Speaker 1: Doctor Don Chappelle. Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2: Thank you, happy to be here.
Speaker 3: So we have a Belgian living in the States talking
Speaker 3: to an Irishman living in Australia.
Speaker 1: This could be quite an interesting journey for people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, should we call somebody in Kennedy emergency or yeah?
Speaker 3: So Dad, you are a You've got a really interesting background.
Speaker 1: So you're background kind of you're.
Speaker 3: A clinical psychologist by trade, but also a bona fide
Speaker 3: philosopher who's interested in religion as well. So you you
Speaker 3: have a really interesting journey. Tell us, first of all,
Speaker 3: how did you get into what was the what was
Speaker 3: the first driver of your study? Was it philosophy, was
Speaker 3: it psychology or was it kind of a dual interest
Speaker 3: right from the get go?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was probably It started off with psychology. I
Speaker 2: discovered a book on psycho analysis when I was in
Speaker 2: my teens in my father's library and I tried to
Speaker 2: read it. Of course, didn't understand much of it, but
Speaker 2: I kept reading, you know, unlike many of my friends
Speaker 2: who sort of gave up on those things. You know,
Speaker 2: they you know a lot of people I think they
Speaker 2: say philosophy, I don't know. I can't get into it. Well,
Speaker 2: I just didn't give up. I kept on reading, and
Speaker 2: so eventually I developed simultaneous or you know, equal interest
Speaker 2: in psychology and philosophy, with the initial emphasis on depth psychology,
Speaker 2: you know, psychology of the unconscious Freud and Young, and
Speaker 2: then archetypal psychology that means anything. And I was I'm
Speaker 2: a student of James Hillman, who was a primary student
Speaker 2: of care Jung and so wow, yeah, so I got
Speaker 2: into archetypal psychology and what we called and what is
Speaker 2: still called phenomenological psychology, that is to say, trying to
Speaker 2: understand human experience from the basis of human experience itself,
Speaker 2: not from models from physics or from physiology or biology,
Speaker 2: but sort of straight from direct experience and to sort
Speaker 2: of make a great leap already into the connections with philosophy.
Speaker 2: I think the original phenomenologist and phenomenological psychologist was the
Speaker 2: Buddha of all people. And this was, you know, the
Speaker 2: West didn't have something called psychology until about the sixteenth
Speaker 2: or seventeenth century. The Buddha spelled out two thousand and
Speaker 2: five hundred years ago a very comprehensive, sophisticated psychology of
Speaker 2: everyday life. And so the other person who is much
Speaker 2: closer to home for us, who is I think also
Speaker 2: a phenomenological philosopher and psychologist, is Nietzsche. So to make
Speaker 2: sort of a kind of a long journey long story short,
Speaker 2: I went from Freud and company, you know, Young and Helen,
Speaker 2: to Nietzsche, and from Nietzsche I went to, of all people,
Speaker 2: the Buddha, and from the Buddha I eventually ended up
Speaker 2: with a Taoist, you know us, first Confucius, and then
Speaker 2: a Laudza who is very well known in the West,
Speaker 2: and then someone who's not at all known in the West,
Speaker 2: which is a philosopher who came a couple of generations
Speaker 2: after Laudze. And his name is Zwangzhu, and he's a very,
Speaker 2: at least when you first encounter him, very bizarre sounding guy.
Speaker 2: Like all these these ancient Chinese philosophers, they operate in
Speaker 2: a very different way from the way we do. You know,
Speaker 2: we are essentially Greeks by origin in philosophy, and we
Speaker 2: became you know, first you were Greek philosophers, then we
Speaker 2: became European philosophers, and then on top of that we
Speaker 2: became Christian philosophers. And it's all very discursive. You know,
Speaker 2: one thing follows from another, one thing argues for another
Speaker 2: from another, and the Chinese are very different in style,
Speaker 2: and that takes some serious getting used to. They'll start
Speaker 2: with a little anecdote to figure off. Let's say two
Speaker 2: men fishing in the river and they have a conversation
Speaker 2: that is no more than one page long, and you go,
Speaker 2: what so, it takes quite some introduction. But once you
Speaker 2: get past that, and you need help getting past that,
Speaker 2: you know, help from from western skul of uh Chinese philosophy,
Speaker 2: then you begin to see, like some very bizarre and
Speaker 2: shocking things, Like one of the things you discovered is
Speaker 2: this Chinese philosopher Zumangzhu. He is, in more than just
Speaker 2: one way, a kind of a Nietzschean philosopher before Nietzsche,
Speaker 2: two five hundred years before Nietzsche. And you go, what so,
Speaker 2: once you begin to see these connections, that opens up
Speaker 2: a world so wide and the windows so wide that
Speaker 2: it is just unbelievable. And so that's that's the that's
Speaker 2: that's the the ground that I plow, so to speak,
Speaker 2: you know, the area that I work in. And so
Speaker 2: my last book, which is called a Minimalist ethic, a
Speaker 2: minimalist ethic for everyday life. It is, it's it goes.
Speaker 2: It starts with Socrates and it ends up all the
Speaker 2: way with the Chinese, and it includes things like the
Speaker 2: celebration of the Sabbath and and and Buddhism and Taoism
Speaker 2: and what have you. And you begin to see I
Speaker 2: I am. Originally I was sort of an academic type,
Speaker 2: but I got away from academia and being a practicing psychologist,
Speaker 2: I had to learn to talk the language of people
Speaker 2: with whom I said, need to need so to speak.
Speaker 2: That's very different from it. It's very different from an
Speaker 2: academic audience. And so I write for that audience. And
Speaker 2: this last little book is my shortest, but I think
Speaker 2: my best and actually most important and most original book,
Speaker 2: which is that that minimalist ethic from for everyday life.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you're familiar with somebody named it's
Speaker 2: a Scottish person, Ian McGilchrist.
Speaker 3: Ian McGilchrist, yes, yes, yes, says he's a neuroscientist, isn't
Speaker 3: he Yeah?
Speaker 2: Neuroscientists, psychiatrist, philosophy, literary critic, you name it, he does
Speaker 2: it all. He wrote this book two major works, the
Speaker 2: last one is a two volume thing. It's too big
Speaker 2: to publish in one volume. It's like sixteen hundred pages
Speaker 2: or something like that. But he covers very similar kind
Speaker 2: of ground, but he does it in a very different way.
Speaker 2: He starts off with a critique of Western habits of
Speaker 2: philosophying from what he calls the left brain type approach.
Speaker 2: And it's not a simplicity.
Speaker 1: Can you explain what you done? Can you just explain
Speaker 1: what you mean by that to people?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, left brain, right brain. All animals, all mammals
Speaker 2: have their brains are made of two parts, the left
Speaker 2: side and the right side, and the different parts control
Speaker 2: different parts of our functioning. For example, the left brain,
Speaker 2: am I pointing at my left rain. Now we're in
Speaker 2: reverse here. The left brain controls the muscles of the
Speaker 2: right side of the body, and the other way around,
Speaker 2: the right side of the brain controls the left side
Speaker 2: of the muscles of the body. But there's not only that.
