Speaker 1: Jesus and Buddha. You just don't see any humor there,
Speaker 1: And I wonder if that was edited out. I hope so.
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 think,
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Our guest today is Roland Marulo, author of nine novels,
Speaker 1: including Breakfast with Buddha, Lunch with Buddha, A Little Love Story,
Speaker 1: and American Savior. Marulo's nonfiction writing includes Revere Beach Elegy,
Speaker 1: a memoir that won the two thousand Massachusetts Book Award
Speaker 1: for Nonfiction. He also wrote the travel book The Italian Summer.
Speaker 1: His essays have appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek,
Speaker 1: Reader's Digest, and many others. At various points in his life,
Speaker 1: Roland has worked in a parking garage, worked for the
Speaker 1: United States Information Agency in the former Soviet Union, served
Speaker 1: in the Peace Corps in Micronesia, worked as a carpenter,
Speaker 1: and taught creative writing and literature at the Bennington and
Speaker 1: Amherst Colleges. Here's the interview. I believe we're all doing
Speaker 1: the best we can in our lives with the abilities
Speaker 1: that we have and the things that we know. But
Speaker 1: sometimes getting some new methods or getting some accountability and
Speaker 1: support can really help us and feeding our good wolf
Speaker 1: and moving our lives forward. If this is something you're
Speaker 1: interested in learning more about some of the programs that
Speaker 1: we're offering, send an email to Eric at one you
Speaker 1: feed dot net. Thanks Hi, Roland, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us this evening, and I
Speaker 1: would like to start rolling by going through the parable
Speaker 1: like we always do. There's a grandfather is talking with
Speaker 1: his grandson and he says, in life, there are two
Speaker 1: wolves inside of us. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, and he looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather and he says, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. I love the parable and and I
Speaker 1: have very strong feelings about what it means for me.
Speaker 1: What it means for me really comes down to our thoughts.
Speaker 1: And I feel like everybody who's ever lived has good
Speaker 1: thoughts and bad thoughts. And the good thoughts are kind, generous, giving,
Speaker 1: considered of other people, and the bad thoughts are hateful,
Speaker 1: device of violent, and sometimes those thoughts the negative thoughts
Speaker 1: can be about ourselves. I think often so many people
Speaker 1: they are. And the whole struggle of life to me
Speaker 1: comes down to how you deal with those thoughts you have.
Speaker 1: I know I'll speak for myself. I have them, and
Speaker 1: the trick is to ignore them, not indulge them, just
Speaker 1: let them pass by and and stove them to use
Speaker 1: the terms of your parable and see the good thoughts
Speaker 1: and say, okay, I could be kind to this person,
Speaker 1: I could be unkind I could do something helpful to
Speaker 1: the world. That I could do something greedy and destructive,
Speaker 1: and though that all begins with thoughts. And in the
Speaker 1: room where I work, which is in my house, which
Speaker 1: is a room I built myself. Um. One of the
Speaker 1: things I keep up on the wall is a Buddhist sutra,
Speaker 1: and it says, I'll just read the first line or two.
Speaker 1: All that we are is the result of what we
Speaker 1: have thought. That is founded on our thoughts. It is
Speaker 1: made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks her
Speaker 1: acts with an evil thought, pain follows him as the
Speaker 1: wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage,
Speaker 1: and that's the bad wolf. To me, Um, that's those
Speaker 1: kinds of thoughts. Indulging and feeding them, just it just
Speaker 1: changes the direction of a life. I think, well, you
Speaker 1: just read. When I read it was one of the
Speaker 1: most striking things to me that I thought I had
Speaker 1: ever read. I was like, Wow, you sent me several
Speaker 1: books and I read. I read two of them completely. Um.
Speaker 1: Breakfast with Buddha and with Buddha, which I liked a
Speaker 1: great deal, So, um, thank you for sending those over
Speaker 1: and and really really enjoyable reading. I love when I
Speaker 1: can be sort of inspired, educated, and entertained all in
Speaker 1: one fell swoop, so very nice. Well, thank you, thanks
Speaker 1: for reading them. So one of the things that goes
Speaker 1: on in UM breakfast with Buddha and lunch with Buddhas,
Speaker 1: there's there's a there's a your your protagonist is on
Speaker 1: sort of a spiritual journey. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that I think is interesting there. And I've heard you
Speaker 1: say before, you talk about that the big questions are
Speaker 1: so big and they can be so serious that humor
Speaker 1: helps a lot with those. And I often say that
Speaker 1: I think humor is a is an underappreciated spiritual virtue.
Speaker 1: So I'm just interested in humor in your process and
Speaker 1: in your writing. Well, it took me a while to
Speaker 1: come to humor. I've always been considered a funny person
Speaker 1: in person, sometimes in the best sense of the if,
Speaker 1: sometimes maybe not so good. But um, in my books.
