Speaker 1: When the buddhas said, do what is wholesome, avoid what
Speaker 1: is unwholesome. This wholeness is within every experience. It's just
Speaker 1: a matter of us being sensitive to it, open to it,
Speaker 1: and aware of it. Welcome to the one you feed
Speaker 1: Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think ring true. And yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Today's guest is
Speaker 1: Steve Hoggen, founder and head teacher of the Dharma Field
Speaker 1: Zen Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Steve is the author of
Speaker 1: several books on Buddhism, among them as The Brilliant Buddhism,
Speaker 1: Plain and Simple which was one of the top five
Speaker 1: best selling Buddhism books in the United States. In two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve, Steve updated and revised his first book, How
Speaker 1: the World Can Be the Way It Is, and published
Speaker 1: it as Why the World Doesn't Seem to Make Sense,
Speaker 1: An Inquiry into science, philosophy, and perception. This episode is
Speaker 1: sponsored by health i Q. To see if you qualify
Speaker 1: and get your free health quote, go to health i
Speaker 1: q dot com. Slash walf Or mentioned the promo code
Speaker 1: wolf when you talk to a health i Q agent,
Speaker 1: and here's the interview with Steve Hogan. Hi, Steve, Welcome
Speaker 1: to the shower. It's a pleasure to have you on.
Speaker 1: I read one of your books, Buddhism, Plain and Simple,
Speaker 1: years and years ago, I think probably when it first
Speaker 1: came out, and I've revisited it a couple of times
Speaker 1: over the years. So it's a real pleasure to get
Speaker 1: you on and talk with you about it. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty happy to be here. Excellent. Well, let's start like
Speaker 1: we always do, with the parable. There is a grandfather
Speaker 1: who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that terrible means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Yeah, that's an interesting story.
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard it, you know, before you contacted me.
Speaker 1: But of course we all want to feed the good
Speaker 1: wolf inside us. The problem I think that we have
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to determine exactly what is good
Speaker 1: and what is bad. You did outline a few things,
Speaker 1: they're examples of goodness and what is bad, But this
Speaker 1: isn't so easily discerned that. There's a an interesting Dawas
Speaker 1: story um of a Chinese farmer, wise Chinese farmer and uh.
Speaker 1: One day his horse runs off. Actually this is in
Speaker 1: in my book Buddhism, Plan and Simple. His horse runs
Speaker 1: off and his neighbor comes to console him that he
Speaker 1: lost his horse. But the farmer said, well, who can
Speaker 1: say what's good or bad? And the next day the
Speaker 1: horse comes back, bringing some other horses with her, And
Speaker 1: now the neighbor comes to congratulate the farmer on his
Speaker 1: good luck, and the farmer says, who can say what's
Speaker 1: good or bad? And it goes on like this. The
Speaker 1: next day, the farmer's son breaks his leg trying to
Speaker 1: break one of the horses, and uh. The neighbor says, well,
Speaker 1: commiserating with with the man, and uh, but the farmer
Speaker 1: I just keep saying, who can say what's good or bad?
Speaker 1: The next day the army's coming through, conscript conscripting young
Speaker 1: men for the for the army, and they pass over
Speaker 1: his son because he's got a broken leg. And so
Speaker 1: it just goes on like this, who can say what's
Speaker 1: good or bad? I've heard this story told by people
Speaker 1: saying the farmer just says maybe maybe good, maybe bad.
Speaker 1: But I think it's a little bit more powerful, Uh,
Speaker 1: when we get down to what he's saying there, who
Speaker 1: can say? Who can say what's good or bad? You know?