Speaker 2: The more important part is that the left brain and
Speaker 2: the right brain they're sort of phenomenologically different. They do
Speaker 2: different functions. The left brain is more the analytic, rational, focused, scientific, argumentative,
Speaker 2: logical kind of approach to things. It's the thing that
Speaker 2: with which we focus our attention on something that's right
Speaker 2: under our nose, you know, like under the microscope. The
Speaker 2: right brain knowledge has to do with a more comprehensive
Speaker 2: knowledge of the entire world around. It's not so focused
Speaker 2: on one specific thing or and it's sort of more
Speaker 2: comprehensive in the sense that it involves like intuitive ways
Speaker 2: of knowing, in the effective importance of the elements of
Speaker 2: knowing and so on. And these two brain hemispheres they
Speaker 2: work together. You can't be if your one side of
Speaker 2: your brain is seriously damaged, and then one side of
Speaker 2: your personality so to speak, is damaged as well, doesn't
Speaker 2: function as well. So his critique being a neurophysiologist, which
Speaker 2: I am not at all. I'm like the Buddha, you know,
Speaker 2: the Buddha never heard of the brain, so to speak,
Speaker 2: but he did very well for himself. Nonetheless, you know,
Speaker 2: he wasn't a scientific researcher, but he came up with
Speaker 2: this fantastic, fantastically sophisticated psychology. This guy, Ian McGilchrist would
Speaker 2: absolutely worth checking out. He sort of argues that our culture,
Speaker 2: largely since the Enlightenment, has focused has has sort of
Speaker 2: given the rain of governing our lives and our decisions
Speaker 2: and whatever to the more left brain part of our person.
Speaker 2: And again, you can't be too literal or too simplistic
Speaker 2: about these things, because these these two brain hemispheres, they overlap,
Speaker 2: they work together, they compensate for each other, and what
Speaker 2: have you. But anyway, his argument is, and there's no argument,
Speaker 2: no arguing with that argument, that ever since the Enlightenment,
Speaker 2: we've become like super weighted on the side of rationalism scientism.
Speaker 2: Religion is out the window. Religious experiences, bull religious dogmas,
Speaker 2: certainty out of the window, you know, introspection, you can't
Speaker 2: rely on it. Really, So it's behavioral science is what
Speaker 2: we want. And that's how a psychology is how we
Speaker 2: got where we are too, because all of science is
Speaker 2: sort of in that sense. And his argument, and it
Speaker 2: is mine, well, although I commented very differently, and I
Speaker 2: ad I skipped the brain altogether, so to speak. But
Speaker 2: his argument is that the whole person we need to
Speaker 2: develop the right side of existence more. That's why I
Speaker 2: think so many people are into yoga and meditation and
Speaker 2: spirituality and and uh earth, you know, earth awareness and
Speaker 2: so on. That's that's more right, brain kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: It's funny here I am talking about McGilchrist's book instead
Speaker 2: of my own. But the point is that we end
Speaker 2: up in the same place. And I actually recently wrote
Speaker 2: to him and I hope that I'll hear back from him,
Speaker 2: is that, you know, we both end up with what
Speaker 2: he calls and what I also call religious experience, direct
Speaker 2: religious experience, you which is different from religion. Hume has
Speaker 2: a fantastic line which says, religion is a defense against
Speaker 2: religious experience. You know, religion is the stuff handled with
Speaker 2: left brain materials, you know, Catholic theologian arguments and you
Speaker 2: will believe this and dogma in whatever. That's a defense
Speaker 2: against the directness of phenomenological experience because you know, very
Speaker 2: few of us are really interested in religious dogma, but
Speaker 2: all of us are interested in what we might call
Speaker 2: religious experience. And that doesn't have to be something fantastic, great,
Speaker 2: you know, something biblical, although you know, biblical literature, of course,
Speaker 2: is full of the material of religious experience. You know,
Speaker 2: like people allow Dawkins and whatever who poo pooh religion.
Speaker 2: I think they're missing the boat entirely. They they think
Speaker 2: that religions is about gods. You know, like these supernatural
Speaker 2: things which are easy to to do away with, you know,
Speaker 2: with some clever, you know arguments. But the point of
Speaker 2: real religion, a real religious study, is not it's not
Speaker 2: about God, it's about who we are. It's about humans.
Speaker 2: Religion is about what it is like to be human.
Speaker 2: And so these people they forget that day sort of,
Speaker 2: you know, Dawkins, you know, they they think they do
Speaker 2: away with religious religious dogma, and they have thereby done
Speaker 2: away with all of religious tradition and religious experience, which
Speaker 2: is of course not true. And so my book ends
Speaker 2: up the little one, you know, the medal, the minimalists,
Speaker 2: I think in everyday life ends up in the with
Speaker 2: with with the Sabbath. I'm not Jewish. You don't have
Speaker 2: to be you don't have to be Jewish, you don't
Speaker 2: even have to be religious to really get the idea
Speaker 2: of what the Sabbath is, you know, in the mythology
Speaker 2: of Judeo Christian tradition, in Genesis, the Book of Creation,
Speaker 2: you know. And again you don't have to believe these things,
Speaker 2: but they nonetheless they say something about something, and what
Speaker 2: you hear them say depends largely on how you tend
Speaker 2: to listen. And so in any case, we all know,
Speaker 2: we all grew up learning that it took God six
Speaker 2: days to create the universe and the world, and then
Speaker 2: he saw that it was all good, very good. And
Speaker 2: then on the seventh day, what does he do? Nothing?
Speaker 2: Now he leaves at the west then and we do
Speaker 2: a pretty good job. So he rests and he says,
Speaker 2: you know, it's all good, it's very good. And I
Speaker 2: think the Sabbath is that capacity to rest, to come
Speaker 2: to a place rest in your own life after all
Speaker 2: the week, the week of the kind of work that
Speaker 2: you do, and you come to a Sunday or a
Speaker 2: rest day, or a day on the golf course or
Speaker 2: whatever it may be, mountain climbing, where you reach a
Speaker 2: point where you say, ah, this is what it's all about.
Speaker 2: You know, some an experience that that that adds to
Speaker 2: the usual. You know, you can have good food on
Speaker 2: a daily basis, but that does not really satisfy. There
Speaker 2: are a few things in our life that satisfy us,
Speaker 2: and the Sabbath is one of those. And that's God's invention.
Speaker 2: And again I'm not a religious person. I'll talk about
Speaker 2: Einstein about that, but I've lost my train of thought
Speaker 2: here that also comes.
Speaker 3: With you were you were talking about this, that the
Speaker 3: concept of the Sabbath.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's the it's it's God inventing. And I learned
Speaker 2: it from a a friend of mine, acquaintance rabbi. He said,
Speaker 2: on the seventh Day, God doesn't rest because he's tired.
Speaker 2: It's not like the rest of us, you know, or
Speaker 2: because he's gotten lazy or something. On the seventh Day. No,
Speaker 2: he discovers or he creates the felt sense of the sacred,
Speaker 2: the felt sense of holiness. He looks at the whole creation,
Speaker 2: that all that has come into being, and he says,
Speaker 2: pretty good, you know, amazing. And that's what celebrating or
Speaker 2: keeping the Sabbath, as they put it, is about that.
Speaker 2: It's about finding ways through ritual behavior or through any
Speaker 2: other behavior. Buddhists do it through meditation. They reach that
Speaker 2: point of shedding all their usual thoughts, you know, and
Speaker 2: coming to a place of profound peace. Not peace after war,
Speaker 2: not peace when you make up with your spouse, but
Speaker 2: a piece that is that income is the whole world,
Speaker 2: and that is what the Sabbath is, and that is
Speaker 2: what meditation aims at, you know, similar to God, the creator.
Speaker 2: There's the legend of the Buddha. Has it that when
Speaker 2: he reached the enlightenment, you know, he had been meditating
Speaker 2: for six years and then one day he wasn't getting
Speaker 2: where he wanted to get. One day he decided, I'm
Speaker 2: not leaving this seat here until until I'm enlightened. And
Speaker 2: guess what he got enlightened haliloja. And so what happened
Speaker 2: after that is he took I think it's seventy four
Speaker 2: days forty seven days of complete rest. He didn't do anything,
Speaker 2: and he said, everything has done nothing else needs to
Speaker 2: be done. That's the same thing that God said on
Speaker 2: the seventh day. Everything has good, everything has done nothing else.
