Speaker 1: Personally, I haven't had to make a decision in decades.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Stephen Mitchell, and author and translator who has dedicated much
Speaker 1: of his life to send practice. He is also married
Speaker 1: to Byron Katie, one of our former guests. His new
Speaker 1: book is Joseph and the Way of Forgiveness, a biblical
Speaker 1: tale retold. Hi, Stephen, Welcome to the show. Glad to
Speaker 1: be with you. It is a real honor and a
Speaker 1: gift to have you on. I told you in the
Speaker 1: pre show conversation that you and I had about how
Speaker 1: much your work is meant to me. But you have
Speaker 1: translated a number of books, but you're you're well beyond
Speaker 1: just a translator. But your translations of The Dooda Ching
Speaker 1: and Letters to a Young Poet are my two favorite
Speaker 1: books probably of all time. Certainly they're up there in
Speaker 1: the first few. So I'm really happy to have you on. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm so honored that you have taken them in so deeply.
Speaker 1: That's a very gratifying for me, wonderful, And we are
Speaker 1: going to talk about that. We'll talk about your latest
Speaker 1: book called Joseph in the Way of Forgiveness, a biblical
Speaker 1: tale retold. But let's start like we always do, with
Speaker 1: the parable. There is a grandmother who's talking with her
Speaker 1: grandson and she says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and he looks up at his grandmother, and he says, well, grandmother,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Okay, Well, I probably have
Speaker 1: a different take on the parable than than most people.
Speaker 1: I think it's a sweet story and probably embodies all
Speaker 1: sorts of tribal wisdom. But for me, it doesn't, of course,
Speaker 1: fund to any reality. And what I mean by that
Speaker 1: is that there are many religious traditions I can think
Speaker 1: of the Jewish tradition that have this kind of duality
Speaker 1: embodied in their theology or mythology. Uh. In the Jewish tradition,
Speaker 1: there's supposedly a an evil inclination inside us and a
Speaker 1: good inclination that are battling. Uh. Many other traditions do
Speaker 1: this too. The best thing that I know as an
Speaker 1: antidote to this kind of thinking is something from a
Speaker 1: brilliant old zen poem by the third founding teacher of
Speaker 1: zen Uh named Saint Son, and he said, the battle
Speaker 1: between good and evil is the primal disease of the mind.
Speaker 1: So whenever we see that kind of thing in in politics,
Speaker 1: or in religions or in our own life. Usually we
Speaker 1: put ourselves on the side of good and put people
Speaker 1: that have hurt us or we don't like on the
Speaker 1: side of evil, and it makes for a very difficult life,
Speaker 1: a life of excluding. And when you actually look inside
Speaker 1: the mind, if you've done many years of meditation or
Speaker 1: sunk into meditative practice to a certain depth, you'll find
Speaker 1: that there's nothing corresponding to these entities, these good and
Speaker 1: evil entities inside the mind. In other words, in reality,
Speaker 1: in experience, there aren't anything like this inside us. What's
Speaker 1: inside us are thoughts that we believe, and the process
Speaker 1: of getting to a point of awakening in Buddhist terms
Speaker 1: or enlightenment, is a process of undoing, of questioning the
Speaker 1: thoughts that we're believing, so that we can become people
Speaker 1: who live in harmony with the way things actually are,
Speaker 1: not the way reality seems when we superimpose our judgments
Speaker 1: and ideas onto it. So in reality, there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as good and bad. When we create good, we're
Speaker 1: creating its opposite bad. When we create beautiful, we're also
Speaker 1: creating ugly. And in the practice of self realization, we
Speaker 1: see that all of that is insubstantial. There's just the great, brilliant,
Speaker 1: joyful reality that cannot be broken into two pieces or
Speaker 1: into any pieces. It's one hole. It's what is. And
Speaker 1: in my wife Byron Katie's beautiful phrase, loving what is
Speaker 1: is what we come to after sufficient, deep enough practice.
Speaker 1: Everything that happens to us we see as good. There's
Speaker 1: nothing that's bad. There's nothing that a poses that good.
Speaker 1: You could also call it god. There's no struggle inside us.
