55 compassion you could say yeah this is a tough one and this triggered I got triggered
2:23:59 so what now the other thing is that I have the same experience where we had
2:24:03 a big remodel of our house when I was some years ago
2:24:07 raising my daughter and in my first marriage and
2:24:11 we were supposed to go and teach and travel in Europe and this guy who was a good
2:24:15 contractor but you know everything of course gets more expensive and you have to do this
2:24:19 and it kept getting slowed down and I said you are going to get this done so we could make
2:24:23 these decisions forward to Europe and it’s not happening you’ve got to hurry up
2:24:27 I do that like three or four different times and it doesn’t happen finally I go
2:24:31 in I get pissed and I say listen you
2:24:35 said this in our contract it was going to be done by and if you don’t fucking get this done
2:24:39 by the time I’m going to pull your ass in court and sue you because I need this
2:24:43 done and I’m not going to pay you the goddamn money oh no no no
2:24:47 he looked at me and he said oh you really want this done don’t you I said yes
2:24:51 next day there’s a huge crew it starts to get done and I realized okay
2:24:55 what I had been sort of talking meditation speak yeah nice
2:24:59 get it done he was a fucking contractor and I just had to
2:25:03 I had to speak contract or ease get the goddamn job done
2:25:07 or I’ll haul your ass in court okay I got it yeah I’ll send the team over
2:25:11 and that’s all it took so there’s something playful about that as well
2:25:15 it’s not that you can’t I’ve seen the dialogue I get angry at people
2:25:19 it’s not that you can’t use that power and that
2:25:23 understanding when it’s necessary to get to be very
2:25:27 strong or forceful and you don’t have to judge yourself unless you hurt people
2:25:31 and then of course that’s the misuse of it but it’s just it’s part of being human
2:25:35 is there something you say to yourself I don’t know you are
2:25:39 certainly in person and any with any contact I’ve had
2:25:43 with you one of the most compassionate
2:25:47 people I’ve ever met and I don’t use that word very much but your
2:25:51 presence of listening and being with someone is really
2:25:55 incredible I don’t know how much of that is intrinsic versus trained
2:25:59 but for better or for worse coming out of the womb I’ve been
2:26:03 very impatient since day one
2:26:07 so I worry about I can get it seems like my
2:26:11 default is speaking contract or ease to more than just
2:26:15 the way word contractor
2:26:19 who’s putting off work is there some
2:26:23 when I feel that the sensations of
2:26:27 anger beginning to bubble up is there something
2:26:31 that you would suggest as self talk or just a temporary
2:26:35 pumping of the breaks to make it an informed decision versus
2:26:39 just a lashing out well I could give you an answer but in a minute I’m
2:26:43 going to guide you in a little practice perfect so that you can find the better answer
2:26:47 first I just want to say that that anger
2:26:51 you know yes it’s your habit or maybe your temperament that’s energy
2:26:55 and there’s nothing wrong with energy you know it’s the power to let you do all the
2:26:59 kind of things you’ve done in your life that are tremendously creative or resourceful
2:27:03 or daring or whatever kinds of things so you want to respect
2:27:07 okay I’m getting filled with energy and you know it might be then you want to
2:27:11 lash out but first you want to respect that energy wow let me feel
2:27:15 this in my body whoo anger how big is it whoo okay then
2:27:19 your question is then your question is what can I do to modulate it
2:27:23 I could give you you know okay take some breaths ground yourself
2:27:27 look at that other person but instead as we’re talking
2:27:31 let yourself picture a circumstance
2:27:35 recently it might have been with your you know the contractor is doing your cabin
2:27:39 or something else you know that uprising of the
2:27:43 injustice of it and how right you are and how you’re going to get this
2:27:47 goddamn thing done and how you have to be hard and strong you feel
2:27:51 all that and feel the energy in your body first thing is just to remember what it felt
2:27:55 like and now you’re becoming the kind of mindful
2:27:59 loving witness of it and saying wow this is a lot of energy
2:28:03 can you feel that and remember that oh yeah okay
2:28:07 now next step is that the wisest
2:28:11 figure you can imagine maybe it’s the Buddha or
2:28:15 doesn’t matter some great master or martial arts master you know
2:28:19 who’s mastered themselves as well as there are comes to you
2:28:23 and let yourself imagine somebody’s going to teach you how to
2:28:27 manage this powerful energy and see who appears
2:28:31 somebody appears to you and first
