Speaker 1: Get a team. Hope you bloody terrific. Welcome to another
Speaker 1: installment the show. Tiffany and Cook the boss, she who
Speaker 1: wears the pants, the big dog. I better say a
Speaker 1: loight to her first, because she's got a lot of issues.
Speaker 1: She gets a bit cranky if I don't acknowledge her upfront.
Speaker 1: Get av boss or just bossy?
Speaker 2: That's the question.
Speaker 1: Well, Melissa's bossy. You both are quite bossy. But I
Speaker 1: like that because I'm quite inept. So I need two
Speaker 1: good women just steering the SSU project out of murky
Speaker 1: waters and into the clarity, the light, out of the
Speaker 1: darkness at Tiffen, into the light of revelation and inspiration.
Speaker 1: How are you?
Speaker 2: I'm good? Thank you.
Speaker 1: Happy Friday, Happy Friday, Happy Friday. How's you? Just before
Speaker 1: we go to our actual guest, who is more important
Speaker 1: than both of us, is very self indulgent Corey. I apologize,
Speaker 1: but as I said to you before, we don't have
Speaker 1: a set protocol. How's your dodgy body? Are you better?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I'm back to some movement. Still a little bit cranky
Speaker 2: in the old back region, but able to work around
Speaker 2: it now. And you know what it's like when you
Speaker 2: have a little bit of time off and then you
Speaker 2: hit the gym very sore in all of the places.
Speaker 1: Good sort so thorassical, lumba lumber. Yeah, okay, And did
Speaker 1: you blow your medical team because you've got to got
Speaker 1: a whole team. You've got a whole team. By the way, Cory,
Speaker 1: we're very sweary. This may or may not suit. What's
Speaker 1: the consensus of your medical team.
Speaker 2: Ah, just got to be patient, calm down and do
Speaker 2: all the things that I don't like.
Speaker 3: Like.
Speaker 2: Clams, clams, doing your clams. Of course I'm not doing
Speaker 2: my clams, Christian. I've done the clam since you told
Speaker 2: me to do my clams years ago. Hate clams. Did
Speaker 2: box jumps instead. Now now, just put me back together.
Speaker 1: Well, it's good that you pay these people to tell
Speaker 1: you what to do, and then you don't do what
Speaker 1: they tell you to do. That's perhaps placebo.
Speaker 2: My body puts itself back together just because I turn
Speaker 2: up to the appointment and have a chat.
Speaker 3: Oh in that m.
Speaker 1: Wow, Corey, how's your back? I think we should start there.
Speaker 3: If I had a rate it out of ten, it's
Speaker 3: probably only around seven and a half. I reckon. I
Speaker 3: started off Actually my first my first started as a
Speaker 3: piano player, as a musician, and it's terrible for your
Speaker 3: back and always in the same position and practicing hours
Speaker 3: a day.
Speaker 1: And really happened. Tell did you have to say that?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 3: Done?
Speaker 1: Tell Corey what you've done. Tell Corey about your piano revelation.
Speaker 2: I bought I had an epiphany and bought a piano
Speaker 2: about five weeks ago.
Speaker 1: So that might be why my backs.
Speaker 2: It is really uncomfortable sitting at the piano. That does
Speaker 2: really aggravate it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and so it's relevant. But lessons on technique
Speaker 3: and make all the difference. And that's where I pulled
Speaker 3: it back together. I moved to Canada and went to
Speaker 3: UNI over there and did a performance degree and they
Speaker 3: really hammered the technique. Can have to see it and
Speaker 3: it made a big difference. But there's still long term
Speaker 3: issues from that. And then you know, as you would
Speaker 3: know PhD, you spend all your time reading and staring
Speaker 3: at a screen. So yeah, at seven and a half
Speaker 3: out of ten for my back is a good d Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My phone, my iPhone told me in late September, Corey
Speaker 1: essentially that I was fat and lazy and unhealthy and
Speaker 1: that you know how your phone tracks your steps? My
Speaker 1: phone said essentially, you need to walk a lot more.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, wow, now I'm being told off by
Speaker 1: Tiff and Melissa and my phone. And so I complied,
Speaker 1: and the next day I tripled my steps and that's
Speaker 1: been so I set myself a base of ten thousand
Speaker 1: a day, like that's the lowest I can do, and
Speaker 1: I've done more more than ten every day since then.
Speaker 1: But it is do you know what someone should? And
Speaker 1: then we'll get onto the actual conversation with the genius
Speaker 1: that we've got on to talk about. The thing is
Speaker 1: actually a genius about. But imagine you two, if somebody
Speaker 1: designed I'm just picturing, like, you know, those super comfy
Speaker 1: recliners where you're kind of almost on a forty five
Speaker 1: degree and you have your keyboard just in front of
Speaker 1: you tip like, so you're in like first class or
Speaker 1: business but you've got a keyboard, right, so you're not
Speaker 1: sitting your ass on your bony ass on a hard
Speaker 1: chair and trying to keep your posture. Imagine that if
Speaker 1: you didn't have to, that'd be super comfy, probably completely impractical.
Speaker 2: Probably not any better for your back though, aren't fitball.
Speaker 2: Sitting on big football supposed to be good for your back.
Speaker 1: They are.
Speaker 2: Maybe if I put this standing desk in standing mode
Speaker 2: it would be better too.
Speaker 1: I'm the same as you. I've got a fifty million
Speaker 1: dollar standing desk that remains seated. So that was a
Speaker 1: great investment. Oh yeah, it's got two motors.
Speaker 3: It does this.
Speaker 1: It's magic. It's the Rolls Royce of bloody stand up tables.
Speaker 1: I'm like, shit, get me one of those of you
Speaker 1: stood up fucking three times. It's not the table that's
Speaker 1: the problem. I'll give you the tip.
Speaker 3: Corey.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the project. How are you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm good. Things. Yeah, yeah, things.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for you know, unknowingly agreeing to
Speaker 1: participate in the rabble that is.
Speaker 3: I like rebel. So that's okay, very comfortable.
Speaker 1: Well, Tiff, actually we're talking about doctorates before she's got
Speaker 1: a PhD in rebel. Yeah, all right, tell my audience
Speaker 1: who you are. Just rather me bang on through your
Speaker 1: bio and bits and pieces and probably stuff it up
Speaker 1: and be clunky, tell us who you are and what
Speaker 1: you do, and a bit about your research and where
Speaker 1: you're at.
Speaker 3: So I have just admitted I'm almost waiting to hear
Speaker 3: back from a PhD that's looking into meditation effects on anxiety.
Speaker 3: But what we're really interested in is not is why
Speaker 3: it works, you know, not there's a lot of research
Speaker 3: that says, oh, you train people in this, that and
Speaker 3: the other, and you see the effects. You know, people
Speaker 3: get better at this, that and the other. But there's
Speaker 3: very little work on why that, why it works. And
Speaker 3: so that's the gap that I chose, And the reason
Speaker 3: I chose it is because I had lived nearly six
Speaker 3: years up in the Northern Indian Himalayan region where I
Speaker 3: learned to speak, read, write Tibetan. So I studied Buddhist
Speaker 3: philosophy and meditation practice in Tibetan for along quite a
Speaker 3: few years living there, and then work as a translator,
Speaker 3: you know, from Tibetan to English when I came back.
Speaker 3: So Buddhism actually has quite a lot to say. In fact,
Speaker 3: it's Buddhism's all about mechanisms, you know, it's like, how
Speaker 3: does this work? And how can we amplify it or
Speaker 3: dial it down or get rid of it all together.
