Speaker 1: I think the practice is to be open to the
Speaker 1: idea that at any given moment there may be a
Speaker 1: better way, So always be curious. I think curiosity is
Speaker 1: the word that I like to highlight the most. There
Speaker 1: it's like, just be curious. There might be a better way,
Speaker 1: There might be a worse way. At least be open
Speaker 1: to that.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed.
Speaker 3: Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 3: thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 3: you are what you think, ring true. And yet for
Speaker 3: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 3: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 3: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 3: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 3: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 3: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 3: worth living. Cast is about how other people keep themselves
Speaker 3: moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 2: Noah or Schetta, a Buddhist philosopher, best selling author, and
Speaker 2: host of the popular podcast Secular Buddhism. His teachings have
Speaker 2: been downloaded millions of times by individuals all around the world,
Speaker 2: and Noah has presented his teachings. It's some of the
Speaker 2: world's most renowned organizations such as Apple Entrepreneurs Organization and
Speaker 2: many others.
Speaker 4: Hi, Noah, Hey, good to see you again. Eric, Good
Speaker 4: to see you. This is sort of a special episode
Speaker 4: in which you have a podcast called Secular Buddhism, which
Speaker 4: is a great podcast. I have a podcast, the one
Speaker 4: you feed, and we're going to release this in both
Speaker 4: of our feeds, and it's just going to be more
Speaker 4: of a conversation and then it is an interview. So
Speaker 4: I'm excited to do that. But we talked before and
Speaker 4: said that we would still start with the parable of
Speaker 4: the Two Wolves to allow you to sort of give
Speaker 4: your thought on that great So in the parable, there's
Speaker 4: a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 4: in life, there's two wolves inside of us that are
Speaker 4: always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents
Speaker 4: things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other
Speaker 4: is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 4: hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. They think about
Speaker 4: it for a second. They look up at their grandparent
Speaker 4: and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says,
Speaker 4: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 4: by asking you what that parable means to you and
Speaker 4: your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a great parable. I think anyone who encounters
Speaker 1: that story it resonates because that really is how things
Speaker 1: are right. We've got these opposing forces that seem to
Speaker 1: be at odds with each other at all times on
Speaker 1: all things. Should I go to the gym, Should I
Speaker 1: not go to the gym? Should I be nice? Should
Speaker 1: I say something mean? And I love the point of
Speaker 1: that story where he says the one that you feed,
Speaker 1: and the way that relates to me when I think
Speaker 1: about it and the work that I do, I understand
Speaker 1: that we have propensities. And let's take just the idea
Speaker 1: of having habitual thought patterns versus more deliberate, thought out
Speaker 1: thought patterns, and in a very similar way, the one
Speaker 1: that you feed, the one that you continually do, becomes
Speaker 1: reinforced and more natural and more easy over time. So
Speaker 1: if you want things to be different, you have to
Speaker 1: do them differently. That's what comes to mind. When I
Speaker 1: hear that parable with those two wolves.
Speaker 4: I love the phrase you just use their propensities because
Speaker 4: I often think about, how do we talk about these
Speaker 4: things that are recurrent in us, and yet we don't
Speaker 4: want to go so far as to say like, that's
Speaker 4: who I am or even what I am or how
Speaker 4: I am all the time, because that's not the way
Speaker 4: it is. We're not like that. And yet there is
Speaker 4: a way in which these things are sort of they
Speaker 4: show up again and again. A word I often use
Speaker 4: as tendencies. We have tendencies towards something, but I also
Speaker 4: like propensities. We're speaking to this idea that, yeah, there
Speaker 4: are ways in which we are more habitual, and something
Speaker 4: that has become habitual can become unhabitual.
Speaker 5: You can unwind the habit.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, of course, you know. When I first encountered
Speaker 1: that word propensities, it really spoke to me as well,
Speaker 1: because I recognize that part of our habitual tendencies may
Speaker 1: be learned societal norms upbringing, but there's also the genetic component.
Speaker 1: And my wife and I were actually just talking about
Speaker 1: this the other day and how she and I both
Speaker 1: have very different propensities for certain things. Things based on genetics.
Speaker 1: Procrastination is actually what we're talking about, where for her
Speaker 1: it's just it's come so natural to delay, delay, delay,
Speaker 1: until she's forced to do it, and I tend to
Speaker 1: want to get things done a little bit earlier and
Speaker 1: avoid the rush at the end. But I think there's
Speaker 1: something to that, the idea that we do have propensities,
Speaker 1: some of which are learned or inherited or genetic, and
Speaker 1: others that we have to put in the effort and
Speaker 1: time and energy if we want to change those propensities
Speaker 1: in ourselves.
Speaker 4: So something I'm going to be doing a little more
Speaker 4: often is ask you, the listener, to reflect on what
Speaker 4: you're hearing. We strongly believe that knowledge is power, but
Speaker 4: only if combined with action and integration. So before we
Speaker 4: move on, I'd like to ask you what's coming up
Speaker 4: for you as you listen to this. Are there any
Speaker 4: things you're currently doing or feeding your bad wolf that
Speaker 4: might make sense to remove, or any things you could
Speaker 4: do to feed your good wolf that you're not currently doing.
Speaker 4: So if you have the headspace for I'd love if
Speaker 4: you could just pause for a second and ask yourself,
Speaker 4: what's one thing I could do today or tonight to
Speaker 4: feed my good Wolf. Whatever your thing is, a really
Speaker 4: useful strategy can be having something external, a prompt or
Speaker 4: a friend, or a tool that regularly nudges you back
Speaker 4: towards awareness and intentionality. For the past year, I've been
Speaker 4: sending little good Wolf reminders to some of my friends
Speaker 4: and community members, just quick, little SMS messages two times
Speaker 4: per week that give them a little bit of wisdom
Speaker 4: and remind them to pause for a second and come
Speaker 4: off autopilot. If you want, I can send them to
Speaker 4: you too. I do it totally for free, and people
Speaker 4: seem to really love them. Just drop your information at
Speaker 4: oneufeed dot net slash sms and I can send them
Speaker 4: to you. It's totally free, and if you end up
Speaker 4: not liking the little reminders, you can easily opt out.
Speaker 4: That's one youfeed dot net slash sms. And now back
Speaker 4: to the episode out of curiosity, how did you guys
Speaker 4: arrive at your style of getting things done? In her
Speaker 4: style of getting things done? Being genetic? In what ways
Speaker 4: did you unwind that from all the other things that
Speaker 4: it could be right, all the conditioning and learning that
Speaker 4: we've had in life.
Speaker 1: Well, I should say for this specifically. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's genetic, but it came to mind as we
Speaker 1: were talking about her family members and her siblings, and
Speaker 1: then she was saying, yeah, my dad always and I
Speaker 1: think certain tendencies could be genetic. I wonder if this
Speaker 1: is a genetic one. There are others the ones that
Speaker 1: we have talked about that are genetic. She has a
Speaker 1: very fast metabolism and I have a very slow metabolism,
Speaker 1: and we know that that doesn't have to do with
Speaker 1: our lifestyle or eating because we have the same lifestyle
Speaker 1: and we eat the same things, so we know that
Speaker 1: one's genetic.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think it's interesting on one hand what's sort of
Speaker 4: genetic and what's not and ultimately kind of unknowable in
Speaker 4: many ways. And I also don't think it's ever as clear.
Speaker 4: You know, epigenetics seem to be sort of showing us.