2:28:35 they look at you and they smile and they say yeah this is the big energy
2:28:39 and they appreciate you so instead of saying oh you’re a doofus
2:28:43 you know they say oh yeah you actually carry some powerful energy and they acknowledge
2:28:47 that they bow to you yeah and you got it all right and then you say
2:28:51 yeah but how do I manage this when it takes me over and so this
2:28:55 master or whoever comes reaches under their robe and
2:28:59 pulls out a gift for you which is a clear
2:29:03 symbol of exactly what you need in that moment
2:29:07 to help you regulate it so that you can keep the energy but do it
2:29:11 in a way that doesn’t cause harm to you or another and this clear symbol
2:29:15 to be able to see it’s just what you need so let yourself picture the gifts
2:29:19 that they put in your hand and let yourself imagine see and
2:29:23 vision picture what it is and if you can’t see it
2:29:27 clearly hold it up to the sunlight you’ll be able to and then let me know what you get
2:29:31 you want me to tell you what it is yeah yeah all right
2:29:35 so the person who came to mind for me I went through a few
2:29:39 was the creator of judo fascinating guy named
2:29:43 Jigoro Kano really small guy who
2:29:47 yes who could throw all the big guys and smile at the same time
2:29:51 right exactly changed a lot also in Japanese government fascinating guy
2:29:55 the symbol I don’t know why this is to be honest but
2:29:59 it’s a pyramid the size with
2:30:03 straight edges about a little too big to hold in your palm
2:30:07 that is blue it’s like almost a
2:30:11 mixture of pure sky blue like blue bird blue
2:30:15 with a bit of electric blue mixed in and it’s
2:30:19 sort of a smoky vapor that’s floating around inside this
2:30:23 glass pyramid I have no idea why that’s the case but that’s what came up
2:30:27 all right so we’ll stay with it and then there’s one more little piece so he gives you this
2:30:31 pyramid free associate a little bit on what it
2:30:35 might possibly mean because these symbols are like dream images and they come from
2:30:39 a deep place in your side key and this pyramid has a message
2:30:43 for you this blue pyramid just guess what it might be
2:30:47 I think it’s very very stable it’s an extremely stable
2:30:51 structure and for me it also
2:30:55 I could imagine it representing power also it seems like a very powerful
2:30:59 symbol in many different cultures certainly
2:31:03 the blue is a little easier for me it’s a very cooling
2:31:07 soothing color where certainly red
2:31:11 is the color I would associate with a fire with the
2:31:15 high resonance, anger, energy would be more
2:31:19 of a red fire element so the blue would be a cooling
2:31:23 or countering balancing force for that
2:31:27 all right so now what I want you to do is imagine taking this
2:31:31 blue pyramid gift which represents
2:31:35 kind of extreme stability and also a kind of power
2:31:39 and cooling that’s given to you by Jigaro Kano and taking this
2:31:43 into your body so that there you are filled with this energy and anger
2:31:47 you know this huge wave of you let that be there
2:31:51 and you take this pyramid in and you let that energy
2:31:55 be inside this stable grounded
2:31:59 place of power and feel what it’s like to be inside
2:32:03 this blue pyramid with this energy and feel how it affects it
2:32:07 just notice as if there you’re in that circumstance and now I’m remembering
2:32:11 I am the blue pyramid and what does it feel like?
2:32:15 The most noticeable thing, I wonder of course how much of this
2:32:19 is the actual visualization versus the time out
2:32:23 that I permit myself to have but there’s very often
2:32:27 a tightness on the left side of my chest right by the sternum
2:32:31 and I feel when I start getting wound up
2:32:35 and that is absent after
2:32:39 taking this gift and then visualizing it being incorporated
2:32:43 that dissipates what you’re practicing and you know and then you know this very well in athletics
2:32:47 that yes you practice things but other times you also practice envisioning
2:32:51 whether it’s playing piano or whether it’s you know some
2:32:55 Olympic training that some of the times you just do it through visualization
2:32:59 that activates a lot of the same neural circuitry. So here you’re starting
2:33:03 to get the feeling of what it’s like to be in the middle of this
2:33:07 upwelling of anger and so forth and then taking
2:33:11 a couple of breaths and feeling the blue pyramid and the
2:33:15 connection with the earth and the stability of it and the power then
2:33:19 of that presence that cools you and allows
2:33:23 the anger to be there but not in the same uncontrolled way
2:33:27 Now there’s one more thing and that is if you imagine again
2:33:31 Jigoro Kano, I believe you said his name is, he comes
2:33:35 up to you after giving you this gift and he touches