Speaker 1: So I think that the Wolf parable may be helpful
Speaker 1: to many people. I can see how it would be,
Speaker 1: but ultimately it doesn't describe anything that's real, and ultimately
Speaker 1: I think it's something we have to grow beyond. So
Speaker 1: that's my take on it. That's a great take, and
Speaker 1: I think it's a great place for us to move
Speaker 1: into a little bit deeper conversation about this. Because you're
Speaker 1: a long time Zen student. I am a Zen student
Speaker 1: and a long time meditator. And there's this idea which
Speaker 1: is not an idea. You could say, it's it's truth
Speaker 1: or reality that as you said, it's all connected, it's
Speaker 1: all reality. It doesn't break out into this good and
Speaker 1: evil in the way that we conventionally think it does.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, there is this world that
Speaker 1: we live in that does have these characteristics and different types,
Speaker 1: and and and and will often talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: two sides of the same thing. There's the absolute and
Speaker 1: then there's the relative. And I'm kind of curious how
Speaker 1: you interpret how to make decisions about what's proper and
Speaker 1: right action in this relative world when you have that
Speaker 1: absolute perspective. How those two things work in harmony is
Speaker 1: a question. Excellent question. And I'm going to cause another
Speaker 1: little problem for you, I hope not, but maybe and
Speaker 1: say that actually there's no such thing as the absolute
Speaker 1: and the relative. In that old Zen poem called absolute
Speaker 1: trust in the mind is one translation in that poem,
Speaker 1: the poet the zen Master says, I can express what
Speaker 1: the truth is. But here's what you should go back
Speaker 1: to every time you're in doubt. Not too it's not
Speaker 1: too so when you say absolute and relative, you've already
Speaker 1: split the world into two. And the experience of someone
Speaker 1: who is living in a state of awakening is that
Speaker 1: there's never a decision that has to be made. Everything
Speaker 1: is obvious, everything flows, and life is very easy. So
Speaker 1: there's a union of if you want to say absolute
Speaker 1: and relative which are are not true in an ultimate sense.
Speaker 1: Uh that that has already fused in the life or
Speaker 1: in the mind one who is living in harmony with
Speaker 1: the way things are. That's how i'd say it. So personally,
Speaker 1: I haven't had to make a decision in decades, So
Speaker 1: as you move through the world, the right action becomes
Speaker 1: apparent to you without having to think or decide yes.
Speaker 1: And again it's just the authentic action. The right part
Speaker 1: is a judgment that you know is at a later
Speaker 1: point in the process, if at all. Um it's simply action.
Speaker 1: It's action that's true to yourself, and you don't have
Speaker 1: to think about it. You know, it becomes second nature
Speaker 1: and everything you do, everything you say, is simply an
Speaker 1: expression of your own reality. And it's always good and
Speaker 1: there's there's never a problem. It's the most astonishing thing
Speaker 1: to experience. And it's uh everything that the old masters
Speaker 1: said it was. I mean, there's nothing that they described
Speaker 1: about this state of awakening that is unworthy of the truth.
Speaker 1: It's an amazing thing to experience, right, And you said
Speaker 1: not to you know, the master said not to now
Speaker 1: in uh Suzuki has a phrase not to not one
Speaker 1: which I think is interesting. It's it's not quite it's
Speaker 1: not really two, but it's also not quite one. You know,
Speaker 1: you're there, I'm here, you know, physical sense like I
Speaker 1: can't you know, I can't touch you right this second, right,
Speaker 1: So you're there, I'm here. But but it comes from
Speaker 1: a deeper place now, a criticism that is often leveled.
Speaker 1: I get it sometimes, and I'm just curious your action
Speaker 1: to it. Is that this idea that it's all good
Speaker 1: and it's all okay is a privileged white idea because
Speaker 1: things in our lives generally are all good and okay,
Speaker 1: and we're in a position to recognize or realize that,
Speaker 1: but lots of other people their lives are very different.
Speaker 1: And what role do we have in helping in that way?