Speaker 4: It's not as clear as like some of his netic
Speaker 4: or not, because different genes get turned on by different
Speaker 4: things that happen in the environment. And I'm oversimplifying a
Speaker 4: very complicated process. But it's ultimately sort of unknowable.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think the important thing out of
Speaker 1: this discussion is and it ties into the parable. When
Speaker 1: we increase our awareness about our propensities or tendencies, then
Speaker 1: we can act more skillfully and stop doing things that
Speaker 1: may be unskillful in our case. For example, there are
Speaker 1: certain foods that I try to avoid. If I have
Speaker 1: a slow metabolism, I don't need to slow it done anymore,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll make sure I consume fiber and drink
Speaker 1: a lot of water or things that she may not
Speaker 1: have to think about or worry about. And I think
Speaker 1: that fits well with this idea. When you understand more
Speaker 1: about yourself, you can feed that portion of you, you know,
Speaker 1: the wolf that needs more fiber versus the wolf that doesn't.
Speaker 1: And again that's over simple behind it, but I think
Speaker 1: that's at the heart of that parable, that we can
Speaker 1: feed the version of us that could lead us down
Speaker 1: a path to become more this way versus more that way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting. My partner Ginny and I both wore
Speaker 4: a continuous glucose monitor for a little while. That sort
Speaker 4: of shows what different foods due to your blood, and
Speaker 4: it was fascinating how like a certain food would make
Speaker 4: her blood sugar spike in a way that it wouldn't
Speaker 4: for me, Like for whatever reason brown rice for her
Speaker 4: was really a problem, like it really caused a huge
Speaker 4: increase in blood sugar and in my case not so much.
Speaker 4: We're all so different. Let's change directions here and talk
Speaker 4: about your podcast. It's called Secular Buddhism. I'm kind of curious,
Speaker 4: what was the path to discovering Buddhism, maybe recognizing that
Speaker 4: you wanted to think of it from a secular perspective
Speaker 4: and then starting the podcast, what.
Speaker 5: Was that like?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's interesting. Over time, the idea of
Speaker 1: secular Buddhism has become more irrelevant to me. The notion
Speaker 1: Buddhism already being secular in nature or not non theis
Speaker 1: stick in nature. But the reason that it came about
Speaker 1: that way. I had emerged from a faith tradition that
Speaker 1: was very black and white in thinking there's the one
Speaker 1: correct path and every other path was incorrect, and I
Speaker 1: had a crisis of faith. And as I was going
Speaker 1: through this, deconstructing my belief system, deconstructing my faith, I
Speaker 1: was searching for a school of thought that would resonate
Speaker 1: for me, and Buddhism did. But knowing just enough about
Speaker 1: it to start to get familiar with it, but not
Speaker 1: enough about it to know that it was already secular
Speaker 1: in nature. I was very concerned with getting involved with
Speaker 1: another ism in my life, and I didn't want that.
Speaker 1: And I had encountered the term secular Buddhism through Stephen Batchelor,
Speaker 1: and he wrote a book, Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist,
Speaker 1: and that's where I introduced to this notion of secular Buddhism.
Speaker 1: And the more I learned about it, the more I
Speaker 1: wanted to share what I was learning and people would
Speaker 1: ask me. So when the time came for me to
Speaker 1: feel like I could start to share concepts and ideas
Speaker 1: from Buddhism, I knew that people like me emerging from
Speaker 1: a faith transition might not know that Buddhism is not
Speaker 1: really like a lot of the other religions. So I
Speaker 1: decided to present it as secular Buddhism to make it
Speaker 1: very clear for those who really have no knowledge of
Speaker 1: Buddhism to not feel threatened that this is something that
Speaker 1: they need to consider. Hey, I'm going to become a Buddhist.
Speaker 1: In fact, I start my podcast every time with the
Speaker 1: quote or the expression that you don't need to use
Speaker 1: what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist, you
Speaker 1: can use it to be a better whatever you already are.
Speaker 1: So I heavily emphasize that, and I think the name
Speaker 1: helps to carry that idea across, that you don't have
Speaker 1: to make this more than what you think it is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree with you that the core thinking of
Speaker 4: Buddhism is sort of secular in that there's not a
Speaker 4: theistic God. And yet there are ways in which certain
Speaker 4: flavors of Buddhism do become for example, believing in reincarnation
Speaker 4: that takes a little deeper faith belief right, or you know,
Speaker 4: certain Tibetan schools where they're talking about different demons and
Speaker 4: different you know, it's hard to know how literal to
Speaker 4: take on it. So I think it's actually useful to
Speaker 4: sort of say secular. I think that I, like you,
Speaker 4: was drawn to Buddhism because at least the Buddhism that
Speaker 4: was presented to me, which is obviously what I would get,
Speaker 4: which is Buddhism presented to a Westerner, was almost psychological
Speaker 4: in the way that it talks about things. And you
Speaker 4: know you mentioned Stephen Bachelor. I mean one of the
Speaker 4: first books I read, which was so hugely influential to
Speaker 4: me was Buddhism Without Beliefs that he wrote. That's an
Speaker 4: old book at this point, but wow, what a great book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, same, That was one of the most influential books
Speaker 1: for me early on studying Buddhism.
Speaker 4: So when you and I were talking yesterday, you were
Speaker 4: bringing up the idea that more and more you're getting
Speaker 4: back to the basics and the core ideas of Buddhism.
Speaker 4: Share a little bit about what those are to you, Like,
Speaker 4: what's the core promise of Buddhism as you understand it?
Speaker 1: You know, for me, the core of Buddhist teachings, concepts,
Speaker 1: ideas always center around the notion of suffering, anguish, dissatisfaction, difficulties.
Speaker 1: It's hard to peg it on one specific word. We
Speaker 1: use suffering most commonly as the translation of the words
Speaker 1: that are used in the Buddhist teachings, but really it's
Speaker 1: that flavor of discontent that arises at times with recognizing, Hey,
Speaker 1: life is hard, and I think the promise of Buddhism
Speaker 1: is that the relationship we have with that suffering, with
Speaker 1: that anguish can be improved. Will we continue to experience
Speaker 1: suffering in life? Yes, but the way that we relate
Speaker 1: to it has, you know, a very big impact inality
Speaker 1: or quality of life. So I think that for me,
Speaker 1: that's what it always comes back to. It's what relationship
Speaker 1: do I have with suffering and not just suffering with
Speaker 1: my thoughts and feelings and emotions. When I feel strong
Speaker 1: emotions and I have an aversion to the emotion, I
Speaker 1: might be feeling what relationship do I have with anger?
Speaker 1: Rather than thinking how do I not be angry?
Speaker 5: To me?
Speaker 1: It keeps going back to that, the relationship that we
Speaker 1: have with suffering. That's what I'm trying to go back
Speaker 1: to with all of these concepts and teachings.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's certainly one of the things that drew
Speaker 4: me to it in the very beginning was this acknowledgment
Speaker 4: that like, hey, like you said, life is hard, there
Speaker 4: is a lot of difficulty and pain in life, and
Speaker 4: I just felt like somebody was speaking the truth right.
Speaker 4: It was like, oh, yes, now here's somebody who's describing
Speaker 4: the way I understand the world to act actually be
Speaker 4: instead of pretending that it's okay, and Buddhism's not saying
Speaker 4: that nothing's okay, it's saying that there is a pervasiveness
Speaker 4: of every human is going to have some degree of
Speaker 4: suffering in life.