Speaker 1: It took me probably ten books before I allowed myself
Speaker 1: to try to be funny. UM in more than you know,
Speaker 1: one or two sentences in a novel. And I think
Speaker 1: the reason I did that was because I turned more
Speaker 1: directly at that same point to what might be called
Speaker 1: spiritual material. I really don't like that word. It's it's
Speaker 1: a little bit divisive. I think um and and my
Speaker 1: meaning of it is pretty broad. But when I started
Speaker 1: to talk about the big questions directly in books, I
Speaker 1: felt like, given the fact that I'm not ordained, I'm
Speaker 1: not a monk, I'm not a priest, I don't have
Speaker 1: a degree in religious studies of philosophy, I wasn't going
Speaker 1: to write a serious book. And those subjects can really
Speaker 1: divide people. And and you can sound like you're trying
Speaker 1: to preach, you can sound uppity and siguria, you can
Speaker 1: you sound like you're trying to convince people to believe
Speaker 1: what you leave. And I am none of those things
Speaker 1: in person. So I did not want to come off
Speaker 1: that way in my books. I tried to make them
Speaker 1: funny and in that way soften undercut the heaviness of
Speaker 1: the material. Yeah, humor is such an interesting line to walk,
Speaker 1: and you're right those Well, the first thing I'll say
Speaker 1: is you didn't come off as preachy or any of
Speaker 1: those things in the book. Which is what I enjoyed
Speaker 1: so much. You said that spiritual is a word that
Speaker 1: you don't like a lot, and I also wrestle with it.
Speaker 1: I'm curious if you could tell me how would you
Speaker 1: define that word. I guess non material in the sense
Speaker 1: that you know, I know, speaking for myself, and I
Speaker 1: think so many of us, we spent so much time
Speaker 1: worrying about just staying alive and just feeding our pleasure
Speaker 1: center and eating and keeping the house warm or cool
Speaker 1: as the case may be, tending to our health, paying
Speaker 1: our bills. There's nothing, of course, there's nothing at all
Speaker 1: wrong with any of that, but it tends to keep
Speaker 1: us locked in a certain dimension. And I think I
Speaker 1: think I would say that spiritual is what is outside that.
Speaker 1: So the other part of being alive, the mystery of
Speaker 1: being alive, that the what am I doing here part
Speaker 1: of being alive to me is is where I would
Speaker 1: where I would put the word spiritual. But the word
Speaker 1: spiritual for people who are not actively religious, uh, sometimes
Speaker 1: is a real turn off. Yeah, it can be. I
Speaker 1: like that definition a lot. I think the one that
Speaker 1: my working definition is just pretty much what you said.
Speaker 1: The it's at least the recognition that there's an internal
Speaker 1: life to us that is helpful to pay attention to.
Speaker 1: That's a good way to think of it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think a lot and write a lot about the interior,
Speaker 1: what I call the interial life. And I remember reading
Speaker 1: Thomas Martin when I was in my twenties and he
Speaker 1: used that term the interior life. And it was the
Speaker 1: first time, either the first time I had read it
Speaker 1: or the first time I had really thought about it,
Speaker 1: but it made a huge impression on me, and I
Speaker 1: remember thinking, Oh, that's what's going that's the word for that,
Speaker 1: this place where I spent so much of my time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is a great phrase for it. So one of
Speaker 1: the things I'm curious about that we explore on this
Speaker 1: show a lot, and I'd be interested in your thoughts
Speaker 1: on it is the idea of so we've got we've
Speaker 1: got thoughts, and we can sort of direct those thoughts
Speaker 1: one way or the other, and then we have emotions
Speaker 1: would sort of tend to come. And I'm always interested
Speaker 1: in walking that line between not repressing what we feel,
Speaker 1: not being in denial about what's going on, so feeling
Speaker 1: our feelings to some degree, but also focusing on positive
Speaker 1: action and positive thought, and I think that's such a
Speaker 1: can be such a tight rope to walk. I'd be
Speaker 1: interested in your thoughts. Yeah, I agree. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I think I have a weird habit. I drive a lot,
Speaker 1: and I have a weird habit if I'm on the
Speaker 1: road late at night, coming home from a reading or something,
Speaker 1: of turning on the radio and getting these preachers religious
Speaker 1: talk shows from all across the country, and some of
Speaker 1: them just sounds so fake to me, so somber and
Speaker 1: superior and fake. And I think I think maybe that's
Speaker 1: because their their emotions that got deadened, you know, I
Speaker 1: think the I think part of what happens when you
Speaker 1: get in touch with your thoughts is that you really
Speaker 1: get in touch with what you feel. It doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you express everything you feel, you know, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's um. Anger, for example, is an issue for me,
Speaker 1: and UM it has always been. I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: a miserably angry, violent person, but I can't get really
Speaker 1: angry quickly. And my kids have pointed that out to me,
Speaker 1: and I've worked really hard to stop indulging that. And
Speaker 1: it begins with the thought. And I've had a meditation
Speaker 1: practice the thirty is and you know, no enlightenment, no
Speaker 1: visions of God, but it does. It has really helped
Speaker 1: me in my ordinary life because it's enabled me to
Speaker 1: see things before they grow into emotions. So something will irritate,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll be in a certain mood and I'll
Speaker 1: notice the pattern of my thoughts and then if something happens,
Speaker 1: or if one of my daughters does something that will
Speaker 1: just that will act as a trigger. But if I
Speaker 1: have seen the pattern of thought beforehand, then that triggers.
Speaker 1: It's either nullified completely or it's really weakened. And um,
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly where the dividing line is, but
Speaker 1: my suspicion is that the emotions have deep roots and
Speaker 1: thought in the patterns of our thought. That's one thing
Speaker 1: I'm always fascinated about is which which proceeds which right?