Speaker 1: I always think of the those buildings in New York
Speaker 1: back in two thousand one when the planes flew into
Speaker 1: the buildings, and of course we would all say that
Speaker 1: this is bad. But of course to the people who
Speaker 1: flew the planes in, they probably thought they were doing
Speaker 1: something good. And we can find all kinds of examples
Speaker 1: of of this. Just last year on the during the campaigns,
Speaker 1: somebody asked the heads of one of the networks about
Speaker 1: giving so much airspace to uh to Donald Trump and uh,
Speaker 1: and he said, well, you know, this might not be
Speaker 1: good for the nation, but it's good for us, he said.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, so here we are good and
Speaker 1: bad and uh, pretty difficult to discern. And I listened
Speaker 1: to a couple of your other interviews that you did,
Speaker 1: and I noticed, uh, one person, it was Sean Carroll,
Speaker 1: very interesting fellow. I really you know, like him what
Speaker 1: he had to say. Uh, But he he observed correctly.
Speaker 1: I would say that it's hard to be objective in
Speaker 1: terms of determining what's good or bad. And I would
Speaker 1: agree with that, except there is a way of without
Speaker 1: expecting to arrive at some kind of objective view of
Speaker 1: good or bad, there is a way of viewing this
Speaker 1: that can actually get us out of our confusion, and
Speaker 1: rather than casting it in good and bad, if we
Speaker 1: just simply look at it in terms of homeless and
Speaker 1: and what is unwholesome, and this brings us You know
Speaker 1: that there's a teaching in the Dama Pada where the
Speaker 1: Buddha said, you just simply put it as do what
Speaker 1: is wholesome, avoid what is unwholesome, and he said purify
Speaker 1: your own mind. And then he said, this is what
Speaker 1: the awaken teach. There. It is in a nutshell. Do
Speaker 1: it as a wholesome, avoid what is unwholesome. And then
Speaker 1: we have the pure precepts which my teacher used to
Speaker 1: express him in this way, it's just we do what
Speaker 1: is wholesome, avoid was unwholesome, consider the welfare of everyone
Speaker 1: and everything you do. That's a way that helps us
Speaker 1: to avoid any kind of one on one confrontation between
Speaker 1: good and bad, which I think anyone if you stand
Speaker 1: back and look at it and get separate yourself from
Speaker 1: your own attached views con sided, well, it's hard to
Speaker 1: say that that itself is good to have that duality exactly.
Speaker 1: Another thing that you wrote talking about the Buddhist teachings,
Speaker 1: one of the things you said was that when Buddhoo
Speaker 1: was asked to sum up his teachings. In a single word,
Speaker 1: he said, awareness. Yeah, not awareness of something in particular,
Speaker 1: but awareness itself. Can you talk to me about that
Speaker 1: difference between being aware of, say like the color of
Speaker 1: the wall or the sounds that I'm hearing, and being
Speaker 1: aware or awareness itself. Yeah. Normally we're so used to
Speaker 1: we're highly conceptual beings, and so we immediately conceptualize our
Speaker 1: experience and see things in terms of form and color,
Speaker 1: and and also for ways in which feeling and thought
Speaker 1: get mixed in with all of that. But this is
Speaker 1: awareness of objects, awareness of the conceptual, and pure awareness
Speaker 1: is just simply that it's not formed in any way whatsoever.
Speaker 1: This is what I think the Buddha was speaking of there.
Speaker 1: It isn't that you're focused on something else. With that
Speaker 1: kind of a focus, you also having a strong sense
Speaker 1: of self at the same time, but just simply to
Speaker 1: be aware of tune end to settle down with the
Speaker 1: actual raw experience of this moment. And uh, that's kind
Speaker 1: of a general awareness. And I would refer to this
Speaker 1: as perception and it's not conceptual at all. The conceptual
Speaker 1: is something where we try to describe what it is
Speaker 1: we're experiencing. We feel like we have to say something
Speaker 1: about it, but we actually can't describe the actual, immediate
Speaker 1: act experience of the moment. It's like tasting orange juice.
Speaker 1: You know, we know it immediately, but it's not a concept,
Speaker 1: it's not an idea. It's a direct experience, and there's
Speaker 1: no way to describe it. If you had never tasted
Speaker 1: orange juice, there's no way I could describe it to
Speaker 1: you so that you would taste it. This is something
Speaker 1: that has to be done directly, and so awareness like that,
Speaker 1: just simply aware of what is the immediate, direct, unformed experience.