Speaker 1: And so just be kind of curious your thoughts on that,
Speaker 1: because that's a common criticism. Personally, I haven't heard that,
Speaker 1: but I'm not surprised. First of all, it's not an idea,
Speaker 1: and second of all, it's not white. It's yellow. If anything,
Speaker 1: comes from many many great teachers in in India and
Speaker 1: China and Japan. So this is a gift to us
Speaker 1: from that culture. We began to take it on really
Speaker 1: in the in the sixties and seventies. And you know,
Speaker 1: those of us who began meditating of practice back then
Speaker 1: were and are sitting at the feet of these great
Speaker 1: yellow and brown enlightened masters. So to say that it's
Speaker 1: white seems awfully silly. It seems to me, as far
Speaker 1: as privilege goes, that has a certain truth to it.
Speaker 1: Most people who come to meditative practice are coming from
Speaker 1: a somewhat educated background, and that entails some degree of privilege.
Speaker 1: But more important, they're coming from a vast hunger for
Speaker 1: the truth. It's probably true that poor people don't have
Speaker 1: the luxury of indulging that hunger because they have to
Speaker 1: support themselves and their families. But there are poor people
Speaker 1: who who come to spiritual practice. I've met many, and
Speaker 1: when they're ready for it, it happens, however little money
Speaker 1: they have. I've I've seen people from extremely modest circumstances,
Speaker 1: and men are already backgrounds plunge into the practice with
Speaker 1: as much passion as anybody else. Uh As for what
Speaker 1: to do, I think Katie, my wife, has the best solution,
Speaker 1: which is to dedicate herself to making everybody in the
Speaker 1: world are as many people as possible aware that there's
Speaker 1: a way out of suffering. Just as the Buddhist said,
Speaker 1: there is suffering, and it's very important to acknowledge that
Speaker 1: in our life. So there is suffering. The second noble
Speaker 1: truth is there's a cause of suffering, and that's just
Speaker 1: spectacularly important thing to understand. Katie makes it very simple
Speaker 1: when she says the second noble truth really means that
Speaker 1: when we believe our thoughts, we suffer. When we question
Speaker 1: our thoughts, we don't. And that's a very powerful formulation
Speaker 1: of the second noble truth. The third noble truth is
Speaker 1: that there's an end to suffering, not just that it's
Speaker 1: possible to alleviate suffering, but that all suffering can be
Speaker 1: ended completely when you've awakened to the truth. What that
Speaker 1: means is that there's no longer any anger, any sadness,
Speaker 1: any fear. That it's possible for a human being to
Speaker 1: live in a state of constant peace and happiness. And
Speaker 1: and that's a radical thing to observer or to experience.
Speaker 1: So those for truth are what actually she teaches in
Speaker 1: her own way. She never knew that there was such
Speaker 1: a thing as Buddhist teaching until I met her. Actually,
Speaker 1: So all this comes directly from the source with her
Speaker 1: and her job, as she conceives it, is to put
Speaker 1: this out to anybody who wants to listen for free
Speaker 1: on her website, so people can be as poor as
Speaker 1: they are, and if they have access to a laptop,
Speaker 1: they can learn how to practice self inquiry and the
Speaker 1: way she teaches it. That's a great response, Thank you.
Speaker 1: I want to dig a little bit deeper into that
Speaker 1: idea of suffering and the end into suffering, because different
Speaker 1: people talk about suffering differently. Some people would describe suffering
Speaker 1: as the additional layer of mental consternation that we put
Speaker 1: on top of experiences that happen, and we usually do
Speaker 1: it on top of experiences that are quote unquote painful ones. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's an accurate description. Okay, good. So your point is
Speaker 1: that it's possible to get to the point where we
Speaker 1: don't do any of that layering, and all we have
Speaker 1: is the base sort of quote unquote pain that shows
Speaker 1: up in life. Your back hurts, you feel the pain,
Speaker 1: but you're not adding to it by all the stories
Speaker 1: of why back pain is a terrible thing and what
Speaker 1: it's doing to your life, and all the fear that
Speaker 1: comes to it. Exactly so so the distinction between pain,
Speaker 1: which is a physical phenomenon, and suffering, which is always
Speaker 1: a mental phenomenon, is really important. So you can feel
Speaker 1: pain and not project it into the future or suffer
Speaker 1: because of what you're remembering, even if if your memory
Speaker 1: goes back to a nanosecond before the present instant and
Speaker 1: all suffering comes from being uh stuck in a past
Speaker 1: or an imagined future, and I'm actually an imagined past
Speaker 1: or an imagined future. If you actually, even with physical pain,
Speaker 1: Katie often says this, if you actually focus on the
Speaker 1: present moment, which doesn't exist because it's always gone as
Speaker 1: soon as you focus on it. If you if you
Speaker 1: focus on that place in between past and future, you
Speaker 1: won't be able to feel any pain because it's gone
Speaker 1: before the moment that you can feel it. So it's possible,
Speaker 1: even with physical pain, not to get caught up in
Speaker 1: physical experience. That's an awkward way of saying it, but
Speaker 1: there it is. Let's change direction here a little bit,
Speaker 1: although it's not a radical change of difference, But I
Speaker 1: would like to ask you this is just for my
Speaker 1: own curiosity. Won't listeners gonna be like, why do I care?