Speaker 2: We don't need to worry about anything else that has
Speaker 2: to be done. And that's the kind of experience that
Speaker 2: all of us are capable of in the smallest ways perhaps,
Speaker 2: but the essential dimension is the same. You know, Like
Speaker 2: one time I wrote that in one of my books,
Speaker 2: I think, or in two. Well, one day I fell
Speaker 2: in love with a paper clip. Excuse me, Yes, I
Speaker 2: did some moment where all of a sudden the paper
Speaker 2: clip struck me. I wasn't just using it, although I
Speaker 2: needed a paper clip or whatever. But when I reached
Speaker 2: for the paper clip, it struck me as a wonderfully
Speaker 2: miraculous little thing. What an invention it, what a humble
Speaker 2: job it does, but how well he does it? And
Speaker 2: I didn't think all those words with it. When you
Speaker 2: start adding words to your experience, you're done. You know
Speaker 2: your experience done. That's sort of like trying to explain
Speaker 2: a poem. If you have to explain a poem, you've
Speaker 2: lost a poem. And the same thing with my paper clip,
Speaker 2: And distinctly remember that day when I fell in love
Speaker 2: with that darn little paper clip, And so small things
Speaker 2: like that, A moment of quiet, of like real silence
Speaker 2: can do the same thing, and.
Speaker 3: So donad But can I just I want to take
Speaker 3: this into a practical application perspective, right, And so the
Speaker 3: Western for me, Western thought in general, Western society is
Speaker 3: overly focused on the idea of happiness and and for
Speaker 3: me often not always, but but some types of modern
Speaker 3: psychology I don't think are helpful because I describe it
Speaker 3: as the psychology of.
Speaker 2: Me, me, me, me, me, absolutely right.
Speaker 3: So so both Nietzsche and and the Buddha they talked about.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think of the.
Speaker 3: First noble truth of Buddhism life is suffering, which I
Speaker 3: think is a bit of a misquote, isn't it that
Speaker 3: that I give duca is kind of better translated of
Speaker 3: life is hard to do.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's what I learned. After decades of practicing psychology,
Speaker 2: I learned life is difficult.
Speaker 3: Yes, And for me this needs to be the fundamental
Speaker 3: thing that every person is taught. Life can be amazing,
Speaker 3: but it's also hard, and it was never meant to
Speaker 3: be easy. And he ever told you that life was
Speaker 3: meant to be easy and you're entitled to happiness.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but they've lied to you.
Speaker 3: And to talk about the importance because I know you're
Speaker 3: a fan of that as well as unhappiness as necessary
Speaker 3: living absolutely, rather than a pathology that has to be medicated.
Speaker 2: Hello, yep, yeah we're still here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we're still here.
Speaker 3: So so so please talk to us about this idea
Speaker 3: of unhappiness is necessary absolutely.
Speaker 2: First of all, starting with the Buddha he you know,
Speaker 2: as you pointed out, you know, his first novel, noble
Speaker 2: truth is life is unhappiness. That's not sort of like
Speaker 2: a simple complaint or being sort of in a bitchy
Speaker 2: mood or something like that. It is a fact that
Speaker 2: the things we pursue in life, none of those will
Speaker 2: ever deeply truly satisfy us. That's all he meant that
Speaker 2: what whatever we pursue, it's not going to make us happy.
Speaker 2: The best career in the world, the best fortune in
Speaker 2: the world, the best test line in the world, the
Speaker 2: best wife. You know, none of it is going to
Speaker 2: make you happy. That's a realization you have to make,
Speaker 2: and a lot of us don't make that until we're
Speaker 2: like in the middle of our life. You know, when
Speaker 2: you're young, you think, oh, you're going to do it.
Speaker 2: It's sort of like it applies to other people, but
Speaker 2: not to me. You know. One popular teacher of Buddhist teachings,
Speaker 2: he was at a conference and he talked about that,
Speaker 2: and he said, you know, we have to start here
Speaker 2: with the idea that life is sort of unsatisfactory as
Speaker 2: they also call it, instead of suffering, you know. And
Speaker 2: he said, well, there will be some people here who
Speaker 2: say will say, well, yeah, that applies to most people maybe,
Speaker 2: but not for me. I just got a new girlfriend.
Speaker 2: I'm as happy as one can get. And he said,
Speaker 2: I'll see you next year, you know. But it is true.
Speaker 2: So I did write a book about that, the Necessity
Speaker 2: of Unhappiness, and it talks about you unhappiness of four figures,
Speaker 2: first the Buddha, secondly Nietzschee, who also realized that he
Speaker 2: as a philosopher, he noticed that everybody was after truth,
Speaker 2: you know, all traditional Western philosopher daring the truth. He says,
Speaker 2: one not other tru one not rather untruth or even
Speaker 2: illusion or something else. And he said, the basis, you know,
Speaker 2: we have to start with the fact that existence is
Speaker 2: very tough, very hard. It's difficult. It is you know,
Speaker 2: it's suffering, you know, and we're not made for this
Speaker 2: sort of you know, one day we'll have land, the
Speaker 2: perfect job will be happily. Ever after no, he said,
Speaker 2: you know, happiness is Unhappiness is necessary. And I have
Speaker 2: a third figure, which is the Book of Job, from
Speaker 2: the biblical figure of the Book of Job. Also he
Speaker 2: I don't know if you listeners are familiar, but Job
Speaker 2: is sort of a saintly figured like a real good.
Speaker 1: What is it Old Testament Job?
Speaker 2: It is Old Testament. Yes, it belongs with the Testament,
Speaker 2: although it appears also in other non Jewish traditions. It's
Speaker 2: older than the Jewish tradition, I think, but it is
Speaker 2: an essential part of the wisdom writings in Judaism. Job
Speaker 2: who is, you know, perfect perfectly devoted to his God.
Speaker 2: And one day his God plans, you know, decides to
Speaker 2: test him, and he inflicts all kinds of pains on him.
Speaker 2: He burns down his holdings, he kills all his workers,
Speaker 2: and he kills all his children, and you know, when
Speaker 2: there's nothing left to take away from him, he inflicts
Speaker 2: him with boils that are untreatable, incurable. But at the
Speaker 2: same time he won't let him die or commit suicide.
Speaker 2: So he's stuck there, you know. And so he goes
Speaker 2: from being the most devoted person you know, to being
Speaker 2: the most blasphemous person more than nietzs you and Nietzsche.
Speaker 2: Everybody knows God is dead. We have murdered him. That
Speaker 2: is niets you he's famous or from his line, Job
Speaker 2: does some he says something far more blasphemous. He says,
Speaker 2: once he really can't handle his suffering anymore, he gets
Speaker 2: enraged and he yells out. He says, goddamn, the day
Speaker 2: I was born, let it never have been If you
Speaker 2: look carefully at that is goddamned today I was born.
Speaker 2: Let it not have been. Let it never have been.
Speaker 2: That is sort of a counter creation myth, you know,
Speaker 2: wishing not to have been created, which of course none
Speaker 2: of us can do. If you're wishing not to have
Speaker 2: been created, you too late, because you're already fully involved
Speaker 2: in life. If you you say you wish you know,
Speaker 2: I wish you had died at birth, too late again,
Speaker 2: because you're, you know, by the time you realize that
Speaker 2: you're you're you're too old, you know, to be dying
Speaker 2: in her as a baby, and and so on. And
Speaker 2: so Job goes through all these faces, and each of
Speaker 2: those makes him feel even worse. And so he says, God,
Speaker 2: damn the day I was born. And then he goes
Speaker 2: on blaspheming so called blasts feaming. I don't think it's
Speaker 2: blest feeming at all. And actually, at the end of
Speaker 2: the book of Job, God himself comes out and he
Speaker 2: says to Job, you have spoken the truth about me
Speaker 2: and your friends who said you must have done something wrong,
Speaker 2: otherwise God wouldn't have punished you. They were absolutely wrong.
Speaker 2: So God sides with Job. And so what Job does.