Speaker 1: And I think that I don't think there's an answer.
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of like the chicken that crossed
Speaker 1: the road question, um or essentially not the chicken that
Speaker 1: cross the road. It's a chicken or chicken or question.
Speaker 1: But that am I am? I feeling something because the
Speaker 1: way I think about a certain situation or vice versa
Speaker 1: and I'm really interested in the way that action, thought,
Speaker 1: and emotion can all influence each other. It's like there's
Speaker 1: some there's a relationship between all three, and you can
Speaker 1: you can move the lever on any one of them
Speaker 1: and have some ability to affect the other two. You can,
Speaker 1: for sure, I guess. I guess the place that I've
Speaker 1: settled in that question is that the thoughts come first
Speaker 1: the workings, and sometimes they're so deeply buried, they're so reflexive,
Speaker 1: they're so habitual, that that we can't see them. I
Speaker 1: really believe that there's layers upon layers of thought or
Speaker 1: mental activity that I cannot see. I'm just not in
Speaker 1: touch with yet. Um, But I do feel like the emotion,
Speaker 1: the emotion is a tree then the roots that they
Speaker 1: go deep, deep down into the into the layer of thought.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, I'm not saying I know, that's just
Speaker 1: that's just what I believe at this point. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about that idea of everything being conditioned, the
Speaker 1: idea that whatever thought or whatever is happening to me
Speaker 1: right now is the result of so many different conditions
Speaker 1: that happened, and so many habitual reactions, and and just
Speaker 1: starting too and I agree with you. I think that
Speaker 1: the benefit of meditation for me is that I can
Speaker 1: at least start to question some of those and maybe think, huh,
Speaker 1: maybe that's not reality. Maybe that's just my perception of
Speaker 1: it based on exactly, like you said, all these things
Speaker 1: that I can't even begin to fathom exactly. And I
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, people throw the word enlightenment around
Speaker 1: and they talk about Buddha and Jesus and Muhammed and
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth. My suspicion is that
Speaker 1: they they were in touch with their thoughts at a
Speaker 1: much deeper level than I am. And I feel like
Speaker 1: if I just looked back ten years in my own life,
Speaker 1: I feel like now I'm much more in touch has
Speaker 1: gone down to a to what I think of as
Speaker 1: a lower level or more hidden level of my thoughts
Speaker 1: and brought them into the light. And I feel like
Speaker 1: that process just goes on and on and on and on,
Speaker 1: and eventually you get someplace that's extremely special and different
Speaker 1: and I'm not even close to but I really do
Speaker 1: believe that that's the point of being alive, that the
Speaker 1: things that happened to us make us aware of thoughts
Speaker 1: at different I feel sometimes I liken it to a
Speaker 1: big dictionary, you know, the old fashioned webs the dictionary,
Speaker 1: and you turn a page and you learn something else
Speaker 1: about yourself while you see something else. But there's another
Speaker 1: five thousand pages that you can spend. It certainly seems
Speaker 1: that way. At least. I don't feel like I'm anywhere
Speaker 1: near uh in norder. I think I ever will be
Speaker 1: continuing to uncover those those deeper levels, which is which
Speaker 1: is fun. Yeah, most of the time, I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, people say the universe is expanding, I feel
Speaker 1: like you never catch up to God. You know, you
Speaker 1: go or the divine intelligence is what the Buddhists call
Speaker 1: it instead of using the word God. But you know
Speaker 1: you you get clearer and clearer and deeper and maybe
Speaker 1: better and kind of what you just keep going and going.
Speaker 1: It never ends you just as an unlimited amount of
Speaker 1: space for you to improve into. One of the things
Speaker 1: that you said when you were you were referencing Breakfast
Speaker 1: with Buddha and Lunch with Buddha was that you were
Speaker 1: trying to counter what you called an excessively materialistic view
Speaker 1: that we hold in Western society, and you were talking
Speaker 1: about it not in the way we normally think about it,
Speaker 1: like I want to accumulate a lot of things, but
Speaker 1: about a view that really, um really that if I
Speaker 1: can't see it, feel it, touch it, it doesn't exist view.
Speaker 1: Can you expound on that a little bit? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think for me that's been the contribution of Eastern mysticism,
Speaker 1: Eastern religions, Eastern writing is that. And I'm speaking in
Speaker 1: gross general generalizations here. But if you take Tibet for
Speaker 1: one example, um, or you could take Native Americans for
Speaker 1: another example, those are coaches that we would say are undeveloped,
Speaker 1: to use the word that's not politically correct, um. They
Speaker 1: don't have the roads that we have. In the case
Speaker 1: of American Indians, they didn't have the roads, They didn't
Speaker 1: have the kinds of sophisticated medical procedures that we have.
Speaker 1: They certainly didn't don't have the kind of weapons that
Speaker 1: we have, other architecture that we have, but they had
Speaker 1: something else going on that we really don't pay attention to.
Speaker 1: And that's the non material I think that's where I
Speaker 1: use that word that they they went to places in
Speaker 1: the interior world that we don't even know exists. We
Speaker 1: don't you know, we don't as a culture, as a society,
Speaker 1: don't give much credit to We don't really even think
Speaker 1: it matters. You know, people talk about meditation as naval gazing.