Speaker 1: But I'm curious. Have you ever translated or done a
Speaker 1: version of the Heart Sutra. Actually, yes, I I just
Speaker 1: did one for a friend of mine who has a
Speaker 1: small press. So it's going to come out in a
Speaker 1: very limited edition and probably won't come out in any
Speaker 1: other edition because, as you know, it's extremely short and
Speaker 1: would hardly make part of a book. So that's my answer. Yes,
Speaker 1: but it's quite recent and will be something that only
Speaker 1: very few readers will have access to. I'm gonna need
Speaker 1: to somehow get on your email list or whatever I
Speaker 1: need to do so I can get a copy that have. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll figure something out. I'll tell you. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: that I translated Shunyata, which is usually translated as emptiness,
Speaker 1: I translated it as openness. Ah. That's the main thing
Speaker 1: I was going to be curious about is for listeners
Speaker 1: who don't know. The Heart Sutra is a very short
Speaker 1: reading that is used in Zen very very much. Most
Speaker 1: Zen centers that you go to will chant the Heart
Speaker 1: Sutra at the beginning or during their chanting service, and
Speaker 1: a lot of it talks about this idea that form
Speaker 1: is emptiness and emptiness is form, and that word emptiness
Speaker 1: leaves a lot of Western minds sort of puzzle, going, well,
Speaker 1: what the heck does that mean? And so I was
Speaker 1: curious how you would translate that word. Yeah, openness has
Speaker 1: its own problems. I think the problems with emptiness are
Speaker 1: acute because usually people think of emptiness as nothing, and
Speaker 1: it's not nothing. Um. So openness maybe is a little
Speaker 1: bit more useful, because what is really talking about is
Speaker 1: the mind that doesn't get stuck in its own judgments
Speaker 1: and that doesn't believe its own thoughts. My old send
Speaker 1: master used to call it that don't know mind, which
Speaker 1: I think is a brilliant phrase because it allows us
Speaker 1: to live ourselves into it and see what the mind
Speaker 1: might be like when it doesn't attach to any of
Speaker 1: its own content, when it's completely open, completely free to um,
Speaker 1: not believe anything, simply to bathe itself in its own
Speaker 1: experience of of reality without judgment. It's a wonderful phrase,
Speaker 1: I think. I think so too, that don't know mind.
Speaker 1: The other way. I've heard the phrase emptiness translated before it,
Speaker 1: and that I think is interesting, And I'd just be
Speaker 1: curious what you think is boundlessness? Oh that's a good
Speaker 1: way to do it. Yeah, that that works as well. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: no limits, no limitations. All right, there is my overly
Speaker 1: nerdy part of this interview, and we will we will
Speaker 1: get back to other topics. But it'd be curious if
Speaker 1: you tell me a little bit about you did pretty
Speaker 1: extensive zen training. Are you still involved in that tradition
Speaker 1: or or have you sort of internalized it to the
Speaker 1: extent that you're not, you know, actively, you know, there
Speaker 1: and and doing that. I'm kind of curious your relationship
Speaker 1: to it, you know, I don't know how many years
Speaker 1: fifty years later. Maybe I was immersed in zen practice
Speaker 1: for seven years from nineteen seventy three to nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: and immersion means doing nothing else, no writing, very little
Speaker 1: reading practice ranging from four hours a day to twelve
Speaker 1: hours a day, one seven day intensive meditation period every month,
Speaker 1: and then many individual retreats, including a number of one
Speaker 1: hundred days solitary retreats where the schedule was twenty hours
Speaker 1: of meditation a day. So just to give your listeners
Speaker 1: an idea of how intensive that was, and it was
Speaker 1: very difficult of course in its own way too. Since
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty, I haven't done any formal meditation except for
Speaker 1: two many one hundred day retreats where I was sitting
Speaker 1: between midnight and three am every night for a hundred days.