Speaker 5: That's a big part of what's there.
Speaker 4: And so that really appealed to me, the idea that
Speaker 4: there was a way to, like you said, change our
Speaker 4: relationship to that. The way I've always phrased it was
Speaker 4: when I first read Buddhist ideas in high school. It
Speaker 4: was this idea that even if the world was a
Speaker 4: pile of shit, so to speak as a punk rocker,
Speaker 4: that's probably how I would have said it then, Right,
Speaker 4: even if the world is a pile of shit, there's a.
Speaker 5: Way to be okay within that.
Speaker 4: And that's really what's always called to me all these years,
Speaker 4: is how within a difficult world can we be okay?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, one thing I've really valued with
Speaker 1: this experience of adopting Buddhist practices and holding space for
Speaker 1: these thoughts and ideas is how they relate to the
Speaker 1: everyday as of life. I remember at one point in
Speaker 1: my studies I came across this notion that one of
Speaker 1: the things that we fear the most is death, and
Speaker 1: that life and away is the preparation for that final
Speaker 1: event that is inevitable for each of us. And then
Speaker 1: I remember thinking not having to take it to that extreme,
Speaker 1: that a lot of what we do in our day
Speaker 1: to day life is a rehearsal for these difficulties that
Speaker 1: are bound to come our way at some point in
Speaker 1: the future. I'm going to lose a loved one. I'm
Speaker 1: going to be struggling with a flat tire on the
Speaker 1: side of the road, or whatever the thing is. I
Speaker 1: remember encountering this in real life when a few years ago,
Speaker 1: my dad passed away from cancer and I got to
Speaker 1: spend the last ten days or so with him. I
Speaker 1: flew to Texas, and as I was going through the
Speaker 1: full range of emotions that you go through losing a
Speaker 1: loved one, I remember having this thought that this is
Speaker 1: what I've been preparing for. What relationship do I have
Speaker 1: with this experience as it's unfolding, so that I can
Speaker 1: be fully present to it and not run away from it.
Speaker 1: And on one of those moments, I was with my
Speaker 1: brothers and we were all like holding hands and crying,
Speaker 1: and I remember the intensity of the emotion and the
Speaker 1: peace that I felt allowing myself to feel it, and
Speaker 1: I remember distinctly thinking, had I not approached it this way,
Speaker 1: this experience, I probably would have felt a strong aversion
Speaker 1: to the feelings that I have. I would have been
Speaker 1: either trying to pretend that okay, I'm okay, this isn't
Speaker 1: that bad, or distract myself. But instead I got to
Speaker 1: fully be with the experience and fully process the emotions
Speaker 1: and have zero concerns about crying in front of my family,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's when it hit me, that's what
Speaker 1: this is all about. It's that life is difficult. We're
Speaker 1: going to experience difficulties. How do we relate to those
Speaker 1: experiences as they unfold? Because you only go through that
Speaker 1: one and I remember thinking like, this is the first
Speaker 1: and last time that I'm going to lose my dad.
Speaker 1: One day it'll be it could be my mom, it
Speaker 1: could be my siblings, it could be my kids. But
Speaker 1: right now it's this And I wasn't fully with that moment,
Speaker 1: and instead I felt just deep gratitude that I got
Speaker 1: to really process and be with that experience as it
Speaker 1: was happening. And again, that's what I value in these
Speaker 1: concepts and ideas is just a radical shift in the
Speaker 1: relationship that we have with the present moment instead of
Speaker 1: always looking for the future. This moment that's going to
Speaker 1: be better than this one, or you know, it's like, no,
Speaker 1: this is what the moment is. It doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: I like it or not, but this is what is
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: The spiritual teacher Audia Shanti once said to me he
Speaker 4: was talking about freedom, and that is one of the
Speaker 4: phrases that Buddhism tosses around freedom liberation, you know. And
Speaker 4: he was like, it's not freedom from it's freedom too.
Speaker 4: And what he meant is it's not freedom from difficult emotions,
Speaker 4: it's freedom to actually have difficult emotions but relate to
Speaker 4: them in a different way. And that made a lot
Speaker 4: of sense to me. You know, as a former heroin addict,
Speaker 4: I have a default to try and find freedom from
Speaker 4: right like transcend me out of this mess, please orf
Speaker 4: of ar and learning for me. And I think it's
Speaker 4: a key learning for anybody who wants to get over
Speaker 4: an addiction. Is that ability to recognize like you don't
Speaker 4: have to make the difficult emotions go away in order
Speaker 4: to allow them to be there. You can actually experience them,
Speaker 4: let them come and let them sort of pass in
Speaker 4: a way. And I think that that's always really resonated
Speaker 4: with me that you know, freedom too versus a freedom.
Speaker 1: From Yeah, that's great. That hits the nail on the
Speaker 1: head for the benefit of a practice like that.
Speaker 4: Do you ever think about I think about this sometimes
Speaker 4: whether all this work has led me to suffer less
Speaker 4: or has it led me to be happier? And are
Speaker 4: those the same things?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 4: Is by decreasing the negative automatically increase the positive. How
Speaker 4: do you think about that?
Speaker 1: I like to think of it from the Buddhist perspective.
Speaker 1: There's the story of the two arrows, and the idea
Speaker 1: that you can be struck out of nowhere at any
Speaker 1: time by an arrow, and that arrow will cause pain.
Speaker 1: But how we relate to the experience of having been
Speaker 1: shot by an arrow will produce the pain of a
Speaker 1: second arrow. In other words, I've been hit by this arrow,
Speaker 1: and I hate that this arrow hit me here, and
Speaker 1: now I'm upset, and that's a new layer of suffering
Speaker 1: on top of it. Maybe in our Western terminology this
Speaker 1: would be the distinction between pain and suffering, But I
Speaker 1: think it's along those lines the idea that when I
Speaker 1: think of suffering as it's what arises when I want
Speaker 1: things to be other than how they are. That is
Speaker 1: something that can go away when I experience the gratitude
Speaker 1: to be experiencing whatever it is that I'm experiencing. It
Speaker 1: can still be unpleasant, it can still be painful, it
Speaker 1: can still be a lot of things, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be suffering in that sense. Using this example
Speaker 1: with my dad, it was that recognition that I'm crying
Speaker 1: because of the intensity of the experience. I lost someone
Speaker 1: that I love. I'm thinking of those memories. I'm mourning,
Speaker 1: you know, the time that I'll get to be with
Speaker 1: him in the future. I won't have that now. None
Speaker 1: of that had to be suffering. And what I was
Speaker 1: able to identify in that instance is that I'm not
Speaker 1: running away from what I'm feeling. Like the freedom too,
Speaker 1: like you said, I'm the freedom to feel everything that
Speaker 1: I'm feeling. In a moment like that, I think you
Speaker 1: can definitely be experiencing pain, but not be experiencing suffering
Speaker 1: in addition to that pain. So, like you were saying,
Speaker 1: is it happiness that overtakes I'm not sure that that's
Speaker 1: how I view it. I view it as what's absent
Speaker 1: in that moment is wanting it to be different. It's
Speaker 1: like No, this hurts, and I feel pain and I'm
Speaker 1: going to cry, and I don't want to feel any
Speaker 1: other way because that's what I'm feeling. That is peace.