Speaker 1: In a different book, you refer to perception as knowledge
Speaker 1: and conception as belief. That's kind of what it boils
Speaker 1: down to. And we confuse what we believe with knowledge.
Speaker 1: This has been an ancient problem, goes all the way
Speaker 1: back to the to the ancient Greeks, and probably before that.
Speaker 1: How do we parcel belief from knowledge? And again, the
Speaker 1: problem that we have is because we're so caught up
Speaker 1: in the conceptual and we're not paying much attention at
Speaker 1: all to the perceptual or to a media direct awareness.
Speaker 1: Right now, I'm just finishing another book where I get
Speaker 1: into this rather heavily and really spell it out in
Speaker 1: quite a bit of detail. And so what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here when we say perception versus conception is perception
Speaker 1: being I am present in the current moment. I'm here now,
Speaker 1: As you said, I'm just experiencing the raw sensations that
Speaker 1: are coming from my perception, without categorizing them, putting them
Speaker 1: into concepts, labeling them, judging them as good or as bad.
Speaker 1: I'm just simply aware to them. Is that a way
Speaker 1: to sum it up? Well? Actually, uh, what you just
Speaker 1: described as still conceptual, and mainly because you referenced everything
Speaker 1: in terms of I me and you know, my my perception. Uh,
Speaker 1: strictly speaking, with pure awareness, there's no such thing as
Speaker 1: my perception. There's perception. Once we get to my perception,
Speaker 1: now it's it's conceptualized and and I'm formed, and then
Speaker 1: there's something else out there they're formed as well, and
Speaker 1: so pure perception it is a very it's a very
Speaker 1: subtle thing, but we're always experiencing it. It's impossible not
Speaker 1: to experience it. Uh, it's with every waking moment of
Speaker 1: well more than that, it's just continuously with us. It's
Speaker 1: just that the gap between that and the conceptualizing is
Speaker 1: almost non existent for most of us. Right, most of
Speaker 1: us were so quick with the conceptualizing that we don't
Speaker 1: even realize that there is any distinction here to be made.
Speaker 1: You know, and and we and we also uh intensify
Speaker 1: that with just the way we talk. Like I'm sitting
Speaker 1: here in front of a microphone now, and I might
Speaker 1: say something like I perceived the microphone. Uh, well, that's
Speaker 1: how we would normally talk. I would never say that, Well,
Speaker 1: I just did, but I would never I don't I
Speaker 1: realized that the microphone is something conceived by me. It's
Speaker 1: it's a conceptual construct, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1: I also don't mean to set out one against the other,
Speaker 1: like perception is good and conception is bad. We need conceptual,
Speaker 1: we need the conceptual. But it's just that we can't
Speaker 1: arrive at truth that way. The truth doesn't go in
Speaker 1: the concept, but we can see it directly, and we
Speaker 1: omit that we overlook it simply because we so quickly
Speaker 1: wrap everything into a conceptual construct and we missed the
Speaker 1: actual media, direct experience that we that we know from
Speaker 1: moment to moment all the time. Is that part of
Speaker 1: what you would say meditation helps to do is to
Speaker 1: allow us to get some gap between that perception and
Speaker 1: the conception. Yeah, well, that's what the meditation is. That's
Speaker 1: how we start out. We tune into a settled down.
Speaker 1: It's quieting the mind, settling down to what the actual
Speaker 1: experience of the moment is without adding anything to it.
Speaker 1: And at some point we can start to become more
Speaker 1: discerning and realize, you know, how much we are adding
Speaker 1: to the experience of the moment, how much we're explaining
Speaker 1: to ourselves or just assuming in a conceptual way, and
Speaker 1: we're constantly acting out of that and and not really
Speaker 1: tuned into what the pure experiences. So the meditation is
Speaker 1: just simply settling down in the actual perceptual experience. This
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Speaker 1: of the interview. You use the word enlightenment. You say
Speaker 1: it's nothing more or less than seeing things as they are,
Speaker 1: rather than as we wish or believe them to be.