Speaker 1: You know that's that's a really revealing comment because it
Speaker 1: completely diminishes it. Or you're just wasting time, you know,
Speaker 1: looking into yourself. That's the Western mentality. And I have
Speaker 1: this idea, which I'm writing about a little bit now,
Speaker 1: that maybe someday those two, those two philosophies will come together,
Speaker 1: those two ways of life. So instead of you know,
Speaker 1: the the Europeans crushing the Native Americans um or the
Speaker 1: Chinese crushing the Tibetans, maybe we could say, okay, look,
Speaker 1: we know how to replace the hip. We know how
Speaker 1: to develop these very sophisticated medications to fight disease. We
Speaker 1: know how to build, you know, hundred story buildings and
Speaker 1: fly planes around the world. But you know how to
Speaker 1: do this thing that we don't. And maybe we could
Speaker 1: learn from you and you could learn from us. That's
Speaker 1: my very idealistic dream for the future. Do you think
Speaker 1: we're moving in that direction? Some days? I do. I
Speaker 1: mean I don't think. I'm not sure that progress exists
Speaker 1: in the human realm. I wish, I wish I believe that,
Speaker 1: but it just seems to me that for for every
Speaker 1: new disease we can conquer, we have a new kind
Speaker 1: of weapon. You know this. There was war and torture
Speaker 1: two thousand years ago, and there's war and torture now.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would like to think it's getting better,
Speaker 1: but I really what I really think is that individual
Speaker 1: spirits move through that. In other words, we go from
Speaker 1: a cruder place to a finer place as individual souls,
Speaker 1: and eventually we go on to someplace else. Um. But
Speaker 1: but the earth itself, I'm not sure that that dimension
Speaker 1: of life really really gets better. To use a to
Speaker 1: use a judgmental term, I just don't see it. Do
Speaker 1: you see it? Yeah? I do. I think my general
Speaker 1: feeling is that, yes, I agree that I think there's
Speaker 1: I think we're human and so some degree the human
Speaker 1: condition is going to exist, and all those bad things
Speaker 1: that you mentioned will exist. But it feels to me
Speaker 1: like even if you just look at, you know, being
Speaker 1: here in this country, the thing the progression we've had
Speaker 1: as far as you know, civil rights or or gay rights,
Speaker 1: or it's the sort of when torture happens now, it
Speaker 1: seems like it's the sort of thing that that most
Speaker 1: people call out as a concern globally worldwide, and I don't.
Speaker 1: I guess I wasn't around two thousand years ago, but
Speaker 1: life just seemed like, it seems to me like that
Speaker 1: was those things were a lot more common and accepted.
Speaker 1: But I'm also aware that I may have rose colored
Speaker 1: glasses on in that one, but that tends to be
Speaker 1: how I feel. But maybe it's maybe I'm feeling that
Speaker 1: as a result of, like you said, my own spirit
Speaker 1: moving in a certain direction. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think one of the great one of the things
Speaker 1: I love about theo Zen Monks is when they asked,
Speaker 1: you know what happens after you die? They say, I
Speaker 1: don't know. That's the perfect answer to me, you know,
Speaker 1: because Billy, we don't know. And I think I think
Speaker 1: we have to have a philosophy that we live by.
Speaker 1: I think everybody has a religion. Everybody if you define
Speaker 1: religion as a as a as a philosophy about life,
Speaker 1: why we here, what we should do, what happens to us?
Speaker 1: And it's helpful for me. I have my own belief system,
Speaker 1: which is a hybrid system but um, I think it
Speaker 1: helps us to live, That helps us not to be
Speaker 1: completely paralyzed by the mystery and the and the impossible
Speaker 1: puzzle of being alive. But at the end of that,
Speaker 1: I have my model. I have my I think the
Speaker 1: world works this way. But at the end of ends,
Speaker 1: as the Russians say in the final analysis, I say,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm with you on that. I think
Speaker 1: that sometimes seems like the only reasonable answer to me, Like,
Speaker 1: who knows. It's interesting to think about, but it's fascinating topic.
Speaker 1: But I don't I don't feel like some of those questions. Certainly,
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I'll ever know. So you talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about meditation that you've had a had
Speaker 1: a daily meditation practice for a long time, and you
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about the benefits. Could you maybe
Speaker 1: share a little bit about what that meditation practice is,
Speaker 1: maybe more like the method that you use. I'm just
Speaker 1: it's a topic I'm interested in. I know our listeners
Speaker 1: are interested in. Also, sure. Yeah, I should preface it
Speaker 1: by saying I was raised a devout Catholic and for
Speaker 1: the last thirty or forty years have been really reading
Speaker 1: across the religious spectrum. It's a real hobby. It's a
Speaker 1: passion for me and not just a religious spectrum. I
Speaker 1: read a lot of psychology also. But so my own
Speaker 1: practice is a is a very strange hybrid. I think
Speaker 1: because I sit in a chair and comfortably, and sometimes
Speaker 1: I keep my eyes open, sometimes I close them and
Speaker 1: I say a Hail Mary um, and I say an
Speaker 1: our Father slowly, and then I do this, really, what's
Speaker 1: really a Buddhist meditation? Some uh Sometimes from the Hail
Speaker 1: Mary and our Father, I do tungling, which is a
Speaker 1: Tibetan meditation. It's called the prayer of giving and taking.