Speaker 1: So I like to think of peace and suffering as
Speaker 1: those opposites on the teeter totter. And I can be
Speaker 1: experiencing peace in the midst of feeling pain or anger
Speaker 1: or frustration, but it's suffering that I'm not feeling that
Speaker 1: chaos of I need this to be other than how
Speaker 1: it is that feeling is what I associate with suffering.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've often joked that if you were to boil
Speaker 4: down everything that I try and teach, you could say that,
Speaker 4: you know, it's just about not making things worse, which
Speaker 4: is a very boring sentiment right on one level, you're like, God,
Speaker 4: that is not going to sell, right, and it doesn't.
Speaker 4: And yet, if you realize the ways in which we
Speaker 4: make everything worse, how we amplify everything that's not quite
Speaker 4: perfect into a bigger and bigger problem, not making things
Speaker 4: worse is a pretty useful skill.
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think that's actually a really neat way
Speaker 1: to frame the core, you know, the foreknoble truths or
Speaker 1: the essence of what Buddhism teaches you could frame it
Speaker 1: and that exactly what you just said. Life is difficult.
Speaker 1: We don't need to make it more difficult than it
Speaker 1: already is. And that's two through four centers around that idea.
Speaker 4: We've been hovering on this idea of suffering and difficulty,
Speaker 4: and it's not that that's all life is by no means, right,
Speaker 4: there's lots of at least from my perspective, there's lots
Speaker 4: of wonderful experiences in life, but even those often can
Speaker 4: get clouded over by the ways in which we manufacture suffering.
Speaker 4: I mean, because then that's what Buddhism is also saying.
Speaker 4: It's not just that bad things are going to happen
Speaker 4: to you, right, It's that good things are going to happen,
Speaker 4: but your desire to make sure that those good things
Speaker 4: don't go away, or your desire to wish that they
Speaker 4: were better than they actually are, like even those if
Speaker 4: we're not careful, we can mess.
Speaker 5: Up in our mind. Yep.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: I want to ask you about a recent podcast episode
Speaker 4: you had which was called The Unseen Teachers Embracing Life's
Speaker 4: Dynamic Lessons, and in it you're talking about paragliding so
Speaker 4: first talk to me about paragliding in general, what is it,
Speaker 4: how long have you been doing it, and then maybe
Speaker 4: share some of the lessons from paragliding that you've pulled
Speaker 4: out that you think apply to broader ideas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, paragliding is definitely my go to hobby.
Speaker 1: I just got back from a paragliding trip yesterday morning. Actually,
Speaker 1: so paragliding if you can visualize what a parachute looks like,
Speaker 1: it's a piece of fabric with strings attached to a
Speaker 1: harness that you happen to be connected to. That's what
Speaker 1: paragliding is. It's a fabric wing that you can inflate
Speaker 1: over your head. The most traditional way, people will run
Speaker 1: off the side of a mountain, and once that wing
Speaker 1: is overhead, you can soar and fly with it. You
Speaker 1: can find air that's rising. There are different forms of paragliding,
Speaker 1: whether you're looking for thermal air that's rising, or you
Speaker 1: can be along the coast, for example, and you have
Speaker 1: wind that's coming off the water. If it hits a ridge,
Speaker 1: you can do what's called ridge soaring, which is like
Speaker 1: surfing but in the wind. And that's what paragliding is
Speaker 1: it's you this inflatable wing over your head and the wind,
Speaker 1: and then it's evolved. Now they have powered paragliding as well,
Speaker 1: so you can strap a motor on your back and
Speaker 1: then it can take off from a field. You don't
Speaker 1: need a mountain at that point. But what I love
Speaker 1: about paragliding as a hobby or as a sport is
Speaker 1: that you have the freedom to fly and go see
Speaker 1: and experience you know the world from a new perspective,
Speaker 1: and yet you still have to comply with the laws
Speaker 1: of physics. You have to have the right conditions to
Speaker 1: be able to fly, or you have to be able
Speaker 1: to keep the wing over your head, so to speak.
Speaker 1: But what I love about it is it's one of
Speaker 1: those things that it's not for everyone. If you're afraid
Speaker 1: of heights, I would say paragliding is probably not for you.
Speaker 1: Over the years, I've realized this is something I thoroughly love,
Speaker 1: to the point where I started a school and I
Speaker 1: teach people to do it, and I recognize it's not
Speaker 1: for everyone. And that's also been my approach with Buddhism,
Speaker 1: and I think that's why the secular part of it
Speaker 1: has been important to me. Because I felt like it's
Speaker 1: another tool. It's a thing that you can do. It
Speaker 1: can bring tremendous joy to the right person in their life.
Speaker 1: But it's not for everyone. It's not like, hey, you
Speaker 1: have to come learn these things you need to meditate.
Speaker 1: Could anyone benefit from it? I believe so, but it's
Speaker 1: not for everyone.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in that same way, that's how I view paragliding.
Speaker 1: And if somebody wants to go and see what it's like,
Speaker 1: I take them up for a tandem. If they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: I don't ever want to do that, or I think
Speaker 1: you're crazy because you do that, I say, well, that's
Speaker 1: fine too, because I am a little crazy for doing it,
Speaker 1: because again, it's not for everyone.
Speaker 4: So it sounds like it's similar to hang gliding in
Speaker 4: the overall concept, but it's different in that you're not
Speaker 4: sort of strapped into a hang glider a mini plane. Instead,
Speaker 4: you've got this parachute sort of above you that you're using,
Speaker 4: and you can strap a motor on your back if
Speaker 4: you want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's very comparable to the idea of
Speaker 1: hang gliding. Hang Gliding is a rigid wing and paragliding
Speaker 1: is a fabric wing. It's not rigid. The principle is
Speaker 1: the same. You're soaring, you're gliding, you're looking for rising air.
Speaker 1: They can stay up in stronger conditions than we can
Speaker 1: because our wing is not rigid. But the principles are
Speaker 1: the same. And I think correlating this to my Buddhist
Speaker 1: practice and Buddhist concepts and ideas. You know, when you
Speaker 1: start out, it's useful to have guidance and to be
Speaker 1: able to know how does this work, how do you
Speaker 1: strap this on? How do you launch? How do you land?
Speaker 1: But where it really becomes an enjoyable experience is when
Speaker 1: you have the skill to be able to go do
Speaker 1: this safely, completely on your own. And then that's a
Speaker 1: process that never ends. You never finish and say I
Speaker 1: did it, I mastered paragliding. It becomes a practice. You
Speaker 1: do it all the time for however long you get
Speaker 1: to do it, but there's not an end goal that says, hey,
Speaker 1: you did it. It's just something that you go and
Speaker 1: you enjoy. That's how I view Buddhism, as well as
Speaker 1: an exerciser as a practice. It's something that I'm always
Speaker 1: trying to be better at, being better at what the
Speaker 1: relationship I have with my thoughts and feelings and emotions,
Speaker 1: understanding why I say and think and do, and the
Speaker 1: relationship I have with suffering and with the difficulties that
Speaker 1: I'll experience in life. So I like to correlate those two.
Speaker 1: And another correlation that I've made when people have asked me,
Speaker 1: is it kind of like a kite, like, you know
Speaker 1: what if it has a string on it? In my
Speaker 1: former worldview, that was usually an analogy that was brought
Speaker 1: up that were like kites and the wind keeps us aloft,
Speaker 1: But it's that string that's the vital piece of the puzzle,
Speaker 1: that that string is your connection to God, or your
Speaker 1: connection to the church, or you know, whatever that is.