Speaker 1: Do you think that enlightenment is something that happens for
Speaker 1: people semi regularly? Is it a pretty rare can audition?
Speaker 1: What's your thought on that? Oh, it's not rare at all.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, different people have different thoughts on that.
Speaker 1: You have to train for so many lifetimes before this
Speaker 1: could happen, and yeah, yeah, Well, actually, enlightenment is with
Speaker 1: us all the time. It's just that we're never tuned
Speaker 1: into it. It's actually our true state. You know, if
Speaker 1: if we would just settle down and not play with
Speaker 1: so many different things, or at least if we would
Speaker 1: start to recognize what we're doing and and so we
Speaker 1: don't allow ourselves to get emotionally caught up with too
Speaker 1: many things, forming attachments all of that. Uh, the enlightenment
Speaker 1: is is right there. But with that, it's really the
Speaker 1: perception itself. It's just that with enlightenment we kind of
Speaker 1: brought in the element of understanding, knowing, realizing, uh, what
Speaker 1: is taking place. And of course people could easily interpret
Speaker 1: what I just said as bringing in the conceptual. Now
Speaker 1: that wouldn't be enlightenment, because the enlightenment is the actual
Speaker 1: perceptual itself. But it is knowing reality and it isn't
Speaker 1: something foreign to us because we actually all no reality.
Speaker 1: You could not not no reality. It's all we ever experience.
Speaker 1: It's just that we, in conceptualizing it, are attempting to
Speaker 1: we go with that with all the various things that
Speaker 1: we form, including ourselves and uh, and pay virtually no
Speaker 1: attention to what is actually taking place, what is actually happening.
Speaker 1: So let's go back to that idea of self for
Speaker 1: a minute. You're you're talking about the Buddhist conception of
Speaker 1: no self, and one of the ways that you describe
Speaker 1: it in the book that I think is great. Well,
Speaker 1: actually I guess the Buddha described it and you're just
Speaker 1: passing on. But what we call a person the Buddha
Speaker 1: referred to simply as stream. What does that mean, Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's just that the actual momentum experience of the
Speaker 1: moment is stream. It is h nothing is holding still,
Speaker 1: there's nothing persisting. A self would have to be something
Speaker 1: that doesn't change. And if we look carefully at the
Speaker 1: experience moment by moment, there isn't anything that doesn't change.
Speaker 1: Everything within the experience, all thought, feeling, objects, everything appears
Speaker 1: to be coming and going. The Buddha described himself the
Speaker 1: term he used to refer to himself. Rather than saying
Speaker 1: me or I, he used the term tatagata, which literally
Speaker 1: means coming and going. Thus, and what he meant by
Speaker 1: that is that the experience is nothing but this coming
Speaker 1: and going, just as we find it. And and so
Speaker 1: that's what he's referring to their rather than saying I
Speaker 1: or me, which is a mistaken view of that. Well,
Speaker 1: I am something here that's persisting from moment to moment.
Speaker 1: We talked about what when I was five or six
Speaker 1: or whatever, but it's still me. We have this idea
Speaker 1: that there's something element here that's persisting from moment to moment.
Speaker 1: But if if you look carefully at your experience, you
Speaker 1: realize you'll never find that thing. That's just a conceptual
Speaker 1: construct that we live by. If we're tuned into the
Speaker 1: actual perceptual experience, it appears as continuous flux and change,
Speaker 1: but there's actually nothing changing there. And describing the idea
Speaker 1: of stream a little bit, you give the analogy of
Speaker 1: a book, you know, the book that you were writing.