Speaker 2: Then what God does is he gives them like a
Speaker 2: panoramic overview of all of creation. He says, look around,
Speaker 2: you know, bird feathers, the wind, you know, seasons. How
Speaker 2: does the cow know when it's time to have her calf?
Speaker 2: Where is the wind when it doesn't blow? Who tells you?
Speaker 2: Who calls the lightning for you? And Job is sort
Speaker 2: of it's some people describe that's one of some of
Speaker 2: the best nature literature ever written. And so after that, God,
Speaker 2: you know, these are all things we can see it
Speaker 2: on an everyday basis, all of us, you know, even
Speaker 2: on the worst day of our lives, just as it
Speaker 2: was the case for Job. And when he sees that
Speaker 2: and he remembers, yeah, he realizes, yes, it is true.
Speaker 2: This is this is amazing stuff that we're born into.
Speaker 2: And then he becomes silent. He stops complaining, stops swearing,
Speaker 2: stops complaining, and he says, you know, I've heard of
Speaker 2: you with my ears, but now I've seen you directly.
Speaker 2: So what he has seen is nothing but things that
Speaker 2: we can see on an everyday basis, the wind, trees, leaves,
Speaker 2: you know, on trees, and so on. So that's the
Speaker 2: third figure in that book on the necessity of unhappiness.
Speaker 2: Is the figure of Job, because then the book ends
Speaker 2: by saying and Job then lived content for the rest
Speaker 2: of his life, which is like one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: years or something like that, and he died content deeply content.
Speaker 3: Contentment is different to happiness, right yes, And I think
Speaker 3: this is a critical part of all of this.
Speaker 2: Right we go, I aim for contentment, not happiness, because
Speaker 2: New Mercedes or whatever, you know. Content And because what's
Speaker 2: interesting about Job here is that of all the hundreds
Speaker 2: upon hundreds of people measure mentioned in the Bible, both
Speaker 2: new and old, you know, Jewish and Christian, there's only
Speaker 2: a handful of people of whom it is said that
Speaker 2: they died content. And Job, of all people, is one
Speaker 2: of those. The most unhappy guy in the world becomes
Speaker 2: one of the few who ends up dying content. And
Speaker 2: then the fourth figure in my book on the necessity
Speaker 2: of unhappiness is The Catcher in the Rye, which is
Speaker 2: a very famous American novel. It's a superbly well written novel.
Speaker 2: If you ever have a chance, it's an easy read.
Speaker 2: It's written. It came out in nineteen fifty or thereabouts.
Speaker 2: You know. The Catcher in the Eye very one of
Speaker 2: the best novels of that century. And it describes a
Speaker 2: young man, an adolescent, you know, who has been already
Speaker 2: kicked out of three prep schools, and he's about to
Speaker 2: be expelled from the fourth, you know, like adolescent going downhill,
Speaker 2: you know, pure and simple. And he also he's the
Speaker 2: most wretchedly unhappy adolescent you can imagine. But it is
Speaker 2: so beautifully written that it speaks to you, you know,
Speaker 2: like you. And he also has to go through all
Speaker 2: his misery before he can come to the end and
Speaker 2: begins to see like something turn around. You know. He's
Speaker 2: alienated everybody, he's pissed off everybody. He has no friends,
Speaker 2: he's drifting, he's totally desperate. And then he sits in
Speaker 2: a psychiatrist's office at the end and he starts telling
Speaker 2: his story. And that's the whole book, is the telling
Speaker 2: of his story. And then at the end he says
Speaker 2: heribed after he has described a scene where he has
Speaker 2: some kind of argument with his friends in school, high
Speaker 2: school or whatever, and he makes this amazing discovery and
Speaker 2: it's very easy to read over it. He says, it's funny.
Speaker 2: He says, don't ever tell anybody anything, because if you do,
Speaker 2: you start missing everybody. And this comes from the mouth
Speaker 2: of the most cynical, you know, sharpest tongued adolescent you've
Speaker 2: ever read about. And he says at the end, it's funny.
Speaker 2: Don't ever tell anybody anything, because if you do, you
Speaker 2: start missing everybody. So something has melted, you know. And
Speaker 2: it's just like the one line is the beginning of
Speaker 2: the turnaround for him, just like it is for Job.
Speaker 2: You know, you have to read thirty seven of the
Speaker 2: forty two books of Job before you the turnaround begins,
Speaker 2: you know. And the same thing with the Buddha. Six
Speaker 2: years of meditation, after multiple many, many endless rebirds, you know,
Speaker 2: and six years of meditation, and then finally it's like bang,
Speaker 2: you know, and then he says, nothing else needs to
Speaker 2: be done. Everything is done. Six days of creation, artwork,
Speaker 2: you know, serious business. And then there's a seventh day. Oh,
Speaker 2: this is beautiful. That's where psychology, I think, has to go,
Speaker 2: and that's where my writing goes, and that's where McGilchrist goes.
Speaker 2: And again I'm putting in plugs for McGilchrist. It's almost funny.
Speaker 3: But is this similar to the Japanese psychology concept of arugamama,
Speaker 3: which is basically an acceptance of what is so, but
Speaker 3: it's it's not a passive acceptance. It's a you know,
Speaker 3: shit happens, that life happens.
Speaker 1: It is what it is.
Speaker 3: But it's also the second part of aurugamama is what
Speaker 3: needs to be done. So it's not what you get
Speaker 3: focused on external stuff. This just happens. The universe happens.
Speaker 3: You'll get a shit sandwich. But it's about that acceptance
Speaker 3: and then thinking about what needs to be done with
Speaker 3: all of that going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not familiar with the Japanese term that you mentioned,
Speaker 2: but I am very familiar with the idea of radical acceptance,
Speaker 2: which is of course part of you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of Japanese culture generally, and Zen in particular. Yes, it
Speaker 2: is pure Zen. It is also pure Buddhism. Of course
Speaker 2: Zen is Buddhism, you know, and it is that you know,
Speaker 2: it is also Yeah, absolutely it's radical acceptance. It's calls
Speaker 2: it a more fattyue love, more fat love of fake
Speaker 2: love of everything that has been, everything that is, and
Speaker 2: everything that will be, and that is.
Speaker 3: N's go and and talk to us from from a
Speaker 3: psychologist perspective, like like, how do you when when someone
Speaker 3: is is rocking up, or or are people listening who
Speaker 3: are struggling with their thoughts and struggling with their emotions
Speaker 3: and wanting to change their reality in their heads and
Speaker 3: talk to us about this this concept Nietzsche's am more fatty,
Speaker 3: which is very similar to that that job.
Speaker 2: So so.
Speaker 3: Like, how do you How do you get that across
Speaker 3: to people?
Speaker 2: Not easily so or with difficulty, But that's why, that's
Speaker 2: why God invented Yes.
Speaker 3: For me, it is absolutely key to accept that you
Speaker 3: cannot control reality. And I think so many people get
Speaker 3: in trouble psychologically when they when they are wishing for
Speaker 3: things to be different, right, right.