2:33:39 you kindly on the shoulder and he has a few words of advice
2:33:43 of how to handle this powerful energy that comes up in you
2:33:47 because he knows all about it and what does he whisper into your
2:33:51 ear kindly? Well he whispers this came to
2:33:55 mind immediately. He says Zenyoko Zenyo, which is
2:33:59 you know, I still have this actually. There are two
2:34:03 he has many famous quotes but he has what you might consider
2:34:07 proverbs, short aphorisms that I’ve actually carried with me
2:34:11 since I was 15 but they’re packed away somewhere. I have two of them. They’re on cloth
2:34:15 and the first is
2:34:19 It means basically if you work hard
2:34:23 you will achieve, you will reach your target. It’s not the best translation but
2:34:27 that’s the idea. The other one is Zenyoko Zenyo, which is effectively
2:34:31 the most efficient use of energy
2:34:35 but it could also be the best/most benevolent use of energy
2:34:39 It’s a principle of Judo but it’s something that he applied to everything
2:34:43 including education. So it would be that
2:34:47 very short bite-sized aphorism which is, and I’m sure some scholars
2:34:51 probably disagree with me, but roughly translated here, at least as I
2:34:55 take it, is the maximum or most efficient
2:34:59 use of energy. So take that in, take
2:35:03 his intentions, Zenyoko Zenyo, the benevolent and efficient use
2:35:07 of it, seal the pyramid and now your assignment is
2:35:11 that the next five times that this comes, which
2:35:15 you will, maybe tomorrow or next week or so forth, bring in the blue pyramids,
2:35:19 stable, powerful, cooling, so the energy is still there
2:35:23 and then you hear his voice say Zenyoko Zenyo and you go, oh yeah, I can
2:35:27 use this but I can use it in a benevolent way. And try it
2:35:31 five times, then text me, let me know what happened
2:35:35 because now we’re closing the loop. If you do it and see
2:35:39 now you’re responsible, if you agree that you’re going to do it, it sort of
2:35:43 gooses the game a little bit and you go, okay, now I better do it because I have to let Jack know
2:35:47 what happened. Let me know what happens. Well, I’ll be able to use it this week
2:35:51 because I’m flying out to the site of this cabin to meet with everybody
2:35:55 and see what’s going on. So I’ll have at least five opportunities
2:35:59 to do that. You have your Zen training ahead. I mean, the other thing
2:36:03 that’s great and then that you can hear in this rather than by giving
2:36:07 you a cookie cutter answer is that we actually
2:36:11 have the wisdom that we’re
2:36:15 seeking or that’s available. We have it in ourselves.
2:36:19 I mean, you didn’t have to fly to Kyoto and get in your time machine to
2:36:23 go back and see Jigaro Kano or whoever it happens to be
2:36:27 the Dalai Lama or whoever happens to come to you, the Buddha or some other
2:36:31 great figure that actually the goddess of compassion
2:36:35 that we carry that wisdom in our own heart and part of
2:36:39 what these contemplative trainings do is they give us access
2:36:43 just by taking a little pause. It didn’t take you 30 seconds.
2:36:47 Okay, he appears. What do I do? Ah, here’s how my body would feel.
2:36:51 What perspective should I bring? Ah, here’s efficient and benevolent use
2:36:55 of energy. Okay, now I remember. So these
2:36:59 answers for the questions of the psyche and the heart
2:37:03 don’t require going somewhere. They
2:37:07 ask us to quiet and begin to listen. And as you do
2:37:11 you discover your own inherent wisdom and your own
2:37:15 compassion as well because the benevolent use that he offers
2:37:19 to you, where does that live? It lives in
2:37:23 Tim. It lives in you. One of the reasons I’ve wanted to have you
2:37:27 on the podcast for so long is that for me you represent
2:37:31 a very wide spectrum of tools. You have
2:37:35 developed a toolkit that has enabled you to work with
2:37:39 everyone from the seekers of say the Buddhist, along the lines
2:37:43 of the Buddhist traditions to say adolescents or cutters to
2:37:47 war vets with PTSD, missing limbs and so on. You’ve worked with a very
2:37:51 diverse set of students and
2:37:55 patients maybe even. And that leads me to my next question, which is
2:37:59 after these experiences abroad, why did you decide to come back to the US
2:38:03 period? And then why did you decide to go back
2:38:07 to school and study clinical psychology? So after
2:38:11 the first five years in Asia, there were two other westerners who
2:38:15 would become monks. It was a handful. And some were going to stay
2:38:19 for the rest of their lives. I’d learned a lot and so that was kind of a
2:38:23 choice. Am I just going to stay? And I realized no, I
2:38:27 want a family. I want a lover. I was a young man
2:38:31 after all and just the celibacy for those years was actually pretty hard.