Speaker 3: So when I saw that it was a kind of
Speaker 3: gap in the in the literature, I thought oh, maybe
Speaker 3: there's some ways we could talk about some sort of
Speaker 3: we'd call them contemplative ideas about why it works, but
Speaker 3: we could talk about in psych terminology. So I can
Speaker 3: basically pitch kind of Buddhist psychology at a clinical psyche
Speaker 3: and just have them nod their head and say, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know that makes sense. So in a nutshell, that's
Speaker 3: kind of what we've done, and you know, on the
Speaker 3: back of some other brilliant work actually to get here.
Speaker 3: So yeah, if I had sum it up as quick
Speaker 3: as possible, that's about it.
Speaker 1: And what led you to what led you to that
Speaker 1: kind of path in terms of, you know, the intersection
Speaker 1: of a spiritual or a philosophical practice and you know science,
Speaker 1: it's like it's an interesting junction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's pretty it's pretty bological when you
Speaker 3: when you look at it.
Speaker 1: Sure I can.
Speaker 3: I can trace it back almost to a moment in
Speaker 3: April I forget nineties something late nineties. I moved to Canada.
Speaker 3: I moved to Toronto from Brisbane here. So I'd been
Speaker 3: at the con at Brisbane in that had a little
Speaker 3: fledgling jazz performance program. I had been accepted and studied,
Speaker 3: and I wanted to study more so I moved to
Speaker 3: Canada because I have a Canadian passport too. So I
Speaker 3: moved to Toronto and when I got there, I should
Speaker 3: when there was a day when I got there and
Speaker 3: I was sitting on a park bench in a place
Speaker 3: called Queen's Park and it was cold, you know, like
Speaker 3: it's April steel and I had all the like physiology,
Speaker 3: if you want, all the symptoms of what we would
Speaker 3: call anxiety, you know, And it was really relevant to
Speaker 3: me because actually that's one of the reasons I left.
Speaker 3: I had really kind of fallen apart in Brisbane young,
Speaker 3: you know, and things hadn't gone my way, and I'd
Speaker 3: got all strung out and had some anxiety and depression.
Speaker 3: Rather than deal with it, I moved to the other
Speaker 3: side of the world, which to a city where I
Speaker 3: knew nobody, which it should be said, is not the
Speaker 3: ideal kind of treatments.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like anxiety is probably not a geographical issue, but.
Speaker 3: Go on anyways, But so I got But the thing
Speaker 3: that really that really got me interested is that although
Speaker 3: I had all this you know, you'd call it kind
Speaker 3: of anxiety, I loved it was it was really enjoyable,
Speaker 3: like it was excitement because I was in this big
Speaker 3: city full of people I didn't know, Toronto and May
Speaker 3: Poliser in the playoffs, you know, the hockey team was
Speaker 3: in the playoffs. The city was everything was different and
Speaker 3: new and exciting, and I was really into it. And
Speaker 3: it got me thinking, you know, why is it that
Speaker 3: a year or so ago, this kind of physical sensation
Speaker 3: would keep me at home. It would make me worried
Speaker 3: about you know, it's going out and seeing people. You know,
Speaker 3: every time I went out to be like, shit, am
Speaker 3: I am I saying the right thing? Am I do?
Speaker 3: I look like a dumbass? What's going like? All these
Speaker 3: kinds of things. And now I've got the same thing,
Speaker 3: and it's actually going to propel me up off the
Speaker 3: bench into town to learn stuff, to meet people, you know,
Speaker 3: like and it was about the interpretation of it. So
Speaker 3: I got really I got really interested. Then I went on.
Speaker 3: I did a music degree while I was there, I
Speaker 3: met great people. I was there about eight years, and
Speaker 3: it kind of happened again a bit later, like the
Speaker 3: anxiety thing showed up again later, and I had this
Speaker 3: sense that meditating might help. And this is true. There
Speaker 3: was a Buddhist Tibetan Buddhist center across the road from
Speaker 3: my favorite pub right down right around the corner from
Speaker 3: where I lived. I spent a lot of time there,
Speaker 3: and so one day at the part or the book
Speaker 3: at the pub right yeah, you know, when I got there,
Speaker 3: this pub had sixteen beers on tap, you know, and
Speaker 3: I didn't know any of them. So it's cool, like
Speaker 3: you just start at one end and like figure out
Speaker 3: which if anyway that is a relevant call it research. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is my first research part.
Speaker 1: That was what I was up. Yeah, No, it's nice.
Speaker 3: I like it anyway. I sort of I got in
Speaker 3: touch with them because I was getting this stress thing
Speaker 3: happening again. I recognized it, you know. And then when
Speaker 3: I started learning about what they were saying, and I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, you've really there's no surprise to anyone
Speaker 3: who understands Buddhist psychology. It's no surprise. It's like I
Speaker 3: was feeling nervous here and it was a problem, and
Speaker 3: I was feeling nervous here, and it was okay, there's
Speaker 3: no surprise to them. They know they can explain that,
Speaker 3: you know, yes, And so I was so fascinated by
Speaker 3: it that I sold everything and moved to India basically,
Speaker 3: and when I got there, a bunch of things happened,
Speaker 3: and I had every time you go to these classes
Speaker 3: or teaching or interviews, there's always this translator, you know,
Speaker 3: And I started wondering, why why don't just learn? I
Speaker 3: want to speak to them directly. There's really impressive, interesting people,
Speaker 3: you know, they work to me. So I put time aside,
Speaker 3: and I learned to speak the language, and then that
Speaker 3: just opens all sorts of doors, you know, for extra
Speaker 3: study and extra learning.
Speaker 1: Could I just ask quickly between Okay, I'm trying the
Speaker 1: sixteen Beers, I'm a bit anxious. I go over the
Speaker 1: road to the Buddhist Meditation Center. Bibitti, Bobby Burt, I'm
Speaker 1: going to India. I mean, what else happened? I mean
Speaker 1: there must have been some seismic.
Speaker 3: Shift in you to do that, sure, and it was.
Speaker 3: It's just I mean, there was a sort of eight
Speaker 3: The first sixteen Beers was right at the beginning, so
Speaker 3: it was there eight years. So I did come to
Speaker 3: a conclusion quite quickly on my favorite beer, so that
Speaker 3: we can put that aside, you know. No, well, I
Speaker 3: just kept everything went great for me, you know, for
Speaker 3: the most part, had a really good time, but then
Speaker 3: things kind of didn't for a while. Some things didn't
Speaker 3: go my way. I lost some where, some stuff happened,
Speaker 3: you know, but I felt all that anxiety depression thing
Speaker 3: happening again, and I thought I was through it, you know,
Speaker 3: I said, no, no, I've dealt with this once before
Speaker 3: and I was okay. And so when that started to happen,
Speaker 3: I took a really interest in it, you know. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: it was more of this. If I had to, I'd
Speaker 3: say it was a sense that I felt as if
Speaker 3: I immunized myself against this kind of anxiety, you know,
Speaker 3: by having been through it before. And I had as
Speaker 3: holl as things are going my way, you know, and
Speaker 3: then as soon as they weren't and there was some difficulty,
Speaker 3: I just started coming up again, which really freaked me out. Actually,
Speaker 3: I said, no, no, I'm not going back here. What
Speaker 3: can I do? And I looked around. I was out
Speaker 3: at the Zen Center. I looked into some psych things,
Speaker 3: I looked into other new agy stuff, but this Tibetan
Speaker 3: system would just answer all the questions. So I went
Speaker 3: to this center for quite a few months and months,
Speaker 3: and then eventually I just thought, you know, it's the
Speaker 3: same reason I went to Toronto is my favorite pianist
Speaker 3: lived in Toronto. So I picked up and I left
Speaker 3: Brisbane and I went to Toronto. And then I was
Speaker 3: there for a while and I got interested in this
Speaker 3: in the mind and how it works. And to me,
Speaker 3: the people who had the most to say about that
Speaker 3: were in India. So I just got sold what I
Speaker 3: had and I moved to India. To me, it was
Speaker 3: the same, you know, and it was I never looked back.