Speaker 1: There were some interesting stories involved with that. But aside
Speaker 1: from that, I haven't done formal meditation since nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: and it has all been internalized. I have, after I
Speaker 1: met my wife, done um intensive work in her method
Speaker 1: of self inquiry, and that has been amazingly helpful in
Speaker 1: unearthing thoughts that I hadn't been aware of even with
Speaker 1: all that experience of zen meditation, and giving me the
Speaker 1: tools to to question them and have them unravel in
Speaker 1: amazingly short time. So so that's basically my experience. And listeners,
Speaker 1: you are hearing an awful lot about his wife Byron Katie,
Speaker 1: and we do have an interview with her. It's back
Speaker 1: in the archives. It's been a few years, but if
Speaker 1: you search for it you should be able to find it.
Speaker 1: If not, let me know, so thank you for that.
Speaker 1: Did you do co on practice as part of your
Speaker 1: zen studies? Yes, I did. Indeed, I studied with Sung
Speaker 1: San and and helped him write a book called Drop
Speaker 1: being Ashes on the Buddha, and then I studied for
Speaker 1: two and a half years in Maui with Robert Aitken
Speaker 1: Roshi and did Coan studies with both of them excellent.
Speaker 1: I am in the midst of relatively early Coan study. UM.
Speaker 1: I've been meditating for a long long time, but I'm
Speaker 1: more recently this year have made a commitment to Zen practice.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the dangers of doing a show
Speaker 1: like this, right is I talked to a different person
Speaker 1: every week, and I get all kinds of ideas, which
Speaker 1: led my personal spiritual practice to get kind of fragmented.
Speaker 1: And so I went, you know what, I want to
Speaker 1: just pick a path and for my personal spiritual practice
Speaker 1: stay there. And so Zen is what I picked. And
Speaker 1: I've been doing co on work with a teacher and
Speaker 1: it's been a very interesting experience, very different than what
Speaker 1: I've done before. I'll bet yeah. Well, the Coon experience
Speaker 1: was was really helpful for me um and helpful also
Speaker 1: professionally for for writing. It not only taught me how
Speaker 1: to get to a state of um stillness, but also
Speaker 1: and more importantly, how to hold the questioning mind without
Speaker 1: any content, which is really what what you need to
Speaker 1: do to work with collons uh. And it was devilishly
Speaker 1: difficult at first for years. It's more difficult for people
Speaker 1: like me who are it's not a question of intelligence,
Speaker 1: it's a question of intellectuality. So so I came. I
Speaker 1: started when I was a graduate student and with all
Speaker 1: sorts of ideas, and uh, it was. It was excruciating
Speaker 1: the first couple of years because there were so many
Speaker 1: thoughts going on in my mind and it was so
Speaker 1: difficult for me to experience even a short space of silence.
Speaker 1: And it was like, you know, the whole sky was
Speaker 1: covered with clouds, and maybe once in a while every
Speaker 1: few months the clouds would open a peep and the
Speaker 1: sun would shine through, and then the clouds would close
Speaker 1: right back up, and there I was again as I
Speaker 1: was at the beginning. So it really required a huge
Speaker 1: amount of patients and perseverance, but I knew this was
Speaker 1: my path and I wasn't going to let go. I
Speaker 1: felt like a bulldog who had gotten his teeth onto
Speaker 1: somebody's ankle, a postman's ankle maybe, And that was it.
Speaker 1: And so maybe just briefly, if you could explain in
Speaker 1: your words to listeners what co on work is, because
Speaker 1: they realized we just had a conversation about something that
Speaker 1: certainly some of our listeners know but some don't sure.
Speaker 1: A coon is an existential problem or question m that's
Speaker 1: meant to catapult the student into a space of questioning,
Speaker 1: total questioning, and the rational mind cannot make headway with
Speaker 1: this kind of existential question. One of the old send
Speaker 1: masters says that it's like a mosquito trying to bite
Speaker 1: into an iron bull. No way of doing it. These
Speaker 1: questions have a great variety, but one of the famous
Speaker 1: ones that's an old Japanese question, is what is the
Speaker 1: sound of one hand clapping? So if you try to
Speaker 1: figure that out, you'll be looking for quite a long time.