2:38:35 I want to see if what I have learned really
2:38:39 translates into the life back home. I don’t want to
2:38:43 just leave it. And so it was some wrestling, but it became very clear to me
2:38:47 that I wasn’t fit for the monastery for the rest of my life.
2:38:51 I had other, not only other desires, but also and longings,
2:38:55 but also were real interested to say, does this work elsewhere? So I came back and
2:38:59 thought, well, what can I do? I got a couple jobs and right away.
2:39:03 Of course, what I knew how to do would be a student, but I was now a student of the mind
2:39:07 and the heart. And I thought, well, how do I learn more about what happened
2:39:11 to me in the monastery? Oh, I’ll study western psychology.
2:39:15 And so that started me on that particular
2:39:19 path. And I learned a lot of complimentary things. There’s some very good trauma
2:39:23 work in the West that I’ve learned about that really enhances
2:39:27 the compassion and loving kindness and mindfulness things that I learned
2:39:31 in the temple. And now I’ve done a lot
2:39:35 of years of teaching eastern western psychology together. These principles that I’ve
2:39:39 learned are spreading so widely in western psychology. I went to the largest
2:39:43 therapy conference in the country in December
2:39:47 and down in Anaheim and gave a talk, you know, here’s the room full of
2:39:51 3,000 or 5,000 people. And I asked how many of you have
2:39:55 some experience of meditation or mindfulness practice? And the
2:39:59 majority of the hands went up. And that would not have happened, you know,
2:40:03 20 or 30 years ago. So eastern psychology is now
2:40:07 becoming more invisibly woven into the understandings
2:40:11 of clinical psychology in the West and it’s beautiful. Now, I want to
2:40:15 say something else, you know, when you talk about working with a variety
2:40:19 of population, yes, people in prisons,
2:40:23 yes, that’s our kids coming out of gangs, but also
2:40:27 CEOs. And there’s a dialogue that Bill Ford and I did. He was
2:40:31 at that time the chairman of Ford voters. He was actually
2:40:35 the CEO, perhaps, before that, but then he was the chairman of Ford
2:40:39 voters. And he talks about it too. It was in
2:40:43 2008, I guess, when the auto
2:40:47 industry was just about to melt down. He called
2:40:51 we’d had some contact. He’s a meditator and he said, you know, I’m going to
2:40:55 lose my grandfather’s company and maybe the whole industry on my watch
2:40:59 and it’s hard to sleep. What can I do? And we did loving kindness
2:41:03 practices and mindfulness practices together and so forth. And I gave him some
2:41:07 practices that he could use. And it turns out that at whatever
2:41:11 level you’re on, whether you’re incarcerated or whether you’re
2:41:15 a CEO or whether you’re a returning vet, that these
2:41:19 inner capacities that we have to be present
2:41:23 without getting lost to bring an understanding
2:41:27 attention to these energies, just as you were doing with anger in ourselves
2:41:31 are really, really liberating. And sometimes
2:41:35 what’s needed, like for the vets or the people coming back from the war,
2:41:39 is also a kind of forgiveness practice and trauma work.
2:41:43 And we’ll come together and, you know, they’ll say things like, I can’t tell you
2:41:47 what I saw. Because in fact, people don’t want to hear the
2:41:51 stories of war. They can’t tell the story. And if they do often, they retraumatize
2:41:55 themselves. And the people around them couldn’t bear
2:41:59 it. But there is something worse because they’ll say
2:42:03 I can’t tell you what I had to do. And so it’s locked up in their hearts,
2:42:07 you know, and then whether they have, they can drink or they can distract
2:42:11 themselves or get in blind rages periodically. But if
2:42:15 you get a room of returning combat vets and hold
2:42:19 it with a proper space of understanding and
2:42:23 compassion, not only can they tell their stories,
2:42:27 which they’ve never told, but they can listen to one another and say
2:42:31 oh yeah, I’ve been there. And all of a sudden they’re not so alone anymore.
2:42:35 And that release of the weight on their heart.
2:42:39 So there’s a social dimension to trauma where we need to tell the story.
2:42:43 Helps them release also what’s carried in their nervous system and in their body.
2:42:47 And there’s some correlation between those two together
2:42:51 that becomes very powerful. And we need that. We need, I do a lot
2:42:55 of teaching of forgiveness practice and self-forgiveness. Those are also
2:42:59 on those guided meditations that I teach. And for a lot of us, self-forgiveness
2:43:03 like self-compassion becomes a very, very important
2:43:07 way to liberate ourselves from what we had to do to survive
2:43:11 in the past so that we’re actually free in our life.
2:43:15 How do you set the stage, for instance, with those vets?
2:43:19 What do you say to them or what exercise might you do
2:43:23 that opens the door for them to share these stories?