Speaker 3: I mean, I still kind of half wish I lived there,
Speaker 3: if I'm honest.
Speaker 1: What are some of the corey, what are some of
Speaker 1: the or what is some of the divergence between you know,
Speaker 1: Buddhist psychology and Western psychology for one of a better term.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, there's a lot you can say about that.
Speaker 3: I'm less I'm more interested in the overlap.
Speaker 1: So ok, yeah, do that. Let's go there then, yeah,
Speaker 1: because you can.
Speaker 3: You know, in a couple of years ago, I was
Speaker 3: in India and Bodgaya. I had just gone back for
Speaker 3: a visit and I just had a coffee and there's
Speaker 3: actually there's not a lot of good coffee anyway. I
Speaker 3: was there, I just had a coffee and these two
Speaker 3: months sat down at a table just across and I
Speaker 3: could tell. I could tell there were what we call
Speaker 3: it GeSHi, and GeSHi does a twenty year full time
Speaker 3: study program, this degree twenty years full time and sort
Speaker 3: the high end scholars. And I could tell that they
Speaker 3: were just from you can tell. Anyway, I said a
Speaker 3: quick hello to them and made some comment about the
Speaker 3: breakfast and was going to leave, and anyway, they called
Speaker 3: me in because when you speak Tibetan, they really get
Speaker 3: interested in you. You know, there's not manywhere and I
Speaker 3: was there for like two hours with them going on
Speaker 3: and on, and this was their question, is like, hey,
Speaker 3: we know about science and Buddhism and there's like this
Speaker 3: contemplative science and there's all this interaction back and forth.
Speaker 3: You know, what are the ways you think it can
Speaker 3: really help? You know, we're curious, we teach Westerners sometimes,
Speaker 3: you know, what, how can I help? And my my
Speaker 3: sort of I had a few coffee amped up by then,
Speaker 3: but it was we say, just stop talking about the mind,
Speaker 3: right because Buddhism it's all about the mind, and same
Speaker 3: in neuroscience. And you've got this perhaps it's your view.
Speaker 3: I don't know. There's a there is a view within
Speaker 3: in scientific materialism that the mind is derivative of brain,
Speaker 3: you know, and all this stuff which you can never reconcile. This,
Speaker 3: there's there's a completely pointless talking about it. If that's
Speaker 3: the case, Buddhism is wrong, like all of Buddhism is
Speaker 3: finished if that's the case. And if it's not the case,
Speaker 3: then there's some neuroscientist who get to lose their careers,
Speaker 3: you know. So it's sort of like there's like, stop
Speaker 3: talking about it, because there's every because we can talk
Speaker 3: about what the mind does, activities of the mind, mental activity, this,
Speaker 3: talk about this all day long, right, and and then
Speaker 3: of course the question what causes happiness, what causes suffering?
Speaker 3: What causes this? That and the other? All these things
Speaker 3: pop up. So actually, yeah, it's I mean, it's a
Speaker 3: long way of saying that it isn't it's a fun
Speaker 3: little debate topic if you like. But actually there's so
Speaker 3: much scope where they cross over that that's where my
Speaker 3: sort of interest lies. For Marimez. Everything I spent that
Speaker 3: time learning when I was in India and back here translating,
Speaker 3: and then of course a psych degree and a PhD
Speaker 3: and so on. That's you know, there's all this stuff
Speaker 3: to talk about that could be immediately useful for people,
Speaker 3: you know, if it just made its way through into
Speaker 3: the kind of you know, general pub conversations.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, is it hard to get what? We're
Speaker 1: in Australia and we're three of us were buzzis? So
Speaker 1: is it hard to get Australians to open up to
Speaker 1: stuff that, for want of a better term, doesn't make sense?
Speaker 1: Do you know what I mean? I mean, I know
Speaker 1: it makes all the sense, but it's like I'm a
Speaker 1: little well, Tiff and I have spoken about this many times.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of things that I believe in one
Speaker 1: of a better term, that I don't have any evidence for,
Speaker 1: like in terms of data. It's like well, Craig, well,
Speaker 1: I can't you know, And it's like literally, well, I
Speaker 1: mean belief and faith, Like often it's about in something
Speaker 1: that you don't have absolute evidence or absolute knowledge or
Speaker 1: absolute proof ergo belief in faith versus data and evidence.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, absolutely, And to me, like a true
Speaker 3: scientist will will you can have a belief you think?
Speaker 3: I think it's like this, I'm even going to live
Speaker 3: my life based on my belief it's like this, but
Speaker 3: but it might not be correctly and then you're good
Speaker 3: to go. I think, right, And I.
Speaker 1: Think one of the challenges is, sorry, I just cut
Speaker 1: you off. But like so many people corey have there,
Speaker 1: whatever their philosophy, their ideology, they're fill in the blank,
Speaker 1: intertwined with their identity and so then you're unteachable because
Speaker 1: it and I are the same. So you can't teach
Speaker 1: me anything because if, for example, in this case, I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: then I don't know who I am. So you and
Speaker 1: your wisdom can fuck off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. Yeah, And which is interesting is like one
Speaker 3: of the fundamental issues in Buddhism is is how do
Speaker 3: I identify myself and when I Because if I identify
Speaker 3: myself as a neuroscientist, you'd know if everything's in relation
Speaker 3: to me, everything's in interpretation or neurologically, it's a prediction,
Speaker 3: you know, And so that means my whole experience is
Speaker 3: around me. So if I am mistaken about how I
Speaker 3: exist and who I am, I'm essentially mistaken about everything else. Yes,
Speaker 3: it's kind of okay because you might we might all
Speaker 3: be mistaken in the same ways, so we can still
Speaker 3: talk about things right, but but fundamentally there's still this
Speaker 3: issue that's it's a little bit it's hard to ignore
Speaker 3: for some of us. It's a bit like the lose tooth,
Speaker 3: you know, And yeah, that's the that's the exact issue.
Speaker 3: As long as I really think I'm here and if
Speaker 3: you shoot my ideas down it damages me, then I'm
Speaker 3: going to fight back. Whereas if it's like, hey, you know,
Speaker 3: you might have some some some things to say that's
Speaker 3: going to help me deal with my own shit. And
Speaker 3: so even though you know, I might actually be able
Speaker 3: to use that. And that was what I found with
Speaker 3: the Tibetans, which is why I got so hawked, is
Speaker 3: because if they like the questioning, you know, if you
Speaker 3: come in at them and say no, I don't accept this,
Speaker 3: then they want they want the debate. That's really of course,
Speaker 3: they always win the debate because that they twenty years
Speaker 3: of study. So it's kind of a loaded game in
Speaker 3: a way. But I like that. But I always like that.
Speaker 3: And sometimes they would tell stuff and you come back
Speaker 3: a little bit later and go, no, I've thought about
Speaker 3: it and I don't think it's quite right, and they
Speaker 3: will say, yeah, you're right, it's not you know, it's
Speaker 3: a bit and they just lead you through these more
Speaker 3: subtle understandings. They go, yeah, it's not quite like that. Really,
Speaker 3: it's a bit more like this, and then you keep
Speaker 3: coming at them and they always have this judo move,
Speaker 3: you know, but they're working to you, and as the
Speaker 3: better you are, as you said, of like not conflating
Speaker 3: my beliefs and ideas with me, then the more you
Speaker 3: can get out of it. And it's really it's a
Speaker 3: really fun system to work in if you're just curious.