Speaker 1: And if you are able to get into this space
Speaker 1: of questioning and hold that for hours, for days, for weeks,
Speaker 1: for months maybe, or some people for years. I know
Speaker 1: of one zen master who worked on his first colon
Speaker 1: for nineteen or twenty years before he was able to
Speaker 1: answer it. If you're able to rest in that space
Speaker 1: of not knowing and be comfortable in it and persevere,
Speaker 1: then one day the answer will presents itself to you,
Speaker 1: possibly in a in a spectacular, joyful way. Has happened
Speaker 1: with me when I answered my initial colon, So that
Speaker 1: that's what it's like. There are all sorts of other coons,
Speaker 1: and there's a whole curriculum of colons that was devised
Speaker 1: over the years by some of the teachings and masters,
Speaker 1: But it all comes down to being able to immerse
Speaker 1: yourself in that space of active, glorious not knowing. The
Speaker 1: thing I found interesting about Cohen's is, as you say,
Speaker 1: the intellectual mind if it wants to con exhaust itself
Speaker 1: because it just there's no where to go. And I'm
Speaker 1: like you, you know, it's not so much a question.
Speaker 1: I like the way you said that, are being intelligent
Speaker 1: but having that orientation. My orientation is towards thinking, and
Speaker 1: Cohen's help do that. And the only thing I found
Speaker 1: so interesting about them is they're always talking about and
Speaker 1: this goes back to what we talked about early on.
Speaker 1: They're always talking about true undivided reality. That's where it
Speaker 1: all points back to. And even knowing that that's sort
Speaker 1: of the orientation to try and take sort of helps
Speaker 1: position the mind that way a little bit, or at
Speaker 1: least I have found that to be so. And like
Speaker 1: any really powerful spiritual practice, what is all about is
Speaker 1: the mind's relationship with its contents, and most people don't
Speaker 1: even realize that there's a difference between mind and what
Speaker 1: it thinks. One of the most important realizations for people
Speaker 1: to have, which really goes back to the Buddhist first
Speaker 1: noble truth, is something that was very elegantly put by
Speaker 1: an old Greek philosopher named Epictetus, who said, we don't
Speaker 1: suffer because of what happens to us. We suffer because
Speaker 1: of what we think about what happens to us. And
Speaker 1: that's an amazing thing to understand that that changes people's
Speaker 1: lives in an instant, right, right, I think even slightly
Speaker 1: more fundamental than that is the idea, at least it
Speaker 1: was for me that these thoughts are just thoughts. Just
Speaker 1: because it shows up in my head does not mean
Speaker 1: it's a true thing, and it doesn't mean that it's
Speaker 1: it feels like it's us, right, It's like that's the voice,
Speaker 1: and it feels like it's us. And realizing like that
Speaker 1: discursive voice that just secretes thoughts the way gland secrete
Speaker 1: their various hormones or whatever the gland does. Once that
Speaker 1: is realized, it can become a totally different relationship. This
Speaker 1: makes me think of one of the in some of
Speaker 1: the earlier Buddhist text where thinking is categorized as a
Speaker 1: sense like seeing and hearing. It's just it's just another
Speaker 1: thing that happens that receives in stimulation and processes. And
Speaker 1: realizing that we don't have to believe it is such
Speaker 1: a fund lintal step, I think for anybody on a
Speaker 1: spiritual path. Yes, yes, And that's another reason why Katie's
Speaker 1: first question is so powerful. Is it true? If you've
Speaker 1: done self inquiry long enough and deeply enough, whenever any uh,
Speaker 1: stressful thought arises in your mind, instantly along with it
Speaker 1: arises the question is it true? And it meets the thought,
Speaker 1: and the thought unravels by itself before it can cause
Speaker 1: any damage, before it can result in any action. So
Speaker 1: it's a it's a very powerful method. Indeed, let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about how you do your work, because
Speaker 1: you are a translator. But I've also heard you say that,
Speaker 1: and I can't remember which, particularly the Diamond Sutra and
Speaker 1: one of your books with Katie. You say that this
Speaker 1: is not so much a translation as an adaptation, And
Speaker 1: I think that's an interesting way of doing it. But
Speaker 1: tell me sort of your process. You've done so many
Speaker 1: different things from Buddhist works, the Bogata Vita, the old
Speaker 1: ancient Greek tales, Christian stories. I mean, you've done the
Speaker 1: breadth is amazing. Talk to me about how you get
Speaker 1: into these things and what's important to you in making
Speaker 1: a translation. Well, sure, I can take a stab at it.