2:43:27 So a couple of images. One with gang kids and then one with vets.
2:43:31 For gang kids who come in or these kids who are trying to get out of gangs
2:43:35 and might come with a mentor or something like that to some events we’ve had.
2:43:39 You can get these guys and their, you know, their hoods are up and their hats are
2:43:43 backward and they’re leaning back and saying, like, come on, man, you’re going to teach us meditation.
2:43:47 You’re going to teach us, give us some poem, stories or vets. Listen, we’re
2:43:51 out on the street. People got nine millimeters. You do, you got to give us something better than that.
2:43:55 So we try to make a setting
2:43:59 that honors who they are from the very beginning
2:44:03 and say, well, we can’t talk yet about the real things that we came here
2:44:07 to do because there are too many people in this room who have not been acknowledged
2:44:11 and not been respected. So would you go out
2:44:15 in the parking lot and pick up a stone for every young person you know
2:44:19 who’s been killed? And we light one candle and put it in the center of a table
2:44:23 and say, bring it back in and say their name and put their stone
2:44:27 by this candle. The simplest possible ritual.
2:44:31 And these guys and sometimes gals will come in and their hands are full of stones.
2:44:35 No young people should know that many dead people.
2:44:39 And they’ll say, this is for Tito and this is for RJ and this is for
2:44:43 Homegirl. And pretty soon there’s a mound
2:44:47 of stones and the names of people they’ve lost
2:44:51 were put into the fabric of the air
2:44:55 of that room and their hoods are no longer over their heads. They’re sitting up like
2:44:59 okay, this is the place where we can talk about what’s really going on.
2:45:03 So there’s something about making, whether it’s through the simplest ritual
2:45:07 or making a container in which people realize
2:45:11 that this is a safe place to talk about what we’ve never done before.
2:45:15 With the vets, one of the things that Michael Mead, Luis Rodriguez, these guys from
2:45:19 Mosaic Multicultural Foundation that I’ve worked with for years and are
2:45:23 really wonderful. Michael, who’s a great
2:45:27 drummer and a storyteller and mythologist who’s also been working in prisons
2:45:31 and with vets and gang kids for years, he’ll say, let me tell you
2:45:35 an ancient story of returning warriors. And he has a
2:45:39 handful of stories from Africa or Tibet or the Mayan tradition
2:45:43 about warriors coming back with their hands covered with blood
2:45:47 and their eyes filled with the
2:45:51 martial energy that they can’t stop the violence because it’s
2:45:55 taken them over. And here’s a myth or a story
2:45:59 that tells about how ancient warriors were brought back into their community.
2:46:03 I’ll tell you the myth if you want to hear one of them. Oh, yes, please.
2:46:07 So here we are, you know, and there’s these vets and already stories have started
2:46:11 to pour out about, I can’t tell you what I saw, I can’t tell you what I had to do.
2:46:15 And Michael stood up and he said, let me tell you an old
2:46:19 Irish story of an Irish warrior named
2:46:23 Cochulain, or I’m not sure how his name is pronounced, something like that.
2:46:27 Then he was the most fierce and famous of all Irish warriors.
2:46:31 The Irish warriors were mad men because they would go out, they’d paint
2:46:35 their bodies and they’d go out naked and sometimes you’d just see them coming and run the other way.
2:46:39 But anyway, there was some rotting king and army
2:46:43 that had come to threaten their area and so Cochulain went out
2:46:47 and almost single-handedly chased them and defeated them.
2:46:51 But then he was coming back to his own town in a chariot
2:46:55 covered with blood and his eyes blazing
2:46:59 bearing down on his own town still possessed with the violence
2:47:03 of war with the God Mars. And they were all terrified
2:47:07 he would come and do violence there too. And so they were like, what can we do?
2:47:11 What can we do? And they went to ask the old wise
2:47:15 woman in the village and she said three things.