Speaker 3: It's a terrible place to be if you really solidly believe.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And I think also, you know, most of
Speaker 1: us have something of an attachment to certainty and predictability
Speaker 1: and familiarity and knowing. We don't like saying I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what's coming. You know. It's like all
Speaker 1: of that uncertainty, unfamiliarity, unknown as terrifying, and so we'd rather,
Speaker 1: you know, tell ourselves a story, whatever the story is.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm going to live in the echo chamber.
Speaker 1: I'm only going to pay attention to people who think
Speaker 1: like me, because people who don't think like me, one,
Speaker 1: of course they're wrong. And two they make me feel
Speaker 1: these things I don't want to feel. But I think
Speaker 1: the real as you were saying before, like real science
Speaker 1: is about going this is what I think. This is
Speaker 1: my hypothesis theory. But I could be wrong, and not
Speaker 1: only could I be wrong, I'm absolutely going to be
Speaker 1: wrong moving forward, because I've been wrong one million times
Speaker 1: up until now, so that ain't stopping.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of my favorite kind of scientists,
Speaker 3: if you like, in this like field, is Paul Eckman
Speaker 3: did a lot of work on emotions and actually put
Speaker 3: together a course that I teach quite a lot well,
Speaker 3: I teach derivatives of or teach called cultivating Emotional Balance,
Speaker 3: because your emotions is his his thing, and he did
Speaker 3: a lot of work with it. Turns out with the
Speaker 3: diala Lama like he went to a he went to
Speaker 3: one of these mind and life meetings they're called So
Speaker 3: these Tibetan scholars and practitioners get together with like top
Speaker 3: of the field scientists Richie Davidson and these sorts of
Speaker 3: people you know, and they have these meetings and Paul
Speaker 3: Eckman got invited. And the story, as I understand it,
Speaker 3: is he didn't want to go because he didn't care.
Speaker 3: But he's had a daughter who would love to meet
Speaker 3: the Dalai Lama, so it's the only reason he went.
Speaker 3: But it was a complete it was life changing for him,
Speaker 3: like the whole and it changed a lot of what
Speaker 3: he was doing. But he would say, like, despite this
Speaker 3: super close relationship, you know, with the Dalai Lama and
Speaker 3: these things, I've written books together. And so he would
Speaker 3: people ask him about things like, you know, continuity of consciousness,
Speaker 3: you know, so like you know, rebirth, you know, past
Speaker 3: future lives, and he'd say, I don't believe it, but
Speaker 3: I'm a scientist, and no one's proven it, disproven it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it was a.
Speaker 3: Great that's a great example, like eminent Time magazine one
Speaker 3: hundred most Important People of this century sort of thing.
Speaker 3: And he's saying, yeah, I don't believe it, but I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna you know, it might be true because I
Speaker 3: don't have the evidence against it, but I'm going to
Speaker 3: live my life over here.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I have a lot of respect for that. I really
Speaker 3: like it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, me too, And I think I always think, like
Speaker 1: whatever I listen to, whatever I see, experience, whatever you think,
Speaker 1: whatever Tiff thinks, whatever anyone I'm in conversation, thinks whatever
Speaker 1: evidence gets brought up or apparent evidence, I'm always looking
Speaker 1: at that through the Craig window, the Craig filter, Like
Speaker 1: everything is filtered by what I think is and that's
Speaker 1: just my version of the truth or my version of
Speaker 1: reality or my version, you know. And it's like having
Speaker 1: for me, that's like opening the consciousness door or the
Speaker 1: awareness s door a bit where you go, no, there's true,
Speaker 1: there's absolute truth maybe, but then there's my truth, or
Speaker 1: there's my there's the thing that's happening, and then there's
Speaker 1: my story about the thing that's happening. And I should
Speaker 1: not conflate those two things, and I need to go
Speaker 1: this is how I see it. But I could be wrong,
Speaker 1: and even you know, now there's three of us in
Speaker 1: a conversation, but no one's having the same experience. The
Speaker 1: thousands of people will listen to this, and none of
Speaker 1: them probably will have the exact same interaction with this
Speaker 1: stimulus or response to this, or experience of this, because
Speaker 1: despite the commonality everyone's listening to the same audio, everyone
Speaker 1: creates their own experience around that one thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's we often one of the interpret you know,
Speaker 3: ways I've interpreted some of this actually from when you're
Speaker 3: translating this. You know, we talk about what's presented to
Speaker 3: our senses and then how we interpret that, and there's
Speaker 3: sort of two there's two things going on. There's what's
Speaker 3: presented and how we interpret it. But our one hundred
Speaker 3: percent of our reality is the interpretee at no point
Speaker 3: do wherever access the objects out there directly, And so
Speaker 3: this is it's not controversial, is it. But then you
Speaker 3: would start applying this to mental mental activity. So in
Speaker 3: this there's a term in Tibetan now bombo, and we
Speaker 3: translate it as sense usually because it's you know, here
Speaker 3: see smell, see here, smell, taste, touch, and these five senses,
Speaker 3: but in Buddhism there's six because there's a mental domain
Speaker 3: and all they're all sort of you know, you talk
Speaker 3: about things you see here, smell, taste, touched, think, remember,
Speaker 3: and so on and so that so this idea that
Speaker 3: it's only your interpretation of what's presented to your senses
Speaker 3: includes the mental domain. And this is gets really interesting,
Speaker 3: you know, because that's what you think about and this
Speaker 3: is what my actually, So this is the that mechanism
Speaker 3: that does that is what I tried to use in
Speaker 3: my PhD as to why does why is it that
Speaker 3: meditation training can dial down rumination and metacognitive beliefs and
Speaker 3: all these other things, you know why? And that's what
Speaker 3: we're looking at. The mechanism that takes what's presented in
Speaker 3: the mental domain and interprets it as being real. This
Speaker 3: is the issue, right And if you can sort of
Speaker 3: not interpret it as being it's let's say, if I
Speaker 3: can if I treat my opinions as facts sort of
Speaker 3: like you were saying before, you know, my beliefs or
Speaker 3: my beliefs as facts, then it gets really problematic when
Speaker 3: I meet someone else with different beliefs because they have
Speaker 3: different they have alternative facts, and which is always problematic.
Speaker 3: So yeah, there's this, but there is a sense there
Speaker 3: is an area in which my interpretation overlaps with yours.
Speaker 3: And in Buddhism we just call this conventional reality because
Speaker 3: it is a Convention's like this is a table. Your
Speaker 3: your table is a standing table, you know, like, you know,
Speaker 3: we can all agree even though our interpretations are different,
Speaker 3: you know, then so that's cool. Then, but then there
Speaker 3: are plots we disagree, and that's problematic. For us.
Speaker 1: I'm just writing on my notepad in front of me. Corey.
Speaker 1: Don't believe everything you think exactly like, it's that right,
Speaker 1: and we don't. Yeah, like when we it's like you said,
Speaker 1: you know, when we believe something, we un'tequivocally believe it.
Speaker 1: Then that becomes or can become, a literal physiological experience
Speaker 1: based on sometimes based on an erroneous belief or thought,
Speaker 1: like I think, And I apologize to my listeners who
Speaker 1: have heard a version of this example. But you know,
Speaker 1: I'm in the house by myself right now, but all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I think or I believe someone's in
Speaker 1: the house, and now I'm in danger, when the truth
Speaker 1: is no one's in the house. The truth is I'm safe.