Speaker 2: No, You're absolutely right. It is key. It is the
Speaker 2: central objective almost of Buddhist meditation. It is what is medita,
Speaker 2: What is Buddhist meditation. It is simply watching how your
Speaker 2: mind does what your mind does, and not fighting with it,
Speaker 2: not saying oh I shouldn't have thought that, or why
Speaker 2: is my mind wandering again? Or am I still having
Speaker 2: doubts about this or that? It is accepting the way
Speaker 2: your your mind is. Eventually you discover that your mind
Speaker 2: is not your mind, it's not your property, but it's
Speaker 2: sort of mind playing itself out in this space of
Speaker 2: life that we call me. You know, I'm you know,
Speaker 2: you're in Melbourne, but you're also in a different way
Speaker 2: in your own life. And I'm in Massachusetts, but I'm
Speaker 2: also in a in a space that is not geographic,
Speaker 2: but that is sort of the all the stuff, all
Speaker 2: the place where all my all my Dan Chapelle stuff happens,
Speaker 2: you know, and yours is where all your pall stuff happens,
Speaker 2: you know, and it is it requires there are different
Speaker 2: levels of different ways of understanding. First of all, if
Speaker 2: you study Nietzsche, it's important to understand that this is
Speaker 2: an essential that is essential part of Nietzsche. It's aphorism
Speaker 2: two seventy six of his book The Gay Science, where
Speaker 2: he spells that out. And you can actually sum up
Speaker 2: Nietzsche in three aphorisms if you like. The First one
Speaker 2: is aphorism three hundred and forty one from from well
Speaker 2: The Gay Science, Aphorism three forty one, Aphorism two seventy eight,
Speaker 2: also from The Gay Science, and then section fifty six
Speaker 2: from his book called Beyond Good and Evil and Beyond
Speaker 2: Good and Evil fifty six is a boy I haven't
Speaker 2: been in that place. I haven't visited this area of
Speaker 2: my writing and thinking in a while, but you brought
Speaker 2: it up because of your awareness that almorphati is such
Speaker 2: an important point, you know. Section fifty six and beyond
Speaker 2: good and evil is a place where Nietzschee talks about
Speaker 2: discovering that all the things you thought were actually bad
Speaker 2: in your life were They were not at all bad.
Speaker 2: They were just who what your life is. And it
Speaker 2: has to do with one thing that coming to a
Speaker 2: point where you can see that, hey, this is good,
Speaker 2: like seventh Day, you know, kind of this is good,
Speaker 2: this is very good. Where your life, even the ship
Speaker 2: in your life is good, very good. You find the
Speaker 2: same idea in Saint Augustine, who says somewhere he has
Speaker 2: a prayer in his confessions, and he says, and again,
Speaker 2: you don't have to be religious for these things to
Speaker 2: make any sense for you. But he says to his
Speaker 2: he prays to his God, and he says, in your creation,
Speaker 2: in your in what you've done or whatever, there's some
Speaker 2: things which we human beings think think are good, and
Speaker 2: some things which we think are not so good, but totalent,
Speaker 2: but the totality of all things is even better than
Speaker 2: the best of the good things. So it's a kind
Speaker 2: of an amorphattigue, is the totality of things, the acceptance
Speaker 2: the way things are. We don't have to make them good,
Speaker 2: they already are, you know. And this this.
Speaker 3: Kind of aligns with the historic philosophy idea that that
Speaker 3: that nothing is either good or bad, but it's rather
Speaker 3: our judgments of them that bad. Right, And and that
Speaker 3: that then if we if we then come into psychology
Speaker 3: and neuroscience, it's really our emotional responses. I think, I
Speaker 3: think that's what the stoics we're talking about, the emotional
Speaker 3: responses that you have that then shape your judgments on things.
Speaker 3: And so so talk to us a little bit about that,
Speaker 3: because this is kind of central to all of this, right,
Speaker 3: is that that amorphatty, that understanding that that that stuff
Speaker 3: is neither good or bad.
Speaker 1: It's our judgments on that. Like how do you help people?
Speaker 3: And to kind of get into that head space, is
Speaker 3: there any techniques or strategies or is it just an
Speaker 3: understanding of that concept that like a real guttural understanding
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 2: It helps to start with an intellectual philosophical understanding, but
Speaker 2: that's not enough. You need something more practical. And the
Speaker 2: more practical way is the long process of meditation. That's
Speaker 2: where you learn to recognize that things are as they are,
Speaker 2: and that your unhappiness has a lot to do with
Speaker 2: your wishing that they were different from the way they are.
Speaker 2: If you're constantly fighting with everything in your life, if
Speaker 2: you stop fighting, your life will stop fighting with you.
Speaker 2: And so that's meditation is a long, long approach, and
Speaker 2: there's no better approach to this then meditation, I think
Speaker 2: if you want to approach it on an experiential, really
Speaker 2: lived level, not just intellectual stuff to talk about, not
Speaker 2: academic lectures to talk about behind the podium. I don't
Speaker 2: do podiums, you know. I sit with people, need to need,
Speaker 2: as I said, you know, and my language isn't always
Speaker 2: you know, kouth maybe I think that's the word in English, right, yes,
Speaker 2: But my language is everyday language, which is a very
Speaker 2: fine language, I'll have you know, because that's where we suffered,
Speaker 2: that's how we suffer, that's how we fight with our
Speaker 2: spouses or lovers or whatever, you know. So it's a
Speaker 2: very good language. And the Buddha, the Buddha too spoke
Speaker 2: a very vernacular language, whatever it was that he spoke
Speaker 2: because he was always talking about images from nature from
Speaker 2: you know, he lived in an agricultural culture and he
Speaker 2: had images of that all over the place. So he
Speaker 2: was not an academic standing up behind the podium either.
Speaker 2: And so I figured, if it's good enough for the
Speaker 2: budd it's probably good enough for the rest of us.
Speaker 2: But so meditation is something I have. My two favorite
Speaker 2: books are the little one that I mentioned already, which
Speaker 2: is a minimalist ethic for everyday life, and the one,
Speaker 2: the practical one about meditative self care, which is also
Speaker 2: the name of the website meditative self care dot com.
Speaker 2: That's where we make our get our hands dirty, why
Speaker 2: sticking them in our own experiences, you know, in our
Speaker 2: own see how our own minds work and so on.
Speaker 2: So those two books for people who are listening who
Speaker 2: might be interested in, you know, what do I do
Speaker 2: now or is there something I can do? Those two
Speaker 2: little books, they're both very cheap.
Speaker 3: And talk to us about the the thing I've been
Speaker 3: thinking about more and more, and I think this is
Speaker 3: what brings kind of neuroscience and philosophy and experience all together.
Speaker 2: For me.
Speaker 3: Attention is really key around all of this stuff. And
Speaker 3: again I'm want to borrow from Japanese psychology. It is
Speaker 3: all about attention.
Speaker 1: Attention.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So in Japanese psychology they say there.
Speaker 1: Was a guy Greg Greg Creach.
Speaker 3: My wife is a practitioner of Japanese psychology, her mentor
Speaker 3: Greg Creach. I interviewed him and he said that a
Speaker 3: key thing in Japanese psychology is about the flashlight of
Speaker 3: your attention.
Speaker 1: And they say that is the most important thing in
Speaker 1: that you have control of.
Speaker 3: And I kind of love that as the neuroscientist in me,
Speaker 3: because whatever you pay attention to your brand commits sales
Speaker 3: to it. And for me, attention precedes emotion and all
Speaker 3: of this.
Speaker 1: Stuff, right, And so talk to us, and I think.
Speaker 3: That that meditaition can sometimes be interpreted as attention training.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 3: So just talk to us about your experience around attention
Speaker 3: or what how people should start to think about their attention.
Speaker 2: Attention is probably the most important thing we do, you know,
Speaker 2: it is the most important thing because everything else that
Speaker 2: we do or think or feel follow us from attention. Again,
Speaker 2: back to McGilchrist, you know, he also speaks about the importance,
Speaker 2: the cardinal importance of attention, and you find it throughout
Speaker 2: the ages. You know, like there's one person whose name
Speaker 2: I forgot. He said, attention is our natural mystical prayer.
Speaker 2: How about that? Huh? Interesting, right, is natural mystical prayer?
Speaker 2: And yes, indeed, meditation starts with attention, learning to to
Speaker 2: tame your attention. You know, like the meditators, the Buddhist
Speaker 2: they talk about monkey mind. You know, like our minds.