Speaker 1: And they would bring it up as if that string
Speaker 1: gets cut. You know, we all know what happens to
Speaker 1: a kite once you cut the string. And now I
Speaker 1: would say, well, yeah, that's true about a kite, but
Speaker 1: that's not true about a barth or about paraglider. So
Speaker 1: it's about recognizing am I a kite? Or am I
Speaker 1: a bird? Or am I what am I? And then
Speaker 1: seeing I am I doing this skillfully? Because it's unskillful
Speaker 1: to tether the bird to a string. It's also unskillful
Speaker 1: to cut the cord on a kite. So I like
Speaker 1: to correlate all of these things into my day to
Speaker 1: day practices as well.
Speaker 4: So listener, consider this. You're halfway through the episode Integration reminder.
Speaker 4: Remember knowledge is power, but only if combined with action
Speaker 4: and integration. It can be transformative to take a minute
Speaker 4: to synthesize information rather than just ingesting it in a
Speaker 4: detached way. So let's collectively take a moment to pause
Speaker 4: and reflect. What's your one big insight so far and
Speaker 4: how can you put it into practice in your life. Seriously,
Speaker 4: just take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It
Speaker 4: can be so powerful to have these reminders to stop
Speaker 4: and be present, can't it. If you want to keep
Speaker 4: this momentum going that you built with this little exercise,
Speaker 4: i'd encourage you to get on our Good Wolf Reminders
Speaker 4: SMS list. I'll shoot you two texts a week with
Speaker 4: insightful little prompts and wisdom from podcast guests. They're a
Speaker 4: nice little nudge to stop and be present in your life,
Speaker 4: and they're a helpful way to not get lost in
Speaker 4: the busyness and forget what is important. You can join
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Speaker 4: like them, you can get off a list really easily.
Speaker 4: So far, there are over one and seventy two others
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Speaker 4: we'd love to welcome you as well. So head on
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Speaker 4: our good wolves together. I've taken up rock climbing over
Speaker 4: the last number of years. Mostly I do it indoors,
Speaker 4: but I do it outdoors from time to time, and
Speaker 4: I've been amazed at the number of like analogies I
Speaker 4: can make out of rock climbing to life. The most
Speaker 4: obvious one is, you know, the first time I went outdoors,
Speaker 4: I got to the wall and I looked up and
Speaker 4: I was like, there's no way I'm ever going to
Speaker 4: get up there. And then I started looking at the
Speaker 4: wall and I was like, I don't even know where
Speaker 4: to like what am I even supposed to hold on to?
Speaker 4: Like when you go to a rock climbing gym, right,
Speaker 4: here's the holes you can use. You can use the
Speaker 4: blue ones, you know, so you may not know which
Speaker 4: one to use or how to use it, but you
Speaker 4: at least know, like those are my choices.
Speaker 5: You look at a rock wall and you're like, I
Speaker 5: have no freaking idea.
Speaker 4: And so probably the first ten or fifteen minutes I
Speaker 4: did not go one foot. I went nowhere, and I
Speaker 4: was like, there's just no possible way I'm ever going
Speaker 4: to do this. And obviously the lesson is that at
Speaker 4: the end I was all the way up on top
Speaker 4: of that wall. How because I just kept trying, right
Speaker 4: like I just thought I couldn't and I didn't give up.
Speaker 4: And I mean I learned that one again and again
Speaker 4: and again. I'm part way up and I'm like, I
Speaker 4: can't do this. I'm not gonna be able to do this,
Speaker 4: and I'm so all right, take a breath, relax, just
Speaker 4: hold on and keep going, you know. And so that's
Speaker 4: just one. I mean, there's been other ones about how
Speaker 4: useful it is to climb with another person. They're just
Speaker 4: so much any that can come out of doing something
Speaker 4: physical like that, at least for me. And now obviously
Speaker 4: I'm looking for the analogies, but they're there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, for sure, That's how it's been for me
Speaker 1: with paraglide into.
Speaker 5: I want to paraglide. I absolutely want to paraglide.
Speaker 1: So it's a really cool experience. If you're ever out
Speaker 1: my way, definitely let me know. I'd be happy to
Speaker 1: take you up.
Speaker 5: It sounds thrilling.
Speaker 4: You mentioned a couple of minutes ago working with our
Speaker 4: thoughts a little bit, and I'm curious about how do
Speaker 4: we work with our thoughts and emotions skillfully? And I'm
Speaker 4: going to narrow that down a little bit. You and
Speaker 4: I talked about this, right, because there are certain scenarios
Speaker 4: in which there are thought patterns or emotions that are
Speaker 4: going on inside of us where we're going to make
Speaker 4: a decision to try and change those or to intervene
Speaker 4: in some way. I'm just not going to let this
Speaker 4: thought pattern run unsupervised throughout my brain all the time.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: So there are scenarios where that is generally the approach,
Speaker 4: and then there are other scenarios in which the approach
Speaker 4: is a little bit more like, I'm just gonna let
Speaker 4: whatever is.
Speaker 5: Here be here.
Speaker 4: You gave the example of being your dad's bedside as
Speaker 4: he's dying. You just allowed sadness to be there. That
Speaker 4: was the wise approach. You let it be, And sometimes
Speaker 4: that's the best thing to do with thoughts or emotions, right,
Speaker 4: you fight them and they just get stronger. So I'm
Speaker 4: curious how you think about when do I do what approach?
Speaker 4: How do I know whether this is I should just
Speaker 4: let this kind of be and do it, or when
Speaker 4: is this something that is you know, as we would
Speaker 4: say in Buddhist circles, we use the term skillful or unskillful.
Speaker 4: This is an unskillful approach right now, and I'm going
Speaker 4: to try and change it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think that's a good question, the idea
Speaker 1: of knowing where that line is skillful versus unskillful. The
Speaker 1: most appropriate answer, of course, is going to be it
Speaker 1: depends because MH. That may be different for every person
Speaker 1: and their unique circumstances. But I think one tail sign
Speaker 1: would be having the thought is this skillful or unskillful?
Speaker 1: Means there's already the awareness that maybe there's another way,
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm not doing this the best way that I could.
Speaker 1: So then I would say lean into that with curiosity,
Speaker 1: why am I even thinking if this is skillful or unskillful?
Speaker 1: And then give that room to see where that goes.
Speaker 1: Because I think a common thing for a lot of us,
Speaker 1: a natural human thing perhaps is habitual tendencies like this
Speaker 1: is what feels natural. I don't need to question it
Speaker 1: being any other way, because this is what is. And
Speaker 1: we go through life that way, unintentionally making it more
Speaker 1: difficult than it needs to be. And it might not
Speaker 1: be until you see someone else and say, well, hold on,
Speaker 1: it's not that difficult for them. That might be the
Speaker 1: spark that makes you think what am I doing differently?
Speaker 1: Or it could be that the pain or the suffering
Speaker 1: that one experience is enough to make you say, hey,
Speaker 1: this is really difficult. Maybe there's another way to me.
Speaker 1: Those are some of the signs to look for that
Speaker 1: would make me think, maybe there's another way to relate
Speaker 1: to the thoughts or to the feelings or to the emotions.
Speaker 1: And if that's the case, what can I do? Can
Speaker 1: I be more skillful and then start exploring that route?