Speaker 1: That's the truth. But my belief is in the moment,
Speaker 1: and so my nervous system and you know, in the
Speaker 1: crime system and cardiovascual system, everything buys into that idea.
Speaker 1: And now my physiology has changed necessarily because I believe
Speaker 1: a thing that's not true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know if we take we can take
Speaker 3: this a little further if you like this, Yeah, God
Speaker 3: please in my area. Actually, so let's say in fact,
Speaker 3: so you have a if you're taking these beliefs as
Speaker 3: being real. Let's say I have a let's just let's
Speaker 3: a happy memory, right, Like, let's say I have some
Speaker 3: happy memory from the past, you know. So if I
Speaker 3: remember that, like I call that memory up, I cannot
Speaker 3: it can like trigger an enjoyable emotional experience, right, Yes,
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's interesting though because the event, right has passed,
Speaker 3: So the event doesn't exist, right, it happened, it's finished,
Speaker 3: but there's a mental representation of that event. Yeah. And
Speaker 3: what this is called ratification in psychology, you know, as
Speaker 3: a newish way of thinking that if I the degree
Speaker 3: to it which I treat the mental representation the memory
Speaker 3: as the event is the power with which it has
Speaker 3: to elicit emotional reaction. Yes, so I can actually believe
Speaker 3: if you have one hundred percent rarefication. So our next
Speaker 3: project we're putting together is in PTSD because this is
Speaker 3: where it sort of makes sense. It could act like
Speaker 3: one hundred percent raification of a memory could alter my
Speaker 3: perception to the point I believe I'm in that situation. Again,
Speaker 3: of course, we know with traumatic stress this is the case.
Speaker 3: So I'm trying to use a happy example, you know,
Speaker 3: And so one of the core elements perhaps of these
Speaker 3: sort of flashbacks or of disturbing rumination, disturbing mind wandering, worry.
Speaker 3: These are my three elements that I worked on. Actually,
Speaker 3: the rarefication of the mental activity, so the belief that
Speaker 3: it's really happening to me now, which is only a
Speaker 3: small step from what you were just presenting. The I
Speaker 3: think there's someone in the house, I get worried. Actually
Speaker 3: I could just think that there's you know that I
Speaker 3: could just think that this memory is real, doesn't It's
Speaker 3: a little bit and it's enough to set off some
Speaker 3: kind of reaction. Uh. It's called a metacognitive theory. There's
Speaker 3: a it's a brilliant piece of work from Adrian Wells
Speaker 3: called he calls it a self regulatory executive function model,
Speaker 3: and basically it works trying to so trying to dial
Speaker 3: down people's beliefs about their own thinking. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 3: so fascinating, so that there are if people, for example,
Speaker 3: there are five domains, but the three that we're interested in.
Speaker 3: People believe that worry is helpful. So you think, oh,
Speaker 3: if I cover my bases, you know, by worrying about stuff.
Speaker 3: They believe that their thoughts are uncontrollable and dangerous, and
Speaker 3: they believe they have to control their thoughts. If you
Speaker 3: ever tried to control your thoughts, you will know. And
Speaker 3: so anyone high in those beliefs will set off chains
Speaker 3: of worry and rumination which will lead to anxiety, depression,
Speaker 3: and others. And so it's a brilliant model. I love it,
Speaker 3: and I use that to suggest, you know what, it's
Speaker 3: not even the metacognitive The actual beliefs are only problematic
Speaker 3: if you ratify them. Yeah, so an actual fact the ratification.
Speaker 3: And it turns out that for two and a half
Speaker 3: thousand years Buddhism has been refining and developing technology to
Speaker 3: undermine ratification. So that's what we did, is we use
Speaker 3: traditional Indo Tibetan Buddhist practice and understanding and train people
Speaker 3: in that to see the flow on effects.
Speaker 1: Wow, that is so super interesting. So in what like
Speaker 1: in general terms in psych when we talk about you know,
Speaker 1: thinking about thinking, we open that metacognitive door. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: is there is there an equivalent word or term or
Speaker 1: process in you know, Tibetan and Buddhists psychology.
Speaker 3: Or what an awesome question? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Almost in.
Speaker 3: It gets hard because they think about things differently. In
Speaker 3: Buddhist psychology, certainly our tradition, they differentiate perception and conception,
Speaker 3: and perception is like this unmediated apprehension of something. But
Speaker 3: conception is exactly this conception is taking a mental representation
Speaker 3: and treating it as the reference. We call it the
Speaker 3: thing it refers to you know. So yeah, there is
Speaker 3: actually conceptual So then when in Buddhism they start to
Speaker 3: talk about nonconceptual states and these sorts of things, that's
Speaker 3: what they're talking about is meditation practices that reduce the
Speaker 3: amount of that interpretation. There's always some interpretation, but it
Speaker 3: reduces your belief in the interpretation, but it actually dials
Speaker 3: down the bandwidth of the interpretation itself. So as things
Speaker 3: are presented to my senses and especially mental domein right
Speaker 3: as they're presented that I don't it doesn't have this
Speaker 3: capacity to cause all these kind of reactions whether they
Speaker 3: be emotional or physical or verbal or whatever. Wow. So
Speaker 3: the answer is yes, conception just conceptual activities.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you a little bit about
Speaker 1: beliefs and like we've touched on them, but and this
Speaker 1: is not my area of expertise. This is just what
Speaker 1: I think. This is my observation. But it seems to
Speaker 1: me like most of us have beliefs that we didn't choose.
Speaker 1: We just got them through, almost like sociological osmosis, you know,
Speaker 1: being around others who had that belief Mum believes this,
Speaker 1: Dad believes that, and now I'm twenty and also Grandma
Speaker 1: believes it. So I definitely believe that, And I never
Speaker 1: chose it. I never really did a deep dive on it.
Speaker 1: I never put it under the spotlight, had a good think.
Speaker 1: It's just what I believe.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Is that more common than uncommon? I feel like that's
Speaker 1: how most beliefs actually form.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. And I think I'm a bit
Speaker 3: worried about this current generation who may have just graduated
Speaker 3: UNI where it's all gone online, because I think I
Speaker 3: think traditionally that was the sort of workplaces and you know,
Speaker 3: study and these were the places that you came across
Speaker 3: the other ideas. So when I finished high school in
Speaker 3: North Queensland and Cannes, and then I moved down to
Speaker 3: go to the coln here in Brisbane, and I moved
Speaker 3: with I lived with some people I went to high
Speaker 3: school with. You know, I'd known them for a few
Speaker 3: years and holy shit, they were weird, you know, like
Speaker 3: I didn't know I lived.
Speaker 1: With them, right, And that was so interesting because it's
Speaker 1: so funny.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's where I because exactly what you were saying.
Speaker 3: Like I thought my family was normal. But either your
Speaker 3: family is super unnormal abnormal or what mine is, or
Speaker 3: there's no normal. I don't know, And so I think, Yeah,
Speaker 3: those beliefs do come from there, but they're not set
Speaker 3: in stone. And I mean, you know, even into your twenties,
Speaker 3: of prefrontal cortex is still making connections that you can.
Speaker 3: Still you have this flexibility in thinking that a that
Speaker 3: you can and we should be using, you know, because
Speaker 3: you do lose it allegedly. But yeah, of course they
Speaker 3: just come, you go to and you see it at work.