2:47:19 And so the first thing, they lined up all the women in the village who bared their breasts
2:47:23 and this slowed him down as if it reminded
2:47:27 him of his mother’s milk or something. And because he would slow down
2:47:31 then the second thing they did was take a rope and tie it around
2:47:35 him and put him in a huge cauldron of cold water
2:47:39 which hissed off his body and then they filled it three times with
2:47:43 cold water and finally his body cooled down. And then the third
2:47:47 thing they did is they took him at Stillbound
2:47:51 and they lay him on a carpet in the court of the local king
2:47:55 and they sang to him the stories and myths
2:47:59 and songs of warriors who had protected
2:48:03 the kingdom and then come back and released
2:48:07 the violence and the fears that they carried
2:48:11 and planted their crops again and loved their families
2:48:15 and resumed living in harmony with the community
2:48:19 from which they came. And they told the ancient stories and sang the songs
2:48:23 for three days and nights and when it was over
2:48:27 eyes opened they let his, they untied him and he was back as a normal
2:48:31 human being again. And after Michael told this
2:48:35 story to vets who’d been telling terrible accounts
2:48:39 of things that happened, in this room a hundred men
2:48:43 stood up and we’d been working with a simple African chant, a song
2:48:47 that was really an African chant of a prayer
2:48:51 “Earth, hold me for this living is hard.” We all sang to the vets
2:48:55 together for a long time as if
2:48:59 we could sing them back into their bodies from this as if they were
2:49:03 lying there in the court of the king. So this is, you ask
2:49:07 the question, how do you make a setting that allows people
2:49:11 to truly feel that they can tell their stories and be held in
2:49:15 compassion, whether it’s the grief of these gang kids
2:49:19 that no one’s really given a place to give voice to, you know
2:49:23 or that who says I can’t tell you what I had to do. That’s very
2:49:27 powerful and it makes me
2:49:31 also think back to conversations I’ve had with
2:49:35 Sebastian Junger who is a war time
2:49:39 journalist has co-produced
2:49:43 and shot a number of really harrowing documentary films
2:49:47 including “Restrepo” and most recently wrote a book called “Tribe”
2:49:51 that touches on some similar topic area
2:49:55 and leads me to ask you, are there any rites of passages
2:49:59 or rituals that you feel would be useful
2:50:03 for every man or woman to experience? And this is something that I’ve
2:50:07 felt a longing for and a lack of since
2:50:11 my teenage years. I’m not Jewish, did not have a bat mitzvah, bar mitzvah
2:50:15 I don’t know if that serves that purpose in the Jewish tradition
2:50:19 necessarily, but are there any rituals or rites of
2:50:23 passage that you think we could use in let’s just say the United States
2:50:27 that would be helpful to whether it’s a
2:50:31 specific population, specific group or anyone?
2:50:35 So what you’re talking about is a really big subject, it’s a subject of
2:50:39 initiation and unfortunately bar mitzvah is at least when I was
2:50:43 a relatively lightweight and meaningless thing, you get up there
2:50:47 and you recite your Hebrew portion of the Bible and
2:50:51 now you’re a man and they give you a bunch of presents and there wasn’t a lot of meaning in it
2:50:55 the problem that you raise is that of the lack of initiation
2:50:59 and what’s true is that it’s been forgotten in our culture
2:51:03 one of the few places you get initiation is going into the military
2:51:07 that’s an initiation, but a lot of these gang kids for example
2:51:11 they’re trying to initiate themselves which can’t really happen
2:51:15 you need elders and you need it in a ritualized way, but they’ll go on
2:51:19 if you’re in the Masai tradition in East Africa
2:51:23 the Masai people, as everybody’s heard
2:51:27 a young man at a certain age of 14 or something will go out
2:51:31 and kill a lion to prove that they’re now an adult member of the society
2:51:35 and that they’re brave and that’s part of their initiation
2:51:39 for young women as well and it’s not just in Africa the Mayans had
2:51:43 initiations and in Thailand when I lived there back
2:51:47 starting in the 1960s at that point almost every
2:51:51 young man and many young women when they reached
2:51:55 the age of 1920 they became a monk for
2:51:59 three months or for a year and lived in an austere way and it was part of their
2:52:03 initiation to learn both the inner life of themselves
2:52:07 and also a kind of discipline, we don’t have it and because of it
2:52:11 kids are trying to initiate themselves on the streets by shooting somebody
2:52:15 or doing something that shows that they’re brave but it’s not a lion
2:52:19 it’s another person or it’s trying to get the attention of the others
2:52:23 and say prove how powerful or strong they are
2:52:27 so we desperately need these and we need them built into our education
2:52:31 and to our psychology and I can’t give you a simple answer
2:52:35 but one of the people who has the most intelligence about this
2:52:39 is a man, a colleague of mine named Michael Mead
2:52:43 and if you look at Mosaic Multicultural Foundation
2:52:47 his writings on initiation and what’s possible here
2:52:51 and the things he’s led are very very inspiring
2:52:55 so that’s a place that I would look. That’s a good starting point, wonderful