Speaker 2: We all have sort of adhdal. You know, our minds
Speaker 2: are like monkeys, jumping from one thing to another. And
Speaker 2: the first thing you learned to do in meditation is
Speaker 2: to to train the mind to stay put on You say,
Speaker 2: I'm going to focus on that, put my attention on
Speaker 2: this and keep it there. That's how you started meditation.
Speaker 2: And then the second what happens is you learn I
Speaker 2: can't do that in my mind jumps to something else
Speaker 2: all the time. And they said, aha, look what you're learning.
Speaker 2: What your mind is doing. You got monkey mind. We
Speaker 2: all have monkey mind. And so meditation begins with bringing
Speaker 2: attention back again and again and again to the topic
Speaker 2: on which you placed it or want to place it.
Speaker 2: So and then also you begin to you begin to
Speaker 2: see what else your mind is always doing, is bringing
Speaker 2: up stuff, and you're chasing after your mind. Another little
Speaker 2: story or analogy that they use in the Buddhist us,
Speaker 2: they say is attention is like if you throw a
Speaker 2: stick in front of a dog, the dog chases after
Speaker 2: the stick, and you know, keep chasing after it, says.
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, if you what they call
Speaker 2: the lion gaze as opposed to the dog's chasing, the
Speaker 2: lion gaze is if you throw a stick in front
Speaker 2: of the lion, the lion looks at the origin of
Speaker 2: the stick, but doesn't run after the stick. And this
Speaker 2: is sort of like you develop the lion's gaze by
Speaker 2: you watch your mind and you see things coming up,
Speaker 2: but you don't chase after all of them. You watch
Speaker 2: that mind, you know, kicking up, throwing up all kinds
Speaker 2: of sticks, and you don't run after them. That's the
Speaker 2: beginning of meditations, and.
Speaker 3: That brings in self awareness obviously into the peace, but
Speaker 3: to really then dig into a little bit deeper in this.
Speaker 3: You know, if we think about as you'll be well aware,
Speaker 3: our mental health, particularly in developed in our brackets nation,
Speaker 3: is is just going down the gurglar. But if we
Speaker 3: think the two major ones anxiety and depression, If we
Speaker 3: think about people with depression, their attention often is rooted
Speaker 3: in the past and lamenting on the past and anxiety.
Speaker 3: Their attention is future focused, and there's strong concern about
Speaker 3: the future. But the whether attention is absolutely key to
Speaker 3: their pathology.
Speaker 2: Isn't it absolutely? Absolutely? The little book on meditative self
Speaker 2: care begins or is centered around this one idea. We
Speaker 2: suffer from who we think we are. I love that,
Speaker 2: you know, and we're always thinking we're somebody or other,
Speaker 2: you know, like somebody in front of you, what a
Speaker 2: cash register is taking too much time, and then you
Speaker 2: get irritated because you know you've got important things to do,
Speaker 2: you know, more important spend in your life. You know,
Speaker 2: the universe revolves around me exactly. So we suffer from
Speaker 2: who we think we are. And as you become more
Speaker 2: aware by paying more attention to how your mind works,
Speaker 2: you catch yourself at your irritability and at your whatever,
Speaker 2: your hostility, and you begin to see, Jesus, I'm a
Speaker 2: horrible person. Well you're not a horrible person. You're just
Speaker 2: a regular guy, you know. But this is how our
Speaker 2: minds work, and this is how it produces our unhappiness.
Speaker 2: Because if you think you're going to you're special. You're
Speaker 2: going to be very disappointed because you know, so we
Speaker 2: suffer from who we think we are, and we're always
Speaker 2: thinking with somebody. It's not just like one thing. I
Speaker 2: am professor so and so, well you're that, Yeah, sure
Speaker 2: everybody can see that, but you see many other things.
Speaker 2: You know, you're an old letcher who's drooling over all
Speaker 2: your young female students or something, you know, and you're
Speaker 2: you're and at home you're like a you know, a
Speaker 2: door mat, you know, and and you're afraid of your
Speaker 2: children so you avoid them. You know, you're all those
Speaker 2: things as well. You know. So we suffer from who
Speaker 2: we think we are. That's the core issue of the
Speaker 2: Meditative Self Care book. So if you put those two together,
Speaker 2: then I think you cover all the bases. You know. So,
Speaker 2: but attention that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry, I wanted to today and talk a little
Speaker 3: bit about karma.
Speaker 1: So, so you a very good.
Speaker 3: Job of connecting the East to the West and and
Speaker 3: and I guess explaining it better. So, so this idea
Speaker 3: of karma is often misunderstood in in the West, So
Speaker 3: so talk to us about the real impact of what
Speaker 3: really karma is and how it can be used in
Speaker 3: our lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, first, but it isn't What it isn't is all
Speaker 2: the things we think it is in the West, you know,
Speaker 2: like some sort of magical force of the universe that's
Speaker 2: going to get you for bad things you did. You know,
Speaker 2: like what goes around comes around that kind of you know,
Speaker 2: that's not what it is. What it is is it's
Speaker 2: an understanding. It's a psychological understanding of why our lives is,
Speaker 2: why our lives is as it is, and why we
Speaker 2: suffer from what we suffer and while we experience what
Speaker 2: we experience. And you know, it has to do with
Speaker 2: becoming more aware on a moment to moment basis of
Speaker 2: all your intentions. You know, like if you find yourself
Speaker 2: drooling again over this young female student in your classroom,
Speaker 2: catch yourself at that and see where that leads you.
Speaker 2: It's going to disappoint you because you're an old geezer.
Speaker 2: You have no business chasing after young women, you know,
Speaker 2: and so your karma is going to be that they're
Speaker 2: going to laugh at you. That's not something that is
Speaker 2: regulated by the stars or the heavens. It's just your
Speaker 2: own psychology. If you act like a in a pretentious manner.
Speaker 2: People are going to take a distance from you, you know,
Speaker 2: because you're a cold person, cold fish or something like that.
Speaker 2: And so that's all it is. That sounds very simple.
Speaker 2: The point of it is it has to do with
Speaker 2: becoming aware of intention. You know, you say attention is
Speaker 2: the most important thing. Attention and intention. Attention is where
Speaker 2: you put your your consciousness. Intention is where do you
Speaker 2: want to go from here? You know you want to
Speaker 2: cut off, you want to cut off the guy in
Speaker 2: front of you, or you want to get even with
Speaker 2: the guy who cut you off in traffic, or you know,
Speaker 2: that's intention. And you know if you're the guy, if
Speaker 2: you want to get even with the guy in the
Speaker 2: car next to you, you're an angry guy yourself, and
Speaker 2: guess what you're going to experience. You're going to experience
Speaker 2: a lot of anger. Don't be surprised if you do.
Speaker 2: That's karma and which is completely perfectly understandable as is
Speaker 2: the result of your intention. Karma means the word karmen
Speaker 2: sounds great. Karma means action. Doing Karma is simply what
Speaker 2: you do, what you know, your intention in what you do,
Speaker 2: and and what you the price you pay for that intention.
Speaker 2: If you isolate yourself from people, you're going to be
Speaker 2: a lonely person. You know, if you're if you're above people,
Speaker 2: you know, they're not going to come and comfort you
Speaker 2: when you need it. Um, that's that's very simple. Karma. Well,
Speaker 2: it gets I mean it gets complicated also, of course,
Speaker 2: but it is it's a very down to earth you know.
Speaker 2: The Buddhists say, we think that karma is maybe a
Speaker 2: part of your life. The Buddhas said, no, Karma isn't
Speaker 2: part of your life. Karma is your whole life, everything
Speaker 2: you do, from moment to moments. You know, it's a
Speaker 2: very typical Buddhist expression, from moment to moment because nothing
Speaker 2: ever stays the same. You don't ever stay the same
Speaker 2: for two moments in rome and everything. What happens is
Speaker 2: what shifts is your intention. Your attention shifts and your
Speaker 2: intentionship and your intention is going to point to where
Speaker 2: you're going to end up. You know.