Speaker 3: So when let's say, in the monsoon in northern India,
Speaker 3: in the Tibetan communities, all these worms I lived in
Speaker 3: the out there's rice fields and so you know, and
Speaker 3: there's all these worms everywhere, and the Tibetan kids as
Speaker 3: they walk to school will take a broom and make
Speaker 3: sure they brush all the worms off the pathway so
Speaker 3: they don't step on them, because they believe there's an
Speaker 3: issue with killing them, whereas there might be other cultures
Speaker 3: who would happily just trample across them, you know, beliefs
Speaker 3: inherited entirely from parent previous generations of course.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, and you don't grow up questioning.
Speaker 1: I mean, I grew up in a very religious house,
Speaker 1: and so by the time I was ten, I had
Speaker 1: all of these very ingrained, fundamental non negotiable This is
Speaker 1: how it works. This is how life and death and
Speaker 1: the after life worth work. And by the way, we know,
Speaker 1: just so you all know, we know you don't know.
Speaker 1: You think you know, but we actually know. You're welcome.
Speaker 1: If you need to enlightened, let me know I can
Speaker 1: enlighten you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's right. And now it's kind of you know,
Speaker 3: with the online world, it's kind of got a bit
Speaker 3: more difficult because where you might have one extremist in
Speaker 3: the in their mother's basement, you know, in the past,
Speaker 3: in one sort of neighborhood, there was no support for them,
Speaker 3: you know, like their views. But now on Lane they
Speaker 3: might only the only thing they might get is support
Speaker 3: for really wild, radical, even violent views. So yeah, this
Speaker 3: it gets more and more important, I think to think
Speaker 3: about the kind of the views and the skills we're
Speaker 3: giving children as they come up, especially to those teenage
Speaker 3: years because of that, because now it's very easy to
Speaker 3: find an echo chamber, that's mean extreme echo chamber, not
Speaker 3: like before, you know, the really intense and you don't
Speaker 3: have to speak to anyone as Eber eats everything. Although
Speaker 3: I don't know how you make money, so yeah, well.
Speaker 1: You make money online?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: Well me, it's only fans, you know, I just show
Speaker 1: my feet, so you probably don't, do you know what
Speaker 1: only fans are Corey, I hope it don't. No, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: I don't tell him, look it up later.
Speaker 3: I've made a note.
Speaker 1: Tell me about if you're okay with it, just because
Speaker 1: we talk about this quite a bit. We talk about
Speaker 1: mental health, depression, anxiety, you and mental health now these days,
Speaker 1: now that you've been on the journey that you've been on,
Speaker 1: how are you now?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm well, I'm I'm good. I've had so I
Speaker 3: first went to I first went to India in two
Speaker 3: thousand and three. So I feel as if I've been
Speaker 3: working this full time for more than twenty years. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: I have. I mean so I'm very fortunate. I have
Speaker 3: quite a good understanding how emotions and these things work
Speaker 3: from a psych perspective, which is really helpful. And then
Speaker 3: I have also ways to deal with stuff thanks to
Speaker 3: the contemplative training, you know. So yeah, I of course
Speaker 3: get stressed. I mean a PhD, you know, And of
Speaker 3: course once you're stressed about the PhD, everything else is stressful,
Speaker 3: you know. But of course I know how that works.
Speaker 3: I know what a cognitive load is, and I also
Speaker 3: have been and what results I should see. And I've
Speaker 3: been trained in self reflective practice to try to make
Speaker 3: sure I don't say and do dumb shit, right, because
Speaker 3: I have so much such a long history of doing that.
Speaker 3: So then yeah, no it works. So when I do
Speaker 3: have those stresses, and you know, when I feel that
Speaker 3: stuff rising, I have things I can do to counteract it.
Speaker 3: I have released valves leaders I can pull that I
Speaker 3: have been taught thanks to some very very kind and
Speaker 3: awesome teachers of mine.
Speaker 1: But I do.
Speaker 3: The reason I say that is I rely on both.
Speaker 3: I really do rely on stuff I learned from psychology
Speaker 3: because I feel as if sometimes Buddhists and other people religious,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of poo pooh. Psychology is if it's
Speaker 3: as if it's useless or you know, but actually there's
Speaker 3: all these amazing things that have been learned. They tend
Speaker 3: to be short term fixes in my experience, Like a
Speaker 3: psyche intervention isn't going to launch you into you know,
Speaker 3: but but what it will do is get the obstacles
Speaker 3: out of the way to start to deploy the sort
Speaker 3: of contemplative weaponry. You know that you might have this
Speaker 3: contemplative technology which is a much much more stable, high
Speaker 3: end types of well being, and so of course to
Speaker 3: get stressed, of course, to get emotional. But I feel
Speaker 3: as if I have I have a really good tool set,
Speaker 3: and as my contemplative training increases, I know to deploy,
Speaker 3: I know, to sort of activate those things sooner and
Speaker 3: sooner and sooner. And so for me, what I want
Speaker 3: is the shortest possible gap between the stressor and getting
Speaker 3: and activating some sort of response. You know, That's what
Speaker 3: I'm That's what I'm looking for. So at the moment
Speaker 3: something happens, I got it. I've got a whiteboard here
Speaker 3: of things I have to do, you know, and if
Speaker 3: I look at the whiteboard, stuff does to happen. But
Speaker 3: I know what I want is from from noticing I
Speaker 3: need I need the stress to happen. I need to
Speaker 3: notice the stress is the first step, and I need
Speaker 3: to do something about it. And I need to have
Speaker 3: that happens as fast as possible with the higher highest
Speaker 3: percentage I can. If that makes sense, it's as often
Speaker 3: as possible, as quickly as possible. And if you think
Speaker 3: about it like that, which is how I teach people
Speaker 3: and know the people I work with, This is what
Speaker 3: we're we're doing. So you know, how are your percentages?
Speaker 3: Man like? Have you you know over time over three weeks,
Speaker 3: are you less reactive? And so, yeah, I would say
Speaker 3: my mental health is good. It's not only that I
Speaker 3: feel as if I'm the same way as you both know,
Speaker 3: athletes and people can train to achieve higher levels of
Speaker 3: physical health. The SAME's true of the mind. With the
Speaker 3: right diet, the right training, you can achieve really high
Speaker 3: levels of mental health. And that's my goal in life,
Speaker 3: you know, is actually to push for those and maybe
Speaker 3: help some people along the way if they can.
Speaker 1: I feel this is just what I was thinking as
Speaker 1: you were saying that and talking about you know, the
Speaker 1: not good or bad, but kind of the difference is
Speaker 1: between East and Western a little bit, and you know,
Speaker 1: but a psychology and Western psychology for want a better term.
Speaker 1: But I feel like in Australia we don't really do
Speaker 1: a deep dive on the who am I, you know,
Speaker 1: like understanding the self, like trying to figure out who
Speaker 1: I am am separate to all the things I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to sound like the dell a Lama
Speaker 1: or Bloody Eckhart totally here, but you know, trying to
Speaker 1: figure out where does all my stuff finish? And where
Speaker 1: does Craig start? And by stuff, I mean everything from
Speaker 1: physical stuff to programming, psychological garbage, emotional garbage, experiences, memories,
Speaker 1: you know, fear, anxiety, self doubt, self loathing, self love,
Speaker 1: Like where where am I in the middle of all
Speaker 1: of that stuff? To try to And I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, in Buddhist philosophy you do a deep dive
Speaker 1: and understood one of the things, trying to understand the self. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm probably wording this incorrectly, but and I feel like
Speaker 1: almost the comparison over here his fingers in the ear
Speaker 1: la la la, don't want to know. I've got to
Speaker 1: buy a big itellly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, you know there are different. Yes, First
Speaker 3: that you're right, the Buddhist sort of pushes is understanding
Speaker 3: how the self exists, and you know, it's the fundamental
Speaker 3: of the whole thing. Actually, you know, I'm talking about
Speaker 3: this rareification idea earlier that you know, rarefying or confusing.