Speaker 1: Could you share that analogy, because I think it's a
Speaker 1: very helpful way to think of this idea of everything
Speaker 1: sort of being in flux, and also it being really
Speaker 1: difficult to determine where to draw a line that this
Speaker 1: thing begins and this thing ends. That's what the conceptualizing is,
Speaker 1: is that where we do draw the lines, and this
Speaker 1: could be very functional and useful. Again, as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with conceptualizing, and we need we need
Speaker 1: to conceptualize. But if we look very carefully at the experience, though,
Speaker 1: you'll you'll see that there's actually no line, no border,
Speaker 1: no no boundary that we can actually discern beyond the
Speaker 1: conceptual So in other ways, the actual perceptual experience does
Speaker 1: give us any boundaries like that, And this is something
Speaker 1: we can even notice if we really tune in. I
Speaker 1: like an experience I once had lying in my tent
Speaker 1: at night and listening in the deep wood. There, uh,
Speaker 1: in the distance was an owl and in an unpredictable
Speaker 1: way I could I never knew when he was gonna
Speaker 1: hoot next, But just lying there in the tent and listening,
Speaker 1: and Uh, I noticed that either the hoot was hooting
Speaker 1: or it wasn't. And it was like, even though it
Speaker 1: seems like now there's a hoot. Now there isn't. So
Speaker 1: it would seem that there would have to be a
Speaker 1: boundary there. And yet just lying there, really tuned into
Speaker 1: it and focusing on it, you can't really find that.
Speaker 1: And uh, and that's that's getting in with the perceptual experience,
Speaker 1: just noting very carefully there. So there's nothing really bounded
Speaker 1: at all. Uh, though our experience certainly appears that way.
Speaker 1: And we don't deny the appearances, and we don't ignore
Speaker 1: the appearances. It's very important that we to ane into
Speaker 1: these things, but we do make the mistake of thinking
Speaker 1: that the way things appear to be bounded and separated
Speaker 1: from other things, Um, that's actually more of a mental
Speaker 1: construct than an actual reality, an ultimate reality. It's an
Speaker 1: apparent reality. It called it smaller reality or a friend
Speaker 1: of mine. Once you use the term scenality is how
Speaker 1: things seem to be. And I don't deny that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the analogy that you used about a book was you
Speaker 1: you were saying, you know, how how do I tell
Speaker 1: this book as a as a distinct thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: on one hand, here it is in my hand, but
Speaker 1: you know, the paper came from a tree, so as
Speaker 1: the tree consider, you know, as the paper part of
Speaker 1: the book is the tree. Part of the book is
Speaker 1: the water that came down to make the tree. Is
Speaker 1: the fact that you were taught by somebody in order
Speaker 1: to be able to write that book, you know, and
Speaker 1: that person was taught by somebody. And so that all
Speaker 1: these things flow into each other in a way. And again,
Speaker 1: on one hand, it's easy to say this is the book,
Speaker 1: you can hold it in your hand. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, it's also not just that. It's everything that
Speaker 1: had to happen, all the events that occurred all along
Speaker 1: the way until that thing comes. And so and that's
Speaker 1: the idea of to some extent, when you don't put
Speaker 1: a conception on something, you are able to see that unfolding. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and uh, she you can realize that within any
Speaker 1: small uh sphere or object or whatever we find ourselves
Speaker 1: and or everything is there, everything comes together with it,
Speaker 1: totality is there. And this brings us back to wholeness again,
Speaker 1: which I talked about at the very beginning, and talking
Speaker 1: about the two wolves. And uh, if we look carefully
Speaker 1: this wholeness, when the Buddhist said, do it is wholesome,
Speaker 1: avoid what is unwholesome. Uh. This wholeness is within every experience.
Speaker 1: It's just a matter of us being sensitive to it,
Speaker 1: open to it, and aware of it. And we can
Speaker 1: also see the divided and fractured and all of that,
Speaker 1: the unwholesome, those things that appear to be unwhole, and
Speaker 1: we honor that, we respect that. But if we look carefully,
Speaker 1: we realize that these are not two different things. This
Speaker 1: world ultimately is without such boundaries, but they are apparent.