Speaker 1: I know that's exactly how it was for me with
Speaker 1: specific instances. I recall going through the faith crisis that
Speaker 1: I mentioned Around that same time, I was going through
Speaker 1: a marriage crisis as well, and it was the combination
Speaker 1: of the two that really started to get me thinking
Speaker 1: along these lines of maybe there's a more skillful way
Speaker 1: to be in this relationship. And then I started exploring,
Speaker 1: well what if we go to marriage counseling. And then
Speaker 1: I'm starting to read books and learned how to be
Speaker 1: a more effective communicator. None of that had to change.
Speaker 1: I could have gone on being just the way I've
Speaker 1: always been. It was these little moments where you start
Speaker 1: to think, maybe there is another way. Where is that line?
Speaker 1: I think, like I said, it depends. I think the
Speaker 1: practice is to be open to the idea that at
Speaker 1: any given moment there may be a better way, So
Speaker 1: always be curious. I think curiosity is the word that
Speaker 1: I like to highlight the most there. It's like, just
Speaker 1: be curious. There might be a better way, there might
Speaker 1: be a worse way, at least be open to that.
Speaker 4: I like what you said there that recognizing suffering is
Speaker 4: actually a really useful thing to recognize, Like, Okay, something
Speaker 4: is going on inside of me here. I study a
Speaker 4: lot of behavior science, behavior change stuff, and there's.
Speaker 5: An idea of triggers.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: A trigger is something that reminds you to do something.
Speaker 4: There's negative triggers, like I'm triggered by I go into
Speaker 4: this neighborhood it makes me want to buy drugs. But
Speaker 4: there's positive triggers too. Right, an alarm clock goes off,
Speaker 4: it reminds me to do something. If we can start
Speaker 4: to use emotional based triggers, things like oh, I'm suffering
Speaker 4: as a way of saying, okay, now that I'm triggered,
Speaker 4: what do I want to do? Right, like you said,
Speaker 4: recognizing there's a different choice. And the phrase that I
Speaker 4: kept coming back to more recently over and over is
Speaker 4: the idea of.
Speaker 5: Is this useful?
Speaker 4: Like, is this thought pattern or emotion that I'm feeling
Speaker 4: useful in some way? So, for example, if we go
Speaker 4: back to your father at the graveside, like sadness and
Speaker 4: crying is grief, It's useful at that moment, it's appropriate,
Speaker 4: It makes sense thought patterns might be useful if I'm
Speaker 4: trying to figure something out. If I'm in the middle
Speaker 4: of like, oh, okay, I'm really feeling lousy, and part
Speaker 4: of that is because I'm thinking about my marriage situation
Speaker 4: and what I could do different, that's useful. Right, It's useful.
Speaker 4: But there are also plenty of times where if we
Speaker 4: were to examine, we would go, well, this is not useful.
Speaker 4: I'm thinking the same thing that I've thought twenty five
Speaker 4: thousand times before, and all twenty five thousand times I've
Speaker 4: thought it has made me unhappy, and so if that's
Speaker 4: the case, then maybe since it's not useful, that's when
Speaker 4: I try and see if I can change it. I
Speaker 4: think the other thing I often think about is like
Speaker 4: what actually works. I'm generally of the belief like, if
Speaker 4: you're having a negative thought pattern, if you can change it,
Speaker 4: that's probably a good idea. But sometimes we recognize it
Speaker 4: trying to change it simply doesn't work, in which case
Speaker 4: then I might shift into Okay, well I can't seem
Speaker 4: to modify this, so now my work is to let
Speaker 4: it be. I think the creators of acceptance and Commitment therapy,
Speaker 4: one of them, Stephen Hayes, talked about this idea of
Speaker 4: it being like a radio that's playing in your neighbor's apartment.
Speaker 5: You can't turn it off.
Speaker 4: It's not your radio, So at that point you probably
Speaker 4: should just work on relaxing and being like, well, there's
Speaker 4: going to be that sound in the background.
Speaker 5: You know. Those are just some of my thoughts on
Speaker 5: that core idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those are great, And I love that analogy of
Speaker 1: the neighbors radio because a lot of the things that
Speaker 1: bring us discomfort. Are things that are outside of our control.
Speaker 1: In a scenario like that, staying with the thought of well,
Speaker 1: maybe I can change it is just not a useful
Speaker 1: thought because you can't.
Speaker 4: One of the core practices of Buddhism is meditation. And
Speaker 4: one of the things I think is interesting about meditation
Speaker 4: it took me a long time to actually see what
Speaker 4: one of its core values was for me, and one
Speaker 4: of its core values was recognizing that I can't not think,
Speaker 4: and I took that on as a real problem for
Speaker 4: a long time. I went, oh, I've got trained myself
Speaker 4: so I can control my thoughts. And it took me
Speaker 4: years to sort of go, well, what's really interesting about
Speaker 4: this is that I'm not creating them, so I can
Speaker 4: relate to them differently. Then again, it's sort of back
Speaker 4: to the neighbor's radio. The sound is just coming up.
Speaker 4: How can I relate to it? You use that word
Speaker 4: early on a lot. How do I relate to these
Speaker 4: things differently? And that insight of these things are happening
Speaker 4: on their own is one that we often find problematic,
Speaker 4: but I actually find liberating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I think it ties in well with
Speaker 1: the notion you brought up earlier, the freedom too and
Speaker 1: freedom from a lot of times when people first encounter
Speaker 1: Buddhism or meditation specifically, they view it as this exercise
Speaker 1: that if you do it right, it's freedom from whatever
Speaker 1: I'm experiencing. Like, here's my life. I'm going to meditate
Speaker 1: and experience freedom from this and you know, go to
Speaker 1: some alternate state rather than what really happens is freedom too.
Speaker 1: It's like, I'm going to sit here and experience the
Speaker 1: freedom to feel and experience whatever it is I'm experiencing.
Speaker 1: It might be no seing the neighbor's radio is playing
Speaker 1: and I don't like that song, and just noticing and
Speaker 1: being like, it's okay to not like it. It's okay
Speaker 1: to sit here with whatever you're experiencing. But the thought
Speaker 1: that somehow I'm doing it wrong, if I have not
Speaker 1: escaped this to get to that, that's just not helpful
Speaker 1: because that's not how it works. But then something beautiful
Speaker 1: happens when you change that relationship you have to the
Speaker 1: experience you're having, and the irony is that the neighbor's
Speaker 1: radio is still playing and maybe you still don't like
Speaker 1: that song, but now you don't suffer from it. So
Speaker 1: the relationship with that thing, whatever it is, that's what changes,
Speaker 1: rather than thinking it's the thing that needs to change.
Speaker 4: Right, because sometimes you can't change the thing. Sometimes you
Speaker 4: can and in which case do, but sometimes you can't.
Speaker 4: One of the things that you and I both think
Speaker 4: a lot about is bringing this idea of practice into
Speaker 4: your everyday life. And again with Buddhism, most people think
Speaker 4: the practice is meditation, and that's the core practice, and
Speaker 4: it is one of the core trainings that Buddhism encourages
Speaker 4: and recommends. But even if somebody were to get to
Speaker 4: the point where they're meditating thirty minutes in the morning
Speaker 4: or an hour in the morning or whatever. Let's just
Speaker 4: assume somebody even gets to that level, which most people
Speaker 4: won't or don't, right, But if they do, you get
Speaker 4: up from meditating and you've got the whole rest of
Speaker 4: your day. How do you find it useful to think
Speaker 4: about bringing these ideas, these ideas that could change our
Speaker 4: relationship to suffering or liberate us from a certain degree
Speaker 4: of suffering. How do we bring those into our day
Speaker 4: to day life in a way that they actually have
Speaker 4: the potential to change us.