Speaker 3: Sometimes we call it a memory with an event. Well,
Speaker 3: fundamentally in Buddhism, the issue is beliefs about myself, like
Speaker 3: I raify who I think I am and it's and
Speaker 3: I think it's unchanging. And that's the problem. You know,
Speaker 3: the other side of what you're saying in terms of say,
Speaker 3: buying a bigger TV and these things is you can
Speaker 3: we talk again in this you know, this cultivating emotional
Speaker 3: balance program that that I sort of worked with in
Speaker 3: my research and and my work. We we've again we've
Speaker 3: lifted this from from Asia. We've lifted this from from Buddhism.
Speaker 3: Really just divide happiness into two types, which is worth
Speaker 3: doing because the ancient Greeks didn't agree on it, you know,
Speaker 3: they killed not Socrates. Anyway, the guy came up with
Speaker 3: you Demonia, who's escaped my mind for some reason. Just ah,
Speaker 3: like the most flamous of the more I don't think
Speaker 3: about this all day. So the Greeks couldn't agree on it,
Speaker 3: neuroscience doesn't agree on it, cognitive psychology can't. No one
Speaker 3: can agree on what happiness is. But of course if
Speaker 3: you look to Asia, you know, which we never do
Speaker 3: as scientists, then maybe there's something there. And there's this
Speaker 3: there's a very neat division. Actually in Buddhism, we can
Speaker 3: make it sort of very secularized by saying we talk
Speaker 3: about two types. There's a type of happiness defined like this,
Speaker 3: a type of happiness or well being derived from what
Speaker 3: you bring to the world. And you've got a hedonic type,
Speaker 3: which is you can imagine type of happiness well being
Speaker 3: derived from what you get from the world's full Because
Speaker 3: there's no third option here, right, you just divide it
Speaker 3: up into two. And they're not good or bad because
Speaker 3: you know, if it's raining and you have an umbrella,
Speaker 3: this is this is hedonic. If I'm hungry and I
Speaker 3: have food is hedonic, So you need hedonic wellbeing. The
Speaker 3: issue is how much of that hedonic resources do I
Speaker 3: put in the pursuit of the genuine this eu'd ammonic type.
Speaker 3: This is the issue. Yes, So yeah, that's having a
Speaker 3: big TVs is not in and of itself bad the
Speaker 3: usual Do I believe it will make me genuinely happy?
Speaker 3: And the answer for most people is yes, which is
Speaker 3: problematic because it just puts you on a hetonic treadmill
Speaker 3: that will throw you off at some point. Well.
Speaker 1: Even one of the very often misquoted scriptures from the
Speaker 1: New Testament is that money is the root of all evil,
Speaker 1: when an actual fact, it says the love of money. No, wait,
Speaker 1: does I didn't know that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it doesn't
Speaker 1: say money is the root of all evil. It says
Speaker 1: the love of money is the root of all evil.
Speaker 1: So like a TV is just a thing, money is
Speaker 1: just a thing. They're both resources. It depends what they
Speaker 1: represent to you and the relationship for one of a
Speaker 1: better term.
Speaker 3: That is so interesting that I'm so glad you said that.
Speaker 3: I find that because that is completely different.
Speaker 1: Oh well exactly, it's a completely different idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And it's belief. It comes down to this thing. Again,
Speaker 3: if I believe that it's going to make me happy,
Speaker 3: for example, that's the problem, and I ratify the belief,
Speaker 3: and so one of the things that you're doing in
Speaker 3: traditional So this is not modern popularized versions, but traditionally
Speaker 3: in meditation practice, in contemplation, that's what you're sort of
Speaker 3: aiming for is to try to have things. So I get,
Speaker 3: you know, someone hands me a I don't know, like
Speaker 3: a pizza or a chocolate or a beer or a whatever,
Speaker 3: you know, and it appears to me like that thing
Speaker 3: is going to make me happy, right, And that's what
Speaker 3: that's the appearance. It is in no worries. You know
Speaker 3: it's not true. It is. It can't be true because
Speaker 3: if it was, let's say it's pizza. You know, if
Speaker 3: piza made me happy, then the more pizza I ate,
Speaker 3: the happier I would be. Right, Yes, as long as
Speaker 3: I had to eating pizza, I'd be happy. And we
Speaker 3: know it's not true. It would turn to suffering access.
Speaker 3: So the issue becomes when that thing appears. We think
Speaker 3: about this as mindful and insight training. When something appears
Speaker 3: to me and like wow, it appears like like that
Speaker 3: thing will make me happy. But I have mindfulness training,
Speaker 3: which doesn't buy in. Mindfulness training in Buddhism isn't non judgmental.
Speaker 3: This is a this is a new thing. Buddhism doesn't
Speaker 3: talk about non judgmental for very good reasons. Buddhism is
Speaker 3: interested in non reactivity, so that so that when it
Speaker 3: pops up to me and I immediately do have a judgment, Oh,
Speaker 3: it's going to make me happy, right, yes, and so
Speaker 3: then but rather than automatically reaching for it, it's the
Speaker 3: reactivity we cut and you have a moment, hey, will
Speaker 3: it really so? No? I know that it won't, but
Speaker 3: only intellectually, you know, I know that it's not like this,
Speaker 3: And that's when you start to get mindfulness links up
Speaker 3: with these insight kind of trainings, and that's what it's for.
Speaker 3: So as bad as bad decisions, potential bad decisions pop up,
Speaker 3: I keep interfering with them. No no, no, no, no
Speaker 3: no no, or then and you make a good decision.
Speaker 3: And as you would know, like thanks to long term potentiation,
Speaker 3: however you want to think, the more you make the
Speaker 3: good decision, the more it becomes your habit, and eventually
Speaker 3: you've sort of reversed the negative you know, reactivity, and
Speaker 3: actually what's the word, you know, it cultivated the positive one.
Speaker 3: And that's what meditation training is really for. At first,
Speaker 3: you do it with the things that you say and
Speaker 3: do physical, verbal but over time you turn it in
Speaker 3: on the mental as well.
Speaker 1: What is I love that? Thank you? We're on the
Speaker 1: home straight. So in our in our culture, I'm generalizing,
Speaker 1: but most of us grew up in a paradigm or
Speaker 1: a kind of a group think that taught us that
Speaker 1: success is about what we have and what we earn,
Speaker 1: and what we drive, and where we live and what
Speaker 1: people think of us and our brand these days, our
Speaker 1: brand and our listeners and our followers and all the
Speaker 1: all the external things right and again, there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: inherently with any of those things. But you know, we
Speaker 1: all know that. I mean, I do it. I get
Speaker 1: X amount of listeners and I'm like, oh, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: And then two days later on I want two X,
Speaker 1: and then I want three X, and I'm on and
Speaker 1: off the hedonic treadmill because I'm like, now I need
Speaker 1: twenty X to get the same pleasure response that I
Speaker 1: used to get with one. The only thing that's changed
Speaker 1: is me. I've desensitized myself. Blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: So my long winded question is is there what is
Speaker 1: what does Buddhism teach about success? Or is there a
Speaker 1: concept of success? In Buddhism. Oh yeah, there's nobody in
Speaker 1: Australia that doesn't want to be successful. And of course
Speaker 1: that means different things to different people. But is there
Speaker 1: is that an idea or it seems like it might
Speaker 1: not be well you would.