Speaker 1: It's a very big question. At the beginning. I'll say
Speaker 1: that if I've fallen in love deeply enough, I may
Speaker 1: learn a language in order to read it in the original.
Speaker 1: That's what happened with Hebrew in the Book of Job
Speaker 1: and German with the poetry of Brilka, and a Greek
Speaker 1: with homer Um and some other languages. I don't learn
Speaker 1: a language for the sake of the language, but so
Speaker 1: that I can become more intimate with that consciousness that
Speaker 1: I've fallen in love with. So it's like falling in
Speaker 1: love with a woman and wanting to marry her because
Speaker 1: you want to sink into a year's long state event missy,
Speaker 1: and always go deeper deeper. So my experience of doing
Speaker 1: that with the text is very much in parallel with
Speaker 1: my experience of marriage. It's subtle, and it's um not
Speaker 1: something that you can acquire a skill for. It's something
Speaker 1: that the skill has to be discovered. But what I'm
Speaker 1: doing is not translating the meaning of words. It's that
Speaker 1: I'm translating the meaning plus the music of words. And
Speaker 1: if you don't translate music when you're translating a great
Speaker 1: poet like Lka or Homer, or a great text like
Speaker 1: um the Tao Ditching, or the or the Bug of
Speaker 1: Adgita Uh that are originally in verse, or the Book
Speaker 1: of Job, if you don't translate the music, you're you're
Speaker 1: not translating the text. Because much of the meaning of
Speaker 1: the text has to do with the concision or the
Speaker 1: joyous subtlety, or the powerful beating rhythm of the original text,
Speaker 1: and not to reproduce that in English is to to
Speaker 1: fail in your job. In my job as a translator,
Speaker 1: I think it's both and rather than either or, and
Speaker 1: that's a very tricky thing to do. Um oftense, So
Speaker 1: what I do when I'm working on a translation or
Speaker 1: an adaptation is I'll get very still. It's again, it's
Speaker 1: a meditative practice. I'll get very still and tune in
Speaker 1: stereophonically to the original language when I know it. And
Speaker 1: if I'm translating from a language I don't know, that's
Speaker 1: a different process, but not so different as you might think.
Speaker 1: But I'll have the music and meaning of the original
Speaker 1: in one ear, and in the other ear, I'll be
Speaker 1: listening for some equivalent music in English, and again talk
Speaker 1: about don't know mind. It can sometimes be a long wait,
Speaker 1: but I'm having a practice in this to know immediately
Speaker 1: when I'm hearing that music, and when I do, it's
Speaker 1: just a question of writing it down and then I
Speaker 1: can make it more subtle and powerful in later drafts.
Speaker 1: But essentially, that first hearing is where the poem or
Speaker 1: the text comes into reality for me, and it's always
Speaker 1: a gift. It's nothing I can make happen. It's nothing
Speaker 1: I can force into existence. And it's the same as
Speaker 1: with coon study. It's just a question of waiting till
Speaker 1: the answer presents itself to me in its own good time.
Speaker 1: That's wonderful, And I have about fifty questions following up
Speaker 1: on that, but I'm going to try and keep them relevant.
Speaker 1: So much of what we do here is try and
Speaker 1: make it relevant for listeners. And I think you've said
Speaker 1: before a couple of things that your allegiance is to
Speaker 1: the spirit of the text, the literal meaning, and I
Speaker 1: think that that is a great spirit that that we
Speaker 1: can all bring into how we relate with great works
Speaker 1: is what is the spirit here? Not the literal meanings.