Speaker 3: It seems to me, you know, as you talk about
Speaker 3: this and Dan, it's kind of adding to my thinking
Speaker 3: of it. And it seems to me that if if
Speaker 3: most people could master those two things, their attention and
Speaker 3: their intention, then I think life would just be so
Speaker 3: much better.
Speaker 2: Without absolutely absolutely, you're absolutely right. The yeah, the little
Speaker 2: book on ethics, you know, for ethics, for an ethic
Speaker 2: for everyday life, it's largely about intention. It is larger,
Speaker 2: it's it's actually and i'll tell you a little secrets
Speaker 2: of the book. It's a it's a negative ethic, you know,
Speaker 2: the Judeo Christian ethics as love your neighbor as yourself,
Speaker 2: which is not a bad idea, but have you ever
Speaker 2: tried it? It is way harder than we mortals can
Speaker 2: actually do, because there's so many more negative emotions that
Speaker 2: we have and impulses and whatever. So there's a Chinese
Speaker 2: philosopher Confusions. Instead of saying love your neighbor as yourself,
Speaker 2: he says, don't do to other people what you don't
Speaker 2: want done to yourself. That sounds like the same thing,
Speaker 2: except formulated differently. One in a positive fashion, but you
Speaker 2: must do the other in negative. What you shouldn't do
Speaker 2: what you don't do. And actually, in reality, it is
Speaker 2: easier to avoid doing something than it is to positively
Speaker 2: do something. It's easier to you know, none of us
Speaker 2: can generate loving feelings all the time. I certainly can't,
Speaker 2: you know, we spend our whole life trying those of
Speaker 2: us who try a little bit, you know, but you can't.
Speaker 2: But what you we can always do is say no
Speaker 2: to ourselves. Don't do this, don't do what you just
Speaker 2: intended to do. And again that's where you know you
Speaker 2: have to pay attention to your intention. Socrates said famously,
Speaker 2: I know I don't know anything except for one thing.
Speaker 2: The one thing I know is that I know nothing.
Speaker 2: And he wasn't being just humble, you know, or pretending
Speaker 2: to be humble. What he meant was he followed the
Speaker 2: dictates of what he calls his namon. His inner namon
Speaker 2: is you know the voice that talked to him, and
Speaker 2: the voice always told them, no, don't do this, don't
Speaker 2: say that, don't believe that. And so I start with
Speaker 2: in my book with Socrates as a person who says,
Speaker 2: you first have to cultivate the doing no and saying
Speaker 2: no in leaving though, which means you have to get
Speaker 2: to a place where you tell yourself, well, I really
Speaker 2: don't know about this situation, instead of saying, oh I
Speaker 2: got my opinions about it. Every situation you mean that
Speaker 2: I don't know, Or you reach a point in your
Speaker 2: so called knowledge to where you can say, where you
Speaker 2: can realize that you really don't understand it. You know.
Speaker 2: That's what he did with his audience with his students.
Speaker 2: You know, he always made him feel not so much
Speaker 2: dumb as he brought them to a point where they said,
Speaker 2: you're right, I really don't know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: And they were intelligent, well meaning persons, you know, and
Speaker 2: he wasn't just making fools of them. You have to
Speaker 2: come to a point of not knowing. That's where you
Speaker 2: start from. And the essential element in not knowing is
Speaker 2: don't believe what you think. The psychologists also have discovered
Speaker 2: that in cor to behavior therapy. They say, don't believe
Speaker 2: everything you think. You know, you know, I think, I
Speaker 2: think like nobody's gonna love me. I'm not worth loving
Speaker 2: all this. Don't believe everything you think. The Buddhists go
Speaker 2: like a thousand miles further. They say, don't believe anything
Speaker 2: you think. Talk about being radical, you know, and that's
Speaker 2: how you become aware of what you actually think, and
Speaker 2: then you can refrain from that thinking instead of chasing
Speaker 2: after it like the dog chacing after his stick. You know,
Speaker 2: you go like whoa I wasn't aware of that. I
Speaker 2: didn't know that I even thought that, even though I
Speaker 2: never really thought it in so many words or in
Speaker 2: English or in complete sentences. But in some level, some level,
Speaker 2: I really that's what I believed, you know. And then
Speaker 2: you can do away with it. You can then go
Speaker 2: of it, which is the great the Buddha's great form
Speaker 2: of saying. No. You know, Socrates his dam and said,
Speaker 2: don't don't believe this, don't say that, don't do that.
Speaker 2: The Buddha said, let go of everything. Don't believe anything
Speaker 2: you think that, no attachment, right, No, exactly exactly. So
Speaker 2: I don't know how we got here to this point, but.
Speaker 3: No, and I I want to I want to kind
Speaker 3: of end where we started, right and and and talk
Speaker 3: about God from from two people who are who are
Speaker 3: not religious.
Speaker 1: I so so my kind of journey.
Speaker 3: I'm I'm a recovering Catholic, as I describe it, from
Speaker 3: Northern Ireland, got put off and I really got put
Speaker 3: off religion from from my upbringing. And I remember being
Speaker 3: in church and chapel one day listening to a gospel
Speaker 3: and I just thought, actually, I don't really believe what
Speaker 3: they're telling me. So I started looking at other things.
Speaker 3: I started reading other religions and philosophy. That's or I
Speaker 3: in first encountered Buddhism and Stoic philosophy, and and then
Speaker 3: I got really interested in Daoism and at the same
Speaker 3: time had this interest in physics and quantum physics. And
Speaker 3: I remember reading a book called The doll with Physics
Speaker 3: or The tawas it's spelled The taw with Physics by.
Speaker 1: Free Joff Capra.
Speaker 3: I think, and and and what that kind of journey
Speaker 3: laid me into realizing that lots of hardcore scientists like
Speaker 3: Capra and and other and even Einstein ended up going
Speaker 3: full circle around God, and that that always fascinated me.
Speaker 3: But for me, I'm certainly not religious, but I would
Speaker 3: call myself more spiritual. And for me, Daoism, that essence
Speaker 3: of the universe linked to quantum physics and energy is
Speaker 3: the kind of thing thing that that I think is
Speaker 3: is that that connects everything.
Speaker 1: So why there's so many quantum.
Speaker 3: Physicists and end up in the sea in place that
Speaker 3: the Daists ended.
Speaker 2: Up because I think they sort of understand they're getting
Speaker 2: a better understanding of the nature of reality, which is
Speaker 2: a very pretentious concept the nature of reality. You know,
Speaker 2: how can we possibly know the nature of anything, let
Speaker 2: alone the nature of reality? But these people have done
Speaker 2: their homework and they studied knowledge itself. How do we
Speaker 2: know anything? And by the way, about Einstein, you'll like
Speaker 2: this one, he said, he's supposed to have said, I am.
Speaker 2: He makes the distinction like the way that Jung does,
Speaker 2: between religious experience and religion. Einstein said, I am a
Speaker 2: deep religious, deeply religious non believer. I don't like that.
Speaker 1: I do like that.
Speaker 2: You can chew on that for a little bit, you know, yes,
Speaker 2: deep little And that's I think what all these people
Speaker 2: end up being, you know, like this McGilchrist again, the
Speaker 2: one that I refer to many times in the beginning,
Speaker 2: is the same thing. The end of his book, of
Speaker 2: his six hundred sixteen hundred page book is about the
Speaker 2: experience of the sacred. And I like that. This is
Speaker 2: a psychiatrist, neuroscientist, philosopher. Yeah, you know, and so no,
Speaker 2: you're right, I think coming full circle in some fashion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so so tell me this. Then I'm going
Speaker 1: to throw a last question with you.