Speaker 1: So if you're thinking, so, let's say it's it's a
Speaker 1: birthday of someone I love or care about it. Let's
Speaker 1: say a friend of mine's wife has cancer. Let's say
Speaker 1: it's the day on which my father died, or my
Speaker 1: grandfather or grandmother died. I'll think of that person and
Speaker 1: I'll breathe in and take all the negativity, take their pain, distress,
Speaker 1: discompasite here, whatever dimension of life they might be living
Speaker 1: a dead I'll take that upon myself. On the inbreath
Speaker 1: and on the outbreath, I will be out to them, love, happiness, peace, contentment, safety,
Speaker 1: and so on. And you can do it for yourself.
Speaker 1: I mean, if I'm having a particularly bad morning for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, sometimes I'll do that for myself. Or if
Speaker 1: I know that, you know, I have to go through
Speaker 1: something difficult that day, so I'll do that for a
Speaker 1: little while, no set time, and then I'll do really
Speaker 1: what's closest to a joke chin, which is another Tibetan
Speaker 1: Buddhist meditation, which is like then it's um. There's no
Speaker 1: mental gymnastics involved. You just sit quietly and pay attention
Speaker 1: to your thoughts and you try to have one thing
Speaker 1: that you come back to. So that thing, that anchor
Speaker 1: can be your breath, it can be your entire body.
Speaker 1: It can be a word like a mantra. It can
Speaker 1: be an image, it can be a thought of that
Speaker 1: particular person you're praying for him that day. But it's
Speaker 1: not rigorous in that sense. You don't force yourself to
Speaker 1: come back and say a mantra every thirty seconds or something.
Speaker 1: You don't count your breath. You just pay attention to
Speaker 1: your mind and your mind will wander, it'll it'll latch
Speaker 1: onto you know, I have to pay the electric bill.
Speaker 1: Why Did I forget to pay the electric bill? G
Speaker 1: Do I have enough stamps? The snow on the road?
Speaker 1: Can I drive down to the post office? And so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. And then at some point you
Speaker 1: catch yourself and you say, oh, wait a second, let
Speaker 1: me come back to my breath. And that's it. I
Speaker 1: just do that, and I set a time or usually
Speaker 1: thirty minutes, sometimes forty five minutes once in a while
Speaker 1: during an hour, um, and I'll just do that endlessly,
Speaker 1: and at the end, I'll say in Olmney Buddhist prayer
Speaker 1: and you know, open my eyes. I'll stand up, stretch
Speaker 1: a little bit, and go about my business. And I
Speaker 1: missed some days, but i'd say not say I averagely
Speaker 1: six five or six days a week for the last
Speaker 1: twenty five years. Yeah, that's a great it's a great practice.
Speaker 1: I've been meditating on and off for a long time,
Speaker 1: but it's really been the last year and a half
Speaker 1: or so that I got really committed to the very
Speaker 1: daily practice. And for me, it's been good to just
Speaker 1: sort of be like every day without exception that that
Speaker 1: helps me stay on target a little bit better. It's
Speaker 1: so healing to me. I really feel it saved my life.
Speaker 1: I really do certainly saved. My sanity helps me and
Speaker 1: my work helps me tremendously as a as a father,
Speaker 1: and um, it's just the most wonderful thing. I can't
Speaker 1: I'm so so happy that I that just came into
Speaker 1: my life, and I don't think I'd ever let it go.
Speaker 1: So you describe in the past having wrestled with depression,
Speaker 1: and I think I've heard you say that you think
Speaker 1: that meditation has really mostly helped you overcome that as
Speaker 1: am I am I recalling that correctly, Yes you are.
Speaker 1: So what about meditation do you think worked on your
Speaker 1: depression or what was going on in your depression that
Speaker 1: allowed it to be helped by meditation? To take that
Speaker 1: either way, I guess I was. You know, It's it's
Speaker 1: funny when I look back into high school and college
Speaker 1: and the years just after college, I really was almost bipolar.
Speaker 1: I mean I had I had my best friend that's
Speaker 1: had in my life since died had terrible bipolar disease.
Speaker 1: So I'm not I wasn't at that level, I don't think,
Speaker 1: but really, you know, i'd be up, up, up and
Speaker 1: happy and outgoing like a politician on the stump for
Speaker 1: two or three days and then I just sink down
Speaker 1: into the most the dark ist, dreariest negative place where
Speaker 1: I didn't want to see people, nothing good was ever
Speaker 1: going to happen. And you know, it wasn't like I
Speaker 1: was tormented by that every day, but it was definitely there.
Speaker 1: And um in in my twenties and thirties, I started
Speaker 1: to keep notes about I called it hell notes. When
Speaker 1: I when I was in a really bad depression, I
Speaker 1: would force myself to get out my notebook and write
Speaker 1: a paragraph about why I felt that way, where I
Speaker 1: thought it it began. And what happened with the meditation
Speaker 1: and those that note taking, that journaling was that I
Speaker 1: began to to see the depression much much earlier than
Speaker 1: I was able to see it much before, long before
Speaker 1: it took over my my mental state. I could see
Speaker 1: the beginnings of it. I could see a certain pattern
Speaker 1: of thoughts, and I could say to myself, Okay, look
Speaker 1: that's happened, that's beginning to happen. That's just the thought.