Speaker 1: So many people get hung up on exactly what the
Speaker 1: word is, and not that there's not a time and
Speaker 1: a place for that, but but you're really going for
Speaker 1: what's the heart of this thing? Yeah, And in that work,
Speaker 1: as in I'm going to bring this up again simply
Speaker 1: because it's my experience. As in marriage, faithfulness and freedom
Speaker 1: are not opposites. You can be extremely faithful as you're
Speaker 1: being very free with the text because your allegiance is
Speaker 1: to the spirit of it, to the music of it,
Speaker 1: and not to the literal meaning. Um, although you don't
Speaker 1: want to stray too far from the literal meaning. But
Speaker 1: that freedom is something that I learned early on when
Speaker 1: I was doing my real kid translations, because I went
Speaker 1: back to real cut. Most of your readers probably have
Speaker 1: heard of of Real Care, the great German poet who
Speaker 1: many people consider the greatest poet of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: But in any case, he himself was an excellent translator,
Speaker 1: and he translated some of the great works of one
Speaker 1: of the other master poets of the twentieth century a
Speaker 1: French poet named Paul Valerie, and he translated these poems
Speaker 1: in a stunningly beautiful way where he was on a
Speaker 1: very long leash. He made a very long leash for himself,
Speaker 1: and and strayed out into the not literal with with
Speaker 1: great abandon And yet it all sounded like the original poem,
Speaker 1: and it said exactly the same thing, though in a
Speaker 1: different way. So I learned from real care to trust
Speaker 1: that instinct of what feels right, and to know that
Speaker 1: that kind of freedom was a higher faithfulness than the literal,
Speaker 1: constricted sense of it. And you know, this really is
Speaker 1: a very practical application of the word that you mentioned before, boundlessness.
Speaker 1: You can't give readers that sense of boundlessness if you're
Speaker 1: afraid of being unfaithful to the poet, or transgressing the
Speaker 1: strict limits of literality, etcetera, etcetera. It's something that you
Speaker 1: come to and then realize that your faithfulness is the
Speaker 1: same thing as that boundlessness. That's great. When you say
Speaker 1: you learn a language in order to do the translation,
Speaker 1: I assume you learn that language in a different way
Speaker 1: than somebody who is trying to learn a language. To
Speaker 1: be fully fluent in it or speaking there's a different
Speaker 1: way you go about You're not going and getting uh.
Speaker 1: I can't even think of what the most popular uh,
Speaker 1: you know, learning new language apps are. But but you're
Speaker 1: going about it in a different way. Yeah. For example,
Speaker 1: I can't order breakfast in German. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know the with all my German don't know these basic words,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm often baffled by regular conversation because the
Speaker 1: German that I learned was real kiss German, which is
Speaker 1: very peculiar and beautiful and um sometimes esoteric and eliteis etcetera.
Speaker 1: And that's that's what I learned. So it's a kind
Speaker 1: of subdialect of German, you might say. And the same
Speaker 1: with the the Hebrew of Job. I never learned modern
Speaker 1: Hebrew and the Hebrew of Job. I used to compare
Speaker 1: when people asked me about it, how how it was
Speaker 1: to learn Hebrew through working with Job. I would sometimes say,
Speaker 1: not entirely facetiously, that it's like learning English by reading
Speaker 1: Finnigan's Wake. Yeah, so it's not your standard English, right right, Well,
Speaker 1: that is a good place for us to wrap up.
Speaker 1: You and I are gonna in the post show conversation,
Speaker 1: do a little bit of talking about your new book,
Speaker 1: which we didn't even get to. Oh, yes, we need
Speaker 1: to get to Joseph and the way of forgiveness. Yes,
Speaker 1: so we're going to talk about Joseph. And I could
Speaker 1: tell Joseph loves what is. Let's put it that way.
Speaker 1: And that's part of what I think draws you to
Speaker 1: that story, is your idea of loving what is. So
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that in the post show listeners. You
Speaker 1: can get post show conversations, extra mini episodes, ad free episodes,
Speaker 1: all that stuff at one you Feed, dot net, slash join,
Speaker 1: and you also get the pleasure of supporting this show.
Speaker 1: So Steven, thank you so much for coming on. It's
Speaker 1: been a real pleasure talking with you, pleasure for me
Speaker 1: to thank you. You're welcome. If what you just heard
Speaker 1: was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to
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