Speaker 1: That's a good point and a good question. I feel
Speaker 1: like with meditation as the example here, because it is
Speaker 1: kind of viewed as the thing I have to go
Speaker 1: sit there, and you know, if I sat there fifteen minutes,
Speaker 1: that wasn't good enough. I needed to be thirty, or
Speaker 1: it needed to be an hour or whatever. When the
Speaker 1: reality is I like to think of meditation in this
Speaker 1: sense in the same way that I would think of exercise.
Speaker 1: The benefit of exercising isn't necessarily experienced while you're exercising.
Speaker 1: It's for the rest of the day and the rest
Speaker 1: of the week that because I work out regularly, I'm
Speaker 1: capable of lifting this thing and putting it away or
Speaker 1: not having my back go out. Meditation is similar. So
Speaker 1: in that sense, I like to think of meditation as
Speaker 1: something that I'm practicing at any given time for the
Speaker 1: benefit of real life. That's what I'm really after. It's
Speaker 1: not meditation that matters, it's my day to day lived
Speaker 1: experience that matters. And when they kind of become synonymous.
Speaker 1: How I meditate is how I'm going to live my life,
Speaker 1: and how I live my life is how I meditate,
Speaker 1: then I don't have to view them as these two
Speaker 1: separate things. My day to day lived experience is full
Speaker 1: of meditative moments where I'm not sitting on a couch
Speaker 1: or doing anything specific that you would think of as
Speaker 1: man meditation. But what I am doing is I'm fully
Speaker 1: present to the experience as it's unfolding. Whether it's washing
Speaker 1: the dishes or talking to my kids or hearing for
Speaker 1: the one hundredth time the story that my kids wanting
Speaker 1: to tell me about their friend. But I'm fully present
Speaker 1: to it. That to me is meditation, And that's why
Speaker 1: I view meditation as a beneficial practice. But I don't
Speaker 1: like the idea of getting lost in thinking if you're
Speaker 1: not doing it, you're wrong, or you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: or if you're not doing it long enough. I just
Speaker 1: like to think of it as a tool that helps
Speaker 1: me to be more aware of everything that's unfolding in
Speaker 1: real time as it's unfolding in real time for the
Speaker 1: rest of the day. That just happens to be a
Speaker 1: moment of the day that I dedicate to practicing the
Speaker 1: art of paying attention.
Speaker 4: And so is your experience that by doing the practice
Speaker 4: of meditation, that way of relating to the world naturally filters.
Speaker 5: Into the rest of your life. Or are there.
Speaker 4: Ways in which you try and actively make sure that
Speaker 4: it filters into the other aspects of your life.
Speaker 1: I would say it's a little bit of both. I
Speaker 1: think from having a time of my life where these
Speaker 1: concepts were completely foreign and meditation wasn't a thing, to
Speaker 1: another stage of life where I practice meditation, I think
Speaker 1: there's the idea that it becomes more natural and habitual
Speaker 1: to notice something that I may not have noticed before
Speaker 1: simply because I'm practicing noticing. So there's that element with it,
Speaker 1: But then the more deliberate aspect of it. For example,
Speaker 1: one of my meditative practices that isn't like sitting on
Speaker 1: a cushion that's setting a timer. You could do this
Speaker 1: with your watch or your phone that when it goes
Speaker 1: off you just look around and say, what can I
Speaker 1: notice right now that I'm not noticing? So I did
Speaker 1: this with an exercise looking for causes and conditions. This
Speaker 1: was to practice seeing things through the lens of interdependence.
Speaker 1: What I would do is I would just look at
Speaker 1: something and then say what did it take for this
Speaker 1: thing to be? And then thinking of all the steps
Speaker 1: that led to that thing being what it is. And
Speaker 1: I did this with my little alarm that would go
Speaker 1: off random times, three or four times a day for
Speaker 1: months and months and months. But it was one particular
Speaker 1: day I was sitting in a school bus I'm a
Speaker 1: substitute school bus driver, and while I was waiting for
Speaker 1: the next route, just pulled off to the side of
Speaker 1: the road. That happened to be one of those moments
Speaker 1: that I started looking around and looking at all the
Speaker 1: little knobs and the dials on the dash, and as
Speaker 1: I started to think, well, what did it take for
Speaker 1: this to be what it is? And I was thinking
Speaker 1: of whoever invented it? There's whoever made it? How did
Speaker 1: it get here? Like you know, my mind just connected
Speaker 1: this moment of me looking at something as simple as
Speaker 1: a little knob, I felt so connected to a vast
Speaker 1: world that I couldn't even think of all the I
Speaker 1: couldn't think of where that web ends. And then what
Speaker 1: I experience was just tremendous gratitude that I get to
Speaker 1: be here, connected in time and space to all these
Speaker 1: people that none of us are even aware of each other,
Speaker 1: through a simple moment of observation, just to look at
Speaker 1: it and think of this differently, And that really stuck
Speaker 1: with me and from that moment on, I would have
Speaker 1: other instances like that with people, with the person who
Speaker 1: had just honked and then cut off in front of me,
Speaker 1: and I think, what did it take to reach that moment?
Speaker 1: And I don't know the answers, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I know that it was a lot. And again, every
Speaker 1: time I do that, I just feel gratitude. So that's
Speaker 1: an example of like being more deliberate with the practice.
Speaker 1: But the result that I feel often through doing that
Speaker 1: is just gratitude, Like I get to be here in
Speaker 1: this moment in space and time, connected to everything, and
Speaker 1: that I noticed it. I often think in those moments,
Speaker 1: what if I hadn't noticed, I would have probably just
Speaker 1: thought about my day, being annoyed or upset about something insignificant,
Speaker 1: and said I felt, for even a brief moment connected
Speaker 1: to everything.
Speaker 4: I love that for a few different reasons. There's a
Speaker 4: lot of things in there that are really instructive. I
Speaker 4: mean the first is that use of a timer or
Speaker 4: some we talked about earlier, a trigger. Right, your timer
Speaker 4: is your trigger to practice something, and what you practiced
Speaker 4: each little moment of that is sort of laughably basic, right,
Speaker 4: It's like your timer goes off and you think about
Speaker 4: what did it take for this microphone to be here?
Speaker 5: Right? And you do it and so what big deal?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 5: And you're done and you move on right.
Speaker 4: And if you do that three or four times a day,
Speaker 4: day after day after day, it's some juncture. What you're
Speaker 4: describing is that something more profound will come out of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: I think so this little by little approach is if
Speaker 4: you isolate these things, one of them at a time,
Speaker 4: you would go so what doesn't matter, But collectively they
Speaker 4: turn into something really significant. And so I love that
Speaker 4: that you're sort of bringing all that together.
Speaker 5: I call it.
Speaker 4: It's a term I borrowed from someone, but I call
Speaker 4: those like still points. And you could think of a
Speaker 4: still point as like a little container. And if you
Speaker 4: can stitch those into your day like you do with
Speaker 4: a timer, or you could do it like every time
Speaker 4: I go to the bathroom or whatever it is, you
Speaker 4: can put whatever you want into that little still point.
Speaker 4: Yours was a reflection on interdependence, which you did again
Speaker 4: and again. Or it could simply be like you said,
Speaker 4: what is something that I can notice that I've never
Speaker 4: noticed before? Or what are five things that I can
Speaker 4: see right now, or a reflection on why you want
Speaker 4: to be patient with your children. It doesn't matter what
Speaker 4: you put in there, but that consistent regular reflection over time.