2:52:59 I will definitely find that. Well Jack I think we could go for hours and hours
2:53:03 chatting with you and I’d love to perhaps even consider doing a part two sometime
2:53:07 but given that we’ve already gone for two plus hours I want to ask just
2:53:11 a few more questions and I’ll actually start
2:53:15 with just reading something very short which is from your 2017
2:53:19 year end message. I think this is just to
2:53:23 inject some more optimism into our
2:53:27 conversation which we’ve already had plenty of but this is just a
2:53:31 little portion of your year end message. Martin Luther King Jr. describes our collective journey
2:53:35 with hope quote “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends
2:53:39 towards justice” end quote and Pablo Neruda explains further
2:53:43 “you can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming” renewal is happening
2:53:47 this is back to your voice “take quiet time to listen to your heart to meditate
2:53:51 and to rest amidst the great turnings. Feel the renewal of spring that can be born
2:53:55 in you. Align yourself with goodness. Let yourself blossom like a lotus
2:53:59 or whatever unique flower you are shining in the world offering tiny seeds
2:54:03 of love amidst it all” blessings to you in 2018 Jack
2:54:07 and I want this note to then
2:54:11 lead into and certainly welcome to comment on that but
2:54:15 which book you would recommend of yours people start with or where they start
2:54:19 with all of the many materials recordings readings that you produce because
2:54:23 you’re a fantastic writer and a prolific writer
2:54:27 you have some of my favorite book titles I’ve ever heard by the way including
2:54:31 After the Ecstasy The Laundry which maybe we could touch on but where would you suggest
2:54:35 people start of the many things that you’ve written and shared
2:54:39 with the world and if you have any comments on that year end message
2:54:43 you’re welcome to share that as well. So for books if you want
2:54:47 something simple I have books like you know an introduction
2:54:51 to meditation that sounds true publishes or I have
2:54:55 a little book called the art of forgiveness loving kindness and peace which is very simple
2:54:59 stories and practices if you want something that’s
2:55:03 richer and fuller then you could look at one of my bigger books like A Path
2:55:07 with Heart or The Wise Heart the guide to the principles of Buddhist psychology
2:55:11 and again I think lots of stuff online and sounds true
2:55:15 particularly a good place to go along with my website then
2:55:19 and that 40 day mindfulness, mindfulness daily which is like 30 bucks
2:55:23 or something is a really wonderful way to start.
2:55:27 In terms of what I had written about the trusting heart
2:55:31 one of the greatest Zen texts from a thousand years ago says
2:55:35 to be awakened or enlightened is one with the trusting
2:55:39 heart and mind and it doesn’t mean that we won’t go through hard times
2:55:43 we always have and we will again and we are now in many ways
2:55:47 but that we also have born within us the capacity
2:55:51 to meet these difficulties with understanding
2:55:55 with courage, with compassion and to transform them
2:55:59 and in that way one of my favorite recent books is called
2:56:03 The Better Angels of Our Nature by Stephen Pinker and he’s a remarkable
2:56:07 professor at Harvard anthropologist historian talking about
2:56:11 the growing consciousness of humanity in spite of the kind
2:56:15 of wars and conflict and environmental things there are so many good things
2:56:19 that have happened that he charts over the last few centuries of the development
2:56:23 of certain abilities for peacemaking there’s actually less war than
2:56:27 there’d been respect for women, the reduction in
2:56:31 child labor all kinds of things and in that same regard
2:56:35 there’s a wonderful book called Berry the Chains which is about the ending
2:56:39 of slavery in the British Empire starting with this handful of
2:56:43 men who met in a British tea shop or printing shop
2:56:47 and spent 30 years riding around the country bringing
2:56:51 ex-slaves who were well spoken to talk about the middle passage
2:56:55 the horrors of slavery and so forth and even though the British
2:56:59 Empire’s economic engine was built around slavery and
2:57:03 sugar by the end of their work 30 years
2:57:07 the British Parliament outlawed slavery and the British Empire
2:57:11 decades before it happened in the US and the Quakers
2:57:15 were a big part of this and the Quakers famously wouldn’t take their hats off
2:57:19 for the king but when what is his name
2:57:23 Thomas Clarkson who was the center of this group
2:57:27 trying to end slavery and going everywhere to do it, when Thomas Clarkson
2:57:31 died all the Quakers of the England took their hats off
2:57:35 because he’d freed so many spirits and so many lives
2:57:39 we have these amazing possibilities as human beings and we’re just
2:57:43 growing into them now culturally and it’s about time
2:57:47 they are possible and we each have a contribution to make
2:57:51 Jack I’m going to ask you one more question before we
2:57:55 wrap up with just letting people know where they can find you
2:57:59 on social media and elsewhere on the website and so on but last question is one I like to ask
2:58:03 this is a metaphor but
2:58:07 if you could have a short message on a billboard in other words