Speaker 1: They are there in the conceptual form, So we have
Speaker 1: to honor that. Right. It's sort of part of what
Speaker 1: makes life functional in the way that it is is
Speaker 1: being able to do that. But it's, as you said,
Speaker 1: it's not the only way to see things or necessarily
Speaker 1: the bottom line truth of it. And I always think
Speaker 1: that's interesting. It's kind of like the the self no
Speaker 1: self question because on one hand, when that comes up,
Speaker 1: and this was my reaction for a long time, was like, well,
Speaker 1: that's ridiculous. Of course, there's a self here, I am yeah,
Speaker 1: And so on one hand and a in a relative sense, right,
Speaker 1: yes there, you know, I am here and I am
Speaker 1: you know, doing these things. But then at a deeper level,
Speaker 1: at a different level. It's you know, it's more what
Speaker 1: you talked about. It's the stream, it's the everything moves
Speaker 1: together as one thing. Yeah, you can't pick out that
Speaker 1: individuated thing, you know, myself the way, we actually don't
Speaker 1: use the term no self because that's kind of going
Speaker 1: to an extreme, just as we would avoid using the
Speaker 1: term self in terms of grasping anything or thinking we've
Speaker 1: gotten hold of something. By using the term self, we
Speaker 1: also avoid grasping at the other extreme, which is that
Speaker 1: there's no self. We tend to speak of it more
Speaker 1: as that we just simply don't find a self. And again,
Speaker 1: a self meaning that thing that doesn't change. This is
Speaker 1: what we don't find in our experience. So it's not
Speaker 1: that there's no such thing as itself or whatever. It's
Speaker 1: just that, you know, what are you gonna point to?
Speaker 1: We do talk about big self totality. Yeah, it's always us,
Speaker 1: but that's not an object. If you're enjoying this conversation,
Speaker 1: I hate to be the bearer of bad news. We
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Speaker 1: to the interview. One of the things that you reference
Speaker 1: and you say is that picking and choosing is the
Speaker 1: mind's worst disease. Talk about what you're getting at their Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's from the Shin xing Ming early Zen poem
Speaker 1: by the third Patriarch of Zen in China. He starts
Speaker 1: out by saying, um, the Great Way is not difficult.
Speaker 1: There's nothing it prefers. It's often translated is for those
Speaker 1: who have no preferences, But he's if you look at
Speaker 1: the Chinese, it's closer to saying that the Great Way
Speaker 1: itself is without preference. So in our conceptualizing mind, where
Speaker 1: we divide things out and now we start evaluating them,
Speaker 1: some things that we think are good and some are bad,
Speaker 1: and we and some things we want, some things we
Speaker 1: don't want, and we start picking and choosing, and since
Speaker 1: on the author of that peace singing thing, he says,
Speaker 1: uh that this is the mind's worst disease, and it
Speaker 1: leaves us. Um, we easily get caught up in a
Speaker 1: lot of frustrating and difficult situations or even terrifying and
Speaker 1: frightening and painful, whereas if we uh look at the
Speaker 1: larger picture, the larger experience of what's what is always
Speaker 1: being experienced, we can learn not to get caught up
Speaker 1: in these distinctions. We need to honor them with their distinctions,
Speaker 1: but we don't need to let them carry us away.
Speaker 1: The other thing you talk about, I think, similar to
Speaker 1: choosing or preferring this or preferring that, you talk often
Speaker 1: about the idea of that our mind leans a certain way,
Speaker 1: explain that this is the best way really to get
Speaker 1: in touch with the awakened mind, which is right there
Speaker 1: with you always. Again we ignore it as we wake up.
Speaker 1: Our minds are leaning. And it has to do with
Speaker 1: that preference again that I was just talking about, where
Speaker 1: the great Way doesn't have any preferences. And to the
Speaker 1: extent that we're not picking and choosing, the mind isn't leaning,
Speaker 1: so it's a matter of really getting in touch with that,
Speaker 1: noticing your own mind. You can feel the poll you
Speaker 1: can feel the attachment or the aversion that might be
Speaker 1: going on within your mind, rejecting, you know, shunning while
Speaker 1: one thing or another or a person or whatever else
Speaker 1: and being drawn towards another when you allow yourself to
Speaker 1: act out of that rather than out of the hole.