Speaker 1: It's not reality, and that's purely and simply came for meditation.
Speaker 1: And once I got to that point, the you know,
Speaker 1: I still have little ups and downs, but it's nothing
Speaker 1: compared to what it used to be. I mean, really nothing,
Speaker 1: And I credit that completely to meditation, and that's been
Speaker 1: so healing for me. And I mean and my late
Speaker 1: friend I began to teach in meditation and he immediately
Speaker 1: were very quickly was able to reduce his um he's
Speaker 1: taking with him, which is a typical drug for bipolar illness.
Speaker 1: So I think, you know, I don't know that it
Speaker 1: would work for everyone, but I know that it worked
Speaker 1: for me, and I really depression is not even an
Speaker 1: issue in my life anymore at all. That's great news
Speaker 1: for you, certainly, that that that work. I've found that
Speaker 1: meditation has been helpful, but I don't know, And again
Speaker 1: maybe I just haven't been doing it long enough consistently
Speaker 1: enough that it's been sort of that level of transformative
Speaker 1: for me. Yet. I think I'm probably twice as old
Speaker 1: as you are. I don't know. I don't know about that,
Speaker 1: but you might have a few years out of that.
Speaker 1: You know, if you've been meditating regularly for thirty years,
Speaker 1: you've certainly got you got a lot of hours long
Speaker 1: that I don't yet for sure. You write a lot,
Speaker 1: and you describe your writing as a vehicle of hope.
Speaker 1: What does that mean to you? And how do you
Speaker 1: make that happen? And why is that important to you?
Speaker 1: I guess I know I've heard you talk about positive thinking,
Speaker 1: and I feel the same way that you do about
Speaker 1: positive thinking. I don't I don't completely buy the idea
Speaker 1: that if I if I think every day that I'm
Speaker 1: going to hit the lottery, I will hit the lottery. Um.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, to go back to what
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier, that you know, the good
Speaker 1: wolf and the bad wolf, you can you can seed
Speaker 1: certain kinds of ideas that are more positive than others,
Speaker 1: and you can, Um. I think we're kind of digital.
Speaker 1: I guess binary that that at every moment of life,
Speaker 1: we could go this way or that way. You know,
Speaker 1: we could we could embrace this kind of thought of
Speaker 1: that we could make this decision or not this that decision.
Speaker 1: You know, if if I'm an addict at any given moment,
Speaker 1: I can say I can choose to to pick up
Speaker 1: the bottle I'm not, I can choose to pick up
Speaker 1: the cigarette or not. I can choose to do drugs
Speaker 1: I'm not, or whatever the addiction might be. And then
Speaker 1: once you make that choice. Then then there's a there's
Speaker 1: another binary choice in another minute. You know, I can
Speaker 1: choose to yell at my wife or not. I can
Speaker 1: choose to laugh at something that bothers me or not.
Speaker 1: And once you make that choice in a good direction,
Speaker 1: I think it leads you to I don't want to
Speaker 1: sound pollyanna Ish because I'm really not that way, but
Speaker 1: I think it does lead you to a more hopeful
Speaker 1: place in life. And I think that's where I go
Speaker 1: with my writing. I have written some books that are
Speaker 1: really dark. I mean, The tox Funny Girl is a
Speaker 1: It's about a badly abused girl in New Hampshire, and
Speaker 1: I have some violence, especially in its well in certain
Speaker 1: books are not in Breakfast with Boodh and Lunch with Booda.
Speaker 1: But it's not that I denied the darkness in the
Speaker 1: world at all. But I really I have hope. I try,
Speaker 1: I try to I try to go toward the good.
Speaker 1: I tried to see the generosity and people. I was
Speaker 1: brought up by some really extraordinary people in my My
Speaker 1: father and mother both came from huge families. I have
Speaker 1: like forty first cousins and something. Many of those people
Speaker 1: were almost unbelievably warm and generous. I mean, and they
Speaker 1: had lives that were difficult, but that planted some seed
Speaker 1: of possibility in me. That made me think, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't have to be crabby, I don't have to
Speaker 1: be frazzled, you know what the difficulties I face in life.
Speaker 1: And I've had a lot of difficulties. I've had a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of physical pain, but I still find I
Speaker 1: still somehow reach for the good or the hopeful. And
Speaker 1: I think they think a lot of that is in
Speaker 1: my books. Yeah. You you say somewhere that some people
Speaker 1: indulge their pain and pass it on, some fight it
Speaker 1: to a draw, and some people transcend. My goal reflected
Speaker 1: in many of my characters is to transcend. And I really,
Speaker 1: I really liked that. When I read that, that really
Speaker 1: hit me. It's um And in that same book, to
Speaker 1: Talk to the Girl, this the girl is tremendously abused, weirdly,
Speaker 1: terribly abused as a child, and with the help of
Speaker 1: a couple of real angels in her life, she she
Speaker 1: gets out of that situation. And then it becomes years
Speaker 1: later apparent and she knows that some of that scouring
Speaker 1: still is still in her and she feels the tendency
Speaker 1: to pass that onto her children in certain ways, you know,
Speaker 1: to get angry, to yelled to her, and that she
Speaker 1: feels like that's her work in life, is not to
Speaker 1: pass that on. And I feel that way too. You know,
Speaker 1: whatever hardships I had as a kid, in addition to
Speaker 1: the great stuff I had, I feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: the purpose of my life is to dilute that, to
Speaker 1: weed that out, to not pass that on to people.