Speaker 3: So, I mean, I remember, particularly Zen Buddhism used to
Speaker 3: really hurt my head in good ways, right in trying
Speaker 3: to grasp and understand the concepts and the little sort
Speaker 3: of dip into Nietzsche really hurt my head as hell, right,
Speaker 3: And I think this stuff is supposed to you, But
Speaker 3: for somebody who has dug so deeply into all of
Speaker 3: this stuff, and is there one insight or concept that
Speaker 3: continues to challenge you personally after even decades of study
Speaker 3: and practice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is the difficulty of putting these things into
Speaker 2: everyday life, you know, into practical everyday life. It's like
Speaker 2: studying Buddhism. You know, it's a long process. It's never done.
Speaker 2: You know, Buddha reached the point where you could say
Speaker 2: there's nothing else for me to do here. Well, I
Speaker 2: can't say that, you know, But that's okay. I don't
Speaker 2: mind that as long as I keep, so to speak,
Speaker 2: keep the faith. Although it's the word I hesitate to use,
Speaker 2: but it's the best thing I could possibly do, is
Speaker 2: to just keep practicing these things. And I'm very happy
Speaker 2: with that. I have my moments and periods of doubt,
Speaker 2: no question about it. But I think if I didn't
Speaker 2: have any doubt, I would I would be suspicious of myself,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like, don't ever trust a priest who
Speaker 2: doesn't doubt you know, his priesthood. You know, they become
Speaker 2: louder and meaner, but not more kindly or compassionate or
Speaker 2: more religious. But for me, it's it's it's a thing
Speaker 2: that continues and I am what I can say a
Speaker 2: good thing, a positive thing that I can say now
Speaker 2: is when I look back at my whole life. I
Speaker 2: was not born a happy camper. You know, you were
Speaker 2: born Irish in an Irish Catholic upbringing, being from Belgium.
Speaker 2: I'm much more aware of that than most Americans might be,
Speaker 2: and I appreciate all that I had my other my
Speaker 2: own sort of form of not being a happy camper.
Speaker 2: And so I've been searching for my whole life. Essentially.
Speaker 2: I started off I mentioned in my teens, you know,
Speaker 2: when I discovered psychoanalysis and stuff like that. But like job,
Speaker 2: I can now say, I am large. I'm seventy three,
Speaker 2: I'm coming to the end of my life. I'm not
Speaker 2: too worried about that, and I feel like pretty content
Speaker 2: with the way, you know, like again that word content,
Speaker 2: which is not just sort of an everyday kind of experience,
Speaker 2: you know, like you can be content after a full meal,
Speaker 2: and you say I got a full belly, I'm content.
Speaker 2: Well that's nice, but that's not the content I mean.
Speaker 2: And I know you know that. But it is all
Speaker 2: these things, you know, like the company that I have
Speaker 2: kept of all those people, some of whom I've mentioned here,
Speaker 2: has been a great company. You know. I'm not a
Speaker 2: social butterfly. I you know, don't have massive networks of
Speaker 2: friends and big family and stuff like that. But those
Speaker 2: are my people, so to speak, you know, all these
Speaker 2: all these dead people, you know. And so I can
Speaker 2: say that I'm content if I keep practicing the stuff
Speaker 2: that I have learned, that I've learned to understand, that
Speaker 2: I've learned to talk about to some degree, and that
Speaker 2: I've written about so especially in the last in the
Speaker 2: two little books that I mentioned, those are the other
Speaker 2: books are They do their own job. But it's more
Speaker 2: like my first book was on Nietzsche and psychoanalysis. It's
Speaker 2: a you know, a pretty decent academic book, you know,
Speaker 2: as those things go. But it's I consider it some
Speaker 2: sort of engineering work, like the engineer building the basement
Speaker 2: of a building. You know, it's an engineering job, you know,
Speaker 2: scholarly engineering is what I thought of it, you know,
Speaker 2: whereas the last stuff is really conversational, and I've had
Speaker 2: some very positive reviews about the tone in which it
Speaker 2: has written, Like people can't believe that I was able
Speaker 2: to spell out these very difficult, sometimes complex, subtle issues
Speaker 2: in everyday language, and people go, yeah, of course, I
Speaker 2: know that. You know that has given me a great
Speaker 2: deal of pleasure.
Speaker 3: Yeah that I think that content and I think that
Speaker 3: that's the same conclusion that I came to with my
Speaker 3: sort of amateurist double into a different philosophies, is that
Speaker 3: the goal of life is certainly not happiness, but more contentment.
Speaker 3: But I remember, I think I was in my early
Speaker 3: twenties reading a book called Zen in the Art of
Speaker 3: Motorcycles inter you know that, you know, the one by
Speaker 3: Robert Persik, And there's a bit in there where he's
Speaker 3: talking about us trying to get to the top of
Speaker 3: the mountain and always looking for the top, And there.
Speaker 1: Was a just a few words that.
Speaker 3: He wrote that has stuck with me forever. Sometimes it's
Speaker 3: better to travel than to get there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And and it's that whole thing of actually embracing life
Speaker 3: as it is, and and actually enjoying the journey rather
Speaker 3: than always you want to be somewhere, achieve something and
Speaker 3: and and that is your focus. And when I do this,
Speaker 3: I'll be happy. It's really just about slowing down and
Speaker 3: enjoying the journey, the exploration of of all of this stuff,
Speaker 3: the shitty stuff, the good stuff, and and just more
Speaker 3: fatty right.
Speaker 2: Right, right right, absolutely, Yeah, it's keep going, yes, just.
Speaker 3: Keep going and and just and and and take it
Speaker 3: all as it is and do what needs to be done,
Speaker 3: doctor Don Chappelle.
Speaker 1: So where can people go you?
Speaker 3: So you talk you've written I think it was seven
Speaker 3: books of different levels of complexity, but really I think
Speaker 3: from somebody who has a very deep understanding of philosophy,
Speaker 3: and there's also a clinical psychologist, I would, without even
Speaker 3: having read your books, would certainly point people in that
Speaker 3: direction because I think that's more of a I would
Speaker 3: describe you more of a procademic than an academic, right,
Speaker 3: a procademic of life. So tell us where people can
Speaker 3: go to access your books, and I know you've got
Speaker 3: some courses as well.
Speaker 2: The place to go to start is the website Meditative
Speaker 2: self Care dot com Meditative self Care dot com and
Speaker 2: the two books on the seven books are all identified
Speaker 2: there and described in some detail. The two books I
Speaker 2: would recommend most is are number one is a book
Speaker 2: named Meditative Self Care, and the second one, which is
Speaker 2: my last book, which is a minimalist ethic for everyday life.
Speaker 2: Those two I think they sort of go together. They
Speaker 2: hang together. Yeah, all my books, all seven books, hang
Speaker 2: together in some fashion. But I think they're the most accessible.
Speaker 2: They're short, they're easy to read, and people who are
Speaker 2: not used to reading maybe challenging ideas or philosophy or whatever,
Speaker 2: they find themselves perfectly at home in those little books,
Speaker 2: even people who normally don't like that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, I have a brother, and older brother who
Speaker 2: is totally different from me. He's very smart guy, he's
Speaker 2: got more in the mind of an engineer, and he's
Speaker 2: not at all interested in the things that interest me.
Speaker 2: But the two little books that I mentioned to you,
Speaker 2: he thought they were. He was very impressed with them,
Speaker 2: And I consider that the best compliment that could possibly
Speaker 2: get from someone who is naturally a critic of everything
Speaker 2: that I you know. So, yeah, so those two books
Speaker 2: and the website, you know, I will.
Speaker 3: I'll jump on the website myself and get them, and
Speaker 3: I'm actually going to get the one on on on
Speaker 3: Nietzsche as well, because I think it's probably time that
Speaker 3: I went and revisited him.
Speaker 2: But that, yeah, I think that would be good.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you for everything that you do, and
Speaker 3: I trust that you will continue to enjoy traveling.