Speaker 3: It depends, so it is you could talk so fundamentally
Speaker 3: say well, success would be what we call liberation and
Speaker 3: in Layton then you know, there are these Buddhisms kind
Speaker 3: of goal oriented. People are surprised. I was surprised to
Speaker 3: find you know, I heard you.
Speaker 1: Say that on a video. I've watched a bee all right, yeah,
Speaker 1: by the way, great, there's some on substack. Is it
Speaker 1: on substack?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, really good. Go and have a look at
Speaker 1: Corey on there if one, but sorry, carry.
Speaker 3: On all things. Yeah, it's kind of goal oriented. So
Speaker 3: there is this idea, you know, this belief if you
Speaker 3: like that you can eliminate suffering because it's all focused
Speaker 3: on the mind. You know, that's the conversation for another time,
Speaker 3: but that's your long term goal. So you could argue
Speaker 3: that this is success, so that that would take a
Speaker 3: lot of work. But in the meantime there are these
Speaker 3: sort of you know, way stations you know if you
Speaker 3: like along the path and so, yeah, you would from
Speaker 3: a would as perspective you'd be looking at So I
Speaker 3: should just flag this and I'm not pulling this out
Speaker 3: of I'm just giving my own opinion here now. So
Speaker 3: I don't want to people to think but that there
Speaker 3: are things you would look at, things like well, sorry,
Speaker 3: having said that, I can tell you what the dal
Speaker 3: Alarma actually says. I've heard him say this numerous times,
Speaker 3: is that if you've got a meditation practice or a
Speaker 3: spiritual practice of some kind and you want to know
Speaker 3: it's working, look back five years till now, like are
Speaker 3: you doing better now than you were five years ago?
Speaker 3: And if so, it's working. So there is that What
Speaker 3: would those measures be? Is the issue? Right?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: How would I manage?
Speaker 1: What are theis for that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it depends who you are, you know. For me,
Speaker 3: it would be things like how do I handle adversity?
Speaker 3: In fact, what do I even think adversity is? If
Speaker 3: you want to just keep pushing you know, how often
Speaker 3: do I have a problematic situation that I turn into
Speaker 3: a learning problem solving experience? That would be one. Another
Speaker 3: one would be how often do I factor in in
Speaker 3: the things I'm saying and doing the impact I'm having
Speaker 3: on those around me. So now you're bringing this kindness
Speaker 3: compassion thing into it too. Now, is this would be
Speaker 3: success if I'm managing to operate in such a way
Speaker 3: that is at least least minimizing any sort of disturbance
Speaker 3: I might be causing people out there.
Speaker 1: That's good.
Speaker 3: If I'm the more that I'm habitually acting in a
Speaker 3: way that actually even maybe helps them, or at least
Speaker 3: I'm motivated, because my motivation to help you might not
Speaker 3: actually help you, you know, but at least if I'm
Speaker 3: motivated to do so, then that would be kind of
Speaker 3: a success for me as well, you know. So these
Speaker 3: would be the Buddhist ways of thinking. Is how more even,
Speaker 3: how less sorry? How much has my reactivity died down?
Speaker 3: This is important? And then in terms of my reactions,
Speaker 3: how much do they lead to or make a push
Speaker 3: towards the genuine side of wellbeing rather than the hedonic?
Speaker 3: And then if you do that, you have to stop
Speaker 3: and think, well, what sort of things cause this eudaemonic
Speaker 3: this genuine happiness? And that's when you start talking about
Speaker 3: high levels of attention skills, kindness, compassion, insight, we talk
Speaker 3: about equanimity and these things, so there are causes for it.
Speaker 3: So how often do I put how well and consistently
Speaker 3: do I put my hedonic resources in the service of
Speaker 3: the genuine? That's the KPI, you know. And for me
Speaker 3: sometimes I just sit down and watch really shit TV
Speaker 3: because I'm tired, and you know what I mean, That's okay,
Speaker 3: because I don't have any expect The issue is I
Speaker 3: don't expect it's going to help. I'm just gonna, you know,
Speaker 3: just blank out for an hour or so. But that's it.
Speaker 3: How often am I putting this hedonic resources to the
Speaker 3: into the service of the world, of the genuine?
Speaker 1: I think it's I put up a little post the
Speaker 1: other day on my Instagram and the title of the
Speaker 1: thing was fuck all hyphenated fuck all days or and
Speaker 1: or fuck all moments, And it's like, I think there
Speaker 1: are times when in the middle of the business and
Speaker 1: the box sticking and the learning and evolving and adapting
Speaker 1: and serving and researching, you want to have some days
Speaker 1: where you do fuck all and it's good. It's some
Speaker 1: nights where you go, what are you doing? Nothing?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: I feel like we almost in our culture have got
Speaker 1: to come up with a shopping list of what are
Speaker 1: you doing this weekend? I'll stand by, I'll read you
Speaker 1: the list, versus fucking nothing.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: You're doing tonight? Nothing? You want to do something?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: I want to do nothing. You know, I'd love to
Speaker 1: go on.
Speaker 3: Well, I just in that. Like, it's like how how
Speaker 3: you sort of respond to stress? And I often have
Speaker 3: said that there's kind of two main ways. One is
Speaker 3: to kind of face it and understand it and deal
Speaker 3: with it, and one is to drown it out. But
Speaker 3: there's a time for both, actually, and that's exactly Sometimes
Speaker 3: I joke about just pulling the curtains with my wife,
Speaker 3: you know, and seeing, now, let's just drown this shit out,
Speaker 3: like you know, it's fine, yes, but I don't believe
Speaker 3: it's a long term solution. That's the issue. You know.
Speaker 3: If you believe that's going to have some impact in
Speaker 3: the longer term, then that's when it causes some problems. Otherwise,
Speaker 3: you're fine, man, take a day off.
Speaker 1: Hey, so good to meet you and chat to you.
Speaker 1: I feel like we didn't get halfway through what we
Speaker 1: could get through. So maybe another online date at some
Speaker 1: stage if you're up for it point people towards the
Speaker 1: things you would like to point them towards, if you'd
Speaker 1: be so kind.
Speaker 3: Sure, At the moment, the Substack is the best place,
Speaker 3: you know, Corey Jackson. You'll find it's called more than
Speaker 3: merely coping. It's my substack. I do have a website,
Speaker 3: but it's so old and I haven't looked at it
Speaker 3: because the PhD has consumed in my life, and so
Speaker 3: I run online online communities. There's a free section that's
Speaker 3: just full of all the resources of courses I run,
Speaker 3: and then there's a paid section where I work with
Speaker 3: people one to one or in groups as well, which
Speaker 3: you can find if you get in touch with me.
Speaker 3: But the Substack at the moment is becoming my go to.
Speaker 3: I'm quite fond of that platform. By the way, I'm
Speaker 3: becoming my go to.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get on there. I'm not on there,
Speaker 1: but I had a look at yours and I was impressed,
Speaker 1: and I watched and videos and had a little bit
Speaker 1: of a sneak around. It's very good. So yeah, go
Speaker 1: and check it out, everybody, Corey Jackson. Co O r
Speaker 1: E Y Corey Jackson. Go check him out. Hey mate,
Speaker 1: Well say goodbye affair, but thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming on the show. Really appreciate you and really enjoyed
Speaker 1: getting to know you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, me too, that was great. Thanks Buddy, thanks for
Speaker 3: having me, Thanks Tip, thank you.