Speaker 1: And Buddhism, plain and simple, I talk about this as
Speaker 1: really what we can do. It's called the mind that
Speaker 1: knows everything. And of course, in terms of the conceptual
Speaker 1: we can't know everything. It's just too much, and it's
Speaker 1: just just a sheer impossibility. But we can do that
Speaker 1: which is equivalent, which is knowing the whole. And and and
Speaker 1: this is this matter of being aware in any given moment,
Speaker 1: particularly when you're interacting with others. Say, if you can
Speaker 1: detect some pull of your mind you're trying to bring
Speaker 1: about certain results or certain ends, and this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: This is what the Buddha meant by avoid what is unwholesome.
Speaker 1: Just see if you can stay away, you know, from
Speaker 1: this sort of thing. And to the extent that we
Speaker 1: can do this our own mind. Now it doesn't lean
Speaker 1: it's not leaning towards this. It isn't this position of
Speaker 1: mind isn't constantly shifting like that. And uh, and this
Speaker 1: is characteristic of an awakened mind or a mind of
Speaker 1: of totality and wholeness and understanding. And so that is
Speaker 1: a very easy thing to say, easy to say, right.
Speaker 1: So it's a lifetime of practice. Lifetime of practice, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But this is what most distinguishes a Buddha or an
Speaker 1: awakened person. And Buddha is a person, human being who's awake.
Speaker 1: But this is what most distinguishes one who's awake from
Speaker 1: from one who's caught up in confusion. Is this matter
Speaker 1: of well, this disposition of mind, the leaning of of mine. Uh.
Speaker 1: The one who's awake, the mind doesn't lean or their
Speaker 1: inclination of mind is you could say zero, it's vertical,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's not leaning. And that's that's characteristic
Speaker 1: of an awakened mind. And you would say, I think,
Speaker 1: putting words in your mouth that we can't make our
Speaker 1: mind go this direction or that direction or not lean
Speaker 1: or yankee back up straight or push it back in
Speaker 1: that that what we can do is see that our
Speaker 1: mind is leaning and and come back to trying to
Speaker 1: be awake here and now that is the best way
Speaker 1: to get to the point where we have a mind
Speaker 1: that doesn't lean. It's simply to see that it's leaning,
Speaker 1: vers simply judging it, pushing it, forcing it by the
Speaker 1: same token. And we also don't try to make it
Speaker 1: not lean. That doesn't work. That's more leaning actually, So
Speaker 1: it's just it is simply a matter of seeing. And
Speaker 1: and when I when I'm writing that word seeing, this
Speaker 1: is when I'll tell us size the word to distinguish
Speaker 1: it from our ordinary seeing where we're seeing an object. Here,
Speaker 1: what we're seeing is totality or the mind of totality.
Speaker 1: And uh, in the way in which things might be
Speaker 1: entering into it that you know, the conceptual to constructs,
Speaker 1: the inclinations and this sort of thing. We can see
Speaker 1: that and uh, and then then we can stop or
Speaker 1: we can learn to do that. That that takes some time.