Speaker 4: It's actually the way in which our thinking and our
Speaker 4: default reactions to life change.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, a good time to do it
Speaker 1: is when you're having to do something that you don't
Speaker 1: necessarily want to do, because then it's combating the habitual
Speaker 1: tendency to feel negative. For example, washing the dishes is
Speaker 1: something that I've never particularly enjoyed that, but it's one
Speaker 1: of the tasks that I've taken on and the dynamic
Speaker 1: in our home, and I thought, I'm going to just
Speaker 1: do this until I finally like doing it. Well, I
Speaker 1: never just started to like doing it, but when I
Speaker 1: made it part of my meditative practice, in the time
Speaker 1: that I'm washing the dishes, I'm also thinking, what is
Speaker 1: something that I hadn't noticed or hadn't thought about. Then
Speaker 1: it changed their relationship with the experience of washing the dishes.
Speaker 1: So now it's not a negative one. I look forward
Speaker 1: to it as, Oh, I'm going to meditate a little
Speaker 1: later when I'm washing the dishes or stopped at the
Speaker 1: red light. Is another great one. Most people don't enjoy
Speaker 1: being stopped. It's like, oh, dang, I got the red light.
Speaker 1: But what I noticed for me is it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I got the red light. Okay, good. I'll take a
Speaker 1: few seconds here, and one of the practices I do
Speaker 1: at a red light because it's usually the same route,
Speaker 1: it's not like I'm somewhere new, But I'll say, what's
Speaker 1: something I have never noticed about this area? And it's
Speaker 1: shocking how much we don't notice. I can't tell you
Speaker 1: how many times I'll look over look at a specific
Speaker 1: detail in a building, like huh, I had never noticed
Speaker 1: that they had that red thing there on the corner
Speaker 1: of the building. And that's it. That was the only goal.
Speaker 1: Then light turns green, keep going. But I think it's
Speaker 1: those little simple things that, like you said, in the moment,
Speaker 1: you might say, so what what does this matter? But
Speaker 1: it's at some other moment and time where that propensity,
Speaker 1: that habit kicks in and now you gain an insight
Speaker 1: or something that's actually a big deal, and you say, well,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have noticed this had I not been practicing
Speaker 1: it on all those little insignificant who cares moments.
Speaker 4: So listener, and thinking about all that and the other
Speaker 4: great wisdom from today's episode. If you were going to
Speaker 4: isolate just one top insight that you're taking away, what
Speaker 4: would it be now?
Speaker 5: Your top ten? Not the top five?
Speaker 4: Just one?
Speaker 5: What is it?
Speaker 4: Think about it?
Speaker 5: Got it?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 4: I ask you, what's one tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little
Speaker 4: thing you can do today? Put it in practice, or
Speaker 4: maybe just take a baby step towards it. Remember, little
Speaker 4: by little, a little becomes a lot. Profound change happens
Speaker 4: as a result of aggregated tiny actions, not massive heroic effort.
Speaker 4: If you're not already on our Good Wolf Reminder SMS list,
Speaker 4: I'd highly recommend it as a tool you can leverage
Speaker 4: to remind you to take those vital baby steps forward.
Speaker 4: You can get on there at oneufeed dot net slash SMS.
Speaker 4: It's totally free, and once you're on there, I'll send
Speaker 4: you a couple text messages a week with little reminders
Speaker 4: and nudges. Here's what I recently shared to give you
Speaker 4: an idea of the type of stuff I send. Keep
Speaker 4: practicing even if it seems hopeless. Don't strive for perfection,
Speaker 4: aim for consistency, and no matter what, keep showing up
Speaker 4: for yourself. That was a great gem from recent guests
Speaker 4: Light Watkins. And if you're on the fence about joining,
Speaker 4: remember it's totally free and easy to unsubscribe. If you
Speaker 4: want to get in, I'd love to have you there.
Speaker 4: Just go to oneufeed dot net slash sms. All right
Speaker 4: back to we're nearly at the end of time. But
Speaker 4: one of the things we said we would do is
Speaker 4: talk about a couple of our favorite books relating to Buddhism.
Speaker 4: So we've already talked about Steven Batchelor's work, what'd you say,
Speaker 4: Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist and Buddhism Without Beliefs. What
Speaker 4: are a couple other books that have been really important
Speaker 4: to you?
Speaker 1: There have been a few. I think one that I've
Speaker 1: revisited over and over again is Rebel Buddha by Zogchen
Speaker 1: pond Lap And for whatever reason, that one just has
Speaker 1: really resonated for me what he presents in that he
Speaker 1: goes through the you know, the core Buddhist teachings and ideas,
Speaker 1: but it's all presented through this lens of being rebellious
Speaker 1: against the habitual, you know, like the idea of going
Speaker 1: against the stream. Yeah, it's kind of that same notion
Speaker 1: that like everything that's configured in me is hardwired to
Speaker 1: want to just take the easy route, even if it's
Speaker 1: not the ideal route. But the rebel Buddha in me
Speaker 1: could say, hey, maybe there's another way, Maybe it doesn't
Speaker 1: need to be as difficult as it is. So that's
Speaker 1: one that I enjoy. And then I always recommend any
Speaker 1: of Paima's children's books, but the one that I have
Speaker 1: really been enjoying from her is When Things Fall Apart.
Speaker 1: I think that's a good one. And the reason why
Speaker 1: is because in life, like we talked about earlier, Buddhism
Speaker 1: isn't saying life is difficult and that's it at the end,
Speaker 1: but what it is saying is there will be difficulties.
Speaker 1: In this book, she expresses it with this idea that
Speaker 1: things are always coming together and falling apart, and then
Speaker 1: they come together and then they fall apart, and that's
Speaker 1: always happening. And that's really stayed with me, that image
Speaker 1: that in my day to day lived experience, I see it.
Speaker 1: Things are coming together and things are falling apart, and
Speaker 1: that's not going to end. Yeah, those are two books
Speaker 1: that I highly recommend to anyone interested in these ideas well.
Speaker 4: When Things Fall Apart is one of my favorites. It
Speaker 4: really as I was going through a divorce when my
Speaker 4: son was too.
Speaker 5: It was just a brutal.
Speaker 4: Time for me, and that book was incredibly helpful. I've
Speaker 4: not read Rebel Buddha, but it makes me think of
Speaker 4: There was a teacher, Noah Levine. He wrote against the
Speaker 4: Stream and Dharma Punks. Now apparently there were some sexual
Speaker 4: misconduct allegations around him and his soanga and I don't
Speaker 4: know what is real and what is not real and
Speaker 4: what has been found. All that aside, he's a brilliant teacher.
Speaker 4: I can't speak to who he is as a person,
Speaker 4: but as a teacher, he's a brilliant teacher. And I
Speaker 4: guess with my background in punk rock, I love those books.
Speaker 4: And then there's a book that I like called Buddhism
Speaker 4: Plain and Simple by a teacher, Steve Hagen. It's a
Speaker 4: book that's just about noticing and seeing and that that's
Speaker 4: the heart of the whole thing. It's a really simple
Speaker 4: but really profound and powerful book. And A Path with
Speaker 4: Heart by Jack Cornfield is always a classic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll have to check those outamiliar with the one
Speaker 1: you mentioned.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well no, it's been a pleasure. I've enjoyed sort
Speaker 4: of doing this collaborative episode together. So thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you too for making this happen. It's been great.
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