Speaker 1: And it's not easy, you know, I struggle with it.
Speaker 1: I mean it's you know, if I have something pain someday,
Speaker 1: I have a backstasm or whatever, I'm worried about something,
Speaker 1: and you know, you go into the post office, it's
Speaker 1: hard to say, hey, how are you doing, good morning.
Speaker 1: You know, if somebody cut you off in traffic, it's
Speaker 1: hard not to give them a finger and lean on
Speaker 1: the on And I don't always succeed, but I try. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like that, that idea of not passing on our pain,
Speaker 1: stopping the I've heard it referred to us, or at
Speaker 1: least in a familial sense, stopping the cycle or breaking
Speaker 1: the cycle. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean I think it's some
Speaker 1: amazing figure like half more of the people in prison
Speaker 1: used as children. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah. So another thing
Speaker 1: that I've heard you refer to is the Biblical idea
Speaker 1: of false gods. That's something that's something that you It
Speaker 1: isn't a concept that helps you think about things. Can
Speaker 1: you explain what you mean by that? Yeah? Um, again,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's me taking my Catholic upbringing and
Speaker 1: reinterpreting it a little bit. And one good thing. One
Speaker 1: of the good things about that upbringing was that I
Speaker 1: listen to stories from the Bible every Sunday, and I
Speaker 1: think that was a wonderful education. And I'm familiar with
Speaker 1: that idea of you know, having false gods. I shall
Speaker 1: not have false gods and so on, and I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different kinds of false gods that
Speaker 1: we can have. You know, money is clearly one, physical
Speaker 1: appearance is clearly one. Power is clearly one. The intellect
Speaker 1: is a subtle, sneaky one. I used to teach in college.
Speaker 1: I haven't done that in years, but um, and many
Speaker 1: of my friends are academics. But I did notice, um
Speaker 1: that sometimes there would be people in the academic world
Speaker 1: who are really really intelligent people but they make what
Speaker 1: I would call a false god of their intelligence, and
Speaker 1: that becomes the most important thing. That's what they look
Speaker 1: for in other people. Are you intelligent like I am?
Speaker 1: And that's that's a false god? You know, I don't.
Speaker 1: I think it's good to be intelligent. You know. I
Speaker 1: want my kids to be educated. I have a great
Speaker 1: education myself, but I don't put it in first place,
Speaker 1: and UM, and I don't put money in first place,
Speaker 1: and I don't put you know, status in first place,
Speaker 1: or at least I try not to put those things there.
Speaker 1: I try to see the whole human being. And I
Speaker 1: guess that's what that's what the false god idea means
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah, I like that idea. I'm a fan
Speaker 1: of UM Stephen Covey's work, and he has an idea
Speaker 1: of what do we hold as our center? And some
Speaker 1: people are money centered, some people are spouse nerds, some
Speaker 1: people are family centered. But that all those UM can have,
Speaker 1: Not that there's anything wrong with any of those things
Speaker 1: being important, but if they become your center or in
Speaker 1: your you know, in the terminology Reaeson, here your your god,
Speaker 1: that your life gets out of balance, and that that
Speaker 1: a center that's based on on principles. Is a center
Speaker 1: that holds a lot more will will hold a lot
Speaker 1: more strongly. Yeah, that absolutely makes sense to me. And
Speaker 1: you can see it. I mean you can see you know,
Speaker 1: you see people who have hun billion dollars trying to
Speaker 1: influence law, make is to pass a bill or to
Speaker 1: build a project that makes them richer. I mean, what's
Speaker 1: that all about? You know? That's just a kind of
Speaker 1: absolute craziness to me. Yeah, there's a lot of that craziness.
Speaker 1: And it just seems to at least that that idea
Speaker 1: of the inequality wealth wise just keeps getting worse and
Speaker 1: worse and worse. It's sort of becoming almost um comic
Speaker 1: if it weren't so tragic. Yeah. I think that's our
Speaker 1: number one problem, and it breads so many other problems.
Speaker 1: I agree. Have you been working on Dinner with the Buddha?
Speaker 1: Is that? Is that something we're going to see anytime soon? Done?
Speaker 1: It's coming out June two. That is great news is
Speaker 1: out from Algonquan June sewond Lunch with Buddha just today
Speaker 1: came out in audio format. And just about two weeks
Speaker 1: ago there was some film, pretty serious film interest in
Speaker 1: breakfast and maybe breakfast and lunch that would be great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the book has been good. Breakfast, I mean came out
Speaker 1: of nowhere from me and Um and it's been a
Speaker 1: wonderful thing for us. It's sold a lot of copies,
Speaker 1: and it's kept me in business as a writer. And
Speaker 1: I've gotten the most beautiful ratifying notes and emails from
Speaker 1: people about it. It's really interesting that so in the
Speaker 1: book you create a The story is about a UM
Speaker 1: family man. He's he's pretty much part of the normal world.