Speaker 1: But the way, the way that we learn it too
Speaker 1: is is through just acquaintance with this, tuning into it
Speaker 1: and becoming aware of what's going on. We start to
Speaker 1: realize all the pain and confusion and anger and anxiety,
Speaker 1: and you know that that coo along with that, and
Speaker 1: you know, the hatred and all of that. The mind
Speaker 1: then can become more supple and open and magnanimous and tolerant. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's the that's kind of the promise of learning
Speaker 1: to live without being caught by your inclinations. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we're near the end of our time here. I'd love
Speaker 1: to have you tell the story about the problems. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: sometimes people get a little confused about this, but it's
Speaker 1: about a a man who who heard of the buddhas
Speaker 1: teachings and heard that he was a wise man and
Speaker 1: all of this. And the man thought, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go talk with him. I have certain problems
Speaker 1: here that maybe he can help me with. And so
Speaker 1: the man went to see the Buddha, and the Buddha
Speaker 1: patiently sat and listened to him, and and the man
Speaker 1: when I turned out, he was a farmer, like the
Speaker 1: wise change farmer with this guy. Maybe it wasn't that man,
Speaker 1: but he said, you know, I'm a farmer and I
Speaker 1: like farming, but sometimes, uh, you know, it range too much,
Speaker 1: or it doesn't rain enough, and my crops fail, or
Speaker 1: I don't get the yields I want. And you know,
Speaker 1: then the Buddhist listening and then says, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm married and I have a wife. She is a
Speaker 1: good wife. I love her, but sometimes she nags me
Speaker 1: too much, you know. And uh, he says, I have
Speaker 1: kids and they're great kids, but sometimes they don't show
Speaker 1: me enough respect, you know. Anyway, the guys just going
Speaker 1: on like this, like any of us, could you know,
Speaker 1: we all have difficulties and problems in our life. And
Speaker 1: that's what the Buddha said, I can't help you. And
Speaker 1: then said, well, what do you mean. He said, I
Speaker 1: thought you were a great teacher. And he he says, well,
Speaker 1: we all have problems, the Buddha said, and he says,
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, eighty three problems. We all
Speaker 1: have eighty eighty three. Just sometimes people good up on
Speaker 1: the number, but it just means a lot of problems.
Speaker 1: And and and then the Buddhist said, well, maybe you
Speaker 1: can solve one of them, but if you do, there'll
Speaker 1: be another one just pops right back in its place.
Speaker 1: And no matter what, it's always eighty three or you
Speaker 1: always have just going to be problems, is what he's saying.
Speaker 1: And the man just kind of kind of blew up
Speaker 1: at him. There, what what good is your is your teaching,
Speaker 1: he said then, And the Buddhist said, well, maybe it'll
Speaker 1: help you with the four problem problem, said the man,
Speaker 1: and he said, what's that? And the buddhistaid, well, you
Speaker 1: don't want to have any problems and uh, and this
Speaker 1: is what we can learn to do. It isn't like,
Speaker 1: you know, we go to this heavenly place or whatever
Speaker 1: where everything is just hunky dory and wonderful from then
Speaker 1: that's just not reality. It's not it's not life. Uh,
Speaker 1: it will never be that way. But what we can
Speaker 1: learn to do is to not be this. This is
Speaker 1: no appealing to this mind of totality. Is this wholesome mind,
Speaker 1: the mind of the whole, as opposed to the splintered
Speaker 1: mind in the divided mind. We can learn uh, to
Speaker 1: to find this. So even in this world of apparent
Speaker 1: differences and things coming and going and changing all around us,
Speaker 1: we can learn to live in this space without being
Speaker 1: tossed about, um, you know. And and so this is
Speaker 1: what the Buddha promise, this is what he teaches, This
Speaker 1: is what he helps us with. Yeah, I love that
Speaker 1: idea that we all have problems and that they're not
Speaker 1: going they're not going away and I think that's just
Speaker 1: such a great thing to recognize and then realizing that
Speaker 1: most of the suffering comes from us one in there
Speaker 1: to be no problems. I just think it's such a profound,
Speaker 1: profound story. It's a little different than jay Z song
Speaker 1: problems and ain't one, but will that'll be for the
Speaker 1: more modern listeners unless you're a big jay Z face,
Speaker 1: in which I don't think so. I know, I really
Speaker 1: don't know what you're talking about here, but I I
Speaker 1: know I couldn't really. I think it's a it's a
Speaker 1: hip hop star, rap star. So well, Steve, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for taking the time to come on the show.
Speaker 1: I really appreciated talking with you. I've appreciated your writing
Speaker 1: over the years, so it was a real pleasure. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you. Eric, was good to be here. Okay, take
Speaker 1: care to bite. If what you just heard was helpful
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