2:58:11 and a message out to millions or billions of people could be a few words
2:58:15 one word, a phrase, a quote of yours, a quote of someone else’s
2:58:19 what might you put on that billboard? Well the two things come to mind
2:58:23 one is a question that when I sat with people many times at the end of their life
2:58:27 that they then ask of themselves silently or outlawed is
2:58:31 did I love well because in the end what matters really
2:58:35 the billboard would have a question rather than a statement
2:58:39 and it would have a question something like how could I love myself
2:58:43 better so that it actually it’s not that I’m going to tell
2:58:47 them something they already know this but I’m going to remind
2:58:51 those who read that there is something that’s asking
2:58:55 to be awakened in them how could I love myself and this
2:58:59 world better then you go well it gets in the way of that and how could I love that too
2:59:03 how could I love myself in this world better well Jack I
2:59:07 want to of course thank you for your time today but
2:59:11 beyond that I want to thank you and this is very
2:59:15 much from deep in my heart thank you for helping me
2:59:19 to learn to love myself better and quite frankly to see something
2:59:23 in the first place that is worth loving
2:59:27 that’s not where I’ve spent most of my life so it’s turned into
2:59:31 if not my I hesitate to say my top priority because I’m
2:59:35 sorry about sounding self indulgent but it’s become
2:59:39 one of the most important and fruitful tasks in my life
2:59:43 is asking that question how could I love myself better
2:59:47 or how could I learn to love myself better so thank you very very sincerely
2:59:51 for that and the words don’t do it justice but that’s the best I can do right now
2:59:55 remotely is to put it into words so thank you for that thank you
2:59:59 Tim this was a pleasure to do and what I feel and I know
3:00:03 is that as you tend your own heart in a wise way
3:00:07 then it makes you available to bring the gifts the many
3:00:11 gifts you have to the world you personally and others but to do it
3:00:15 in a way that’s on the carrier wave of connection and love and it transforms everything
3:00:19 so thank you too well Jack I am looking at a texture of ours
3:00:23 and I’m feeling the necklace around my neck which is really a thread
3:00:27 a red thread that was used to close the one of the elements
3:00:31 of the closing of the ten day silent retreat and I shot you
3:00:35 a text not too long ago asking what the three knots
3:00:39 meant because I had forgotten and this is what you wrote back
3:00:43 first knot equals refuge in whatever you hold is most inspiring and sacred
3:00:47 second commitment to compassion for self and others
3:00:51 third following your highest intention and the
3:00:55 intention that I’ve said at the end of that ten day retreat was to
3:00:59 learn to love myself so I could love others more fully
3:01:03 but I’ve realized that maybe what it is is learning to
3:01:07 love myself so I can help others learn to do the same and you’ve
3:01:11 been an integral piece of that and I just love
3:01:15 that I have the opportunity to introduce you and your work
3:01:19 and these traditions to more people and I will certainly be linking to
3:01:23 where everyone can find you online but are there any particular best
3:01:27 places just to reiterate where people can find you and I’ll link to these in the show notes
3:01:31 jackcornfield.com and also look up jackcornfield
3:01:35 on sounds true.com for those programs that I talked about and then
3:01:39 spiritrock.org which is our great meditation center in
3:01:43 the San Francisco Bay area absolutely stunning
3:01:47 beautiful location worth visiting just to bathe
3:01:51 in the scenery but many more reasons to visit as well
3:01:55 Jack thank you again and thank you thank you Tim it’s a pleasure
3:01:59 and to everybody listening you can find show notes links to all the resources
3:02:03 books and everything that we discussed at tim.blog/podcast
3:02:07 and until next time thank you so much for listening
3:02:11 Hey guys this is Tim again just one more thing before you take
3:02:15 off and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a
3:02:19 short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend
3:02:23 between one and a half and two million people subscribed to my free newsletter
3:02:27 my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday easy to sign up
3:02:31 easy to cancel it is basically a half page that I send
3:02:35 out every Friday to share the coolest things I’ve found or discovered
3:02:39 or have started exploring over that week it’s kind of like my diary of cool things
3:02:43 it often includes articles I’m reading books I’m reading albums perhaps
3:02:47 gadgets gizmos all sorts of tech tricks and so on
3:02:51 it’s sent to me by my friends including a lot of podcast guests
3:02:55 and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then
3:02:59 I test them and then I share them with you so if that sounds fun
3:03:03 again it’s very short a little tiny bite of goodness before you
3:03:07 head off for the weekend something to think about if you’d like to try it out
3:03:11 just go to tim.blog/friday type that into your browser tim.blog/friday
3:03:15 drop in your email and you’ll get the very next one
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3:08:21 [BLANK_AUDIO]