Speaker 1: I'll put that in quotes, and and ends up going
Speaker 1: on a road trip with a spiritual guru of sorts,
Speaker 1: and it sort of unveils that his his spiritual unfolding
Speaker 1: as well as a good road trip and a lot
Speaker 1: of other things. What I find interesting is the character
Speaker 1: that you've created there is a spiritual guru, is very
Speaker 1: interesting character. Have you ever thought of dressing up and
Speaker 1: playing him on TV? No? But I have. I've gone
Speaker 1: on especially before we had children. We were married eighteen
Speaker 1: years before we had children, and those years I I
Speaker 1: went on a bunch of retreats um somewhere Catholic, Protestant,
Speaker 1: non denominational, some of Buddhist, UH and I was really
Speaker 1: lucky on a couple of them. I went through the
Speaker 1: Providence and Center for a three day retreat many years ago,
Speaker 1: and I just happened to be there when son Son
Speaker 1: was there, who was the Creans and Master who had
Speaker 1: these centers all over the world. And Um, I also
Speaker 1: want on to retreat in France with Soviet m Pichet
Speaker 1: and those two men, along with the Dalai Lama. What
Speaker 1: so many things about them impressed me, but one thing
Speaker 1: that really impressed me was that they had a tremendous
Speaker 1: sense of h learning. Sum Sun Nim was a very
Speaker 1: funny guy, very happy. Um Soga Reprochet can be very funny.
Speaker 1: The Dalai Lama is famous for laughing at stuff and
Speaker 1: making jokes and goofing around. And for a guy who
Speaker 1: grew up Catholic, where you know, the popes of my
Speaker 1: youth were not exactly comedians. And the priest that we
Speaker 1: I did have one really funny priest when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, but everything was so serious and so somber,
Speaker 1: and that was so refreshing to me. UM to see
Speaker 1: that they could be goofy, that they could laugh at
Speaker 1: themselves and laugh at life. And I, I really I
Speaker 1: really wanted to put that in the book. So Riprochetus,
Speaker 1: the character you referred to in the Buddha books, I
Speaker 1: think it's a funny, goofy guy. M Yeah. Back to
Speaker 1: that idea of humor being an underappreciated virtue, or levity
Speaker 1: being an underappreciated virtue. You know. I wonder sometimes, you know,
Speaker 1: Jesus and Buddha, you just don't see any humor there.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if that was edited out. I hope so,
Speaker 1: you know, I like to think that they were they
Speaker 1: could laugh sometimes and you don't see that. And I
Speaker 1: wonder if the people who came after them, who had
Speaker 1: control over what was written down in both cases, I
Speaker 1: wonder if they changed it to say, you know, to
Speaker 1: try to be to sound more grown up and more serious,
Speaker 1: but it just doesn't work as well for me. Maybe
Speaker 1: we could work on writing Jesus's joke book. Maybe you know,
Speaker 1: I'd actually did write a book. I did, which is
Speaker 1: a crazy thing to do. I wrote this book called
Speaker 1: American Favia was published about six or seven years ago,
Speaker 1: and the idea is that Jesus comes to Earth and
Speaker 1: runs for president of the United States, and so I
Speaker 1: ended up kissing off people politically and religiously, and um,
Speaker 1: I had a good time and I it was like
Speaker 1: the Jesus of my imagination, you know. And he was
Speaker 1: funny and a little bit goofy and totally unpredictable and
Speaker 1: also loving and kind and deep and miraculous. But you know,
Speaker 1: it was a little bit of a risky thing to do.
Speaker 1: But that too, is being option for film, so maybe someday,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll have to check that one out when
Speaker 1: I get time. We are kind of at the end
Speaker 1: of our time. Could you just maybe spend a minute
Speaker 1: and tell folks where they can find out more about you.
Speaker 1: All have links on the show notes to all of it,
Speaker 1: but if you maybe just want to spend a minute
Speaker 1: with that, sure. The best places my website, which is
Speaker 1: just my name Roland Marulo dot com. I had Facebook
Speaker 1: pages and so on. I don't do a lot of tweeting,
Speaker 1: although I do have an account, but if you go
Speaker 1: to the website, there's information on all my books and
Speaker 1: um my appearances and also um a friend of mine
Speaker 1: who has published my backlist and launce Your Buddha has
Speaker 1: put together a monthly newsletter that he's built up to
Speaker 1: over a thousand people, and it has a serialized novel
Speaker 1: in it. It has giveaways, it has lists of my appearances,
Speaker 1: and I always write a to a three page greeting
Speaker 1: on difference like a minis like an essay on different
Speaker 1: subjects every month. So that's also you can sign up
Speaker 1: for that through the website. Great, and like I said,
Speaker 1: I'll have links to that on our show notes. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for taking the time. I'm really
Speaker 1: glad that Matthew made the introduction. I really enjoyed reading
Speaker 1: both your books and look forward to reading some more
Speaker 1: in the future and staying in touch. Well, thank you,
Speaker 1: I really really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks very much for
Speaker 1: having me on. Oh you're welcome. We'll talk again soon. Alright, alright,
Speaker 1: take care by bye. As a reminder, if you're interested
Speaker 1: in doing some one on one work with me, send
Speaker 1: an email to Eric at one you feed dot net. Thanks.
Speaker 1: You can learn more about this podcast and Roland Marulo
Speaker 1: at one you feed dot net slash Roland