Speaker 1: Do you ever feel like life is just one problem
Speaker 1: after another. You finally feel like maybe there's a break,
Speaker 1: and then bam, another problem. This is how it is
Speaker 1: for many of us. But there is a better way
Speaker 1: to respond, a way of responding that brings greater ease
Speaker 1: into your life and returns some of the energy that
Speaker 1: the problems drained from you. We are hosting a free
Speaker 1: live masterclass on Sunday, February called Learn the Spiritual Habit
Speaker 1: to unlock energy and ease in your life, even if
Speaker 1: each day seems to bring a fresh pile of problems
Speaker 1: in it. I will teach you how to tap into
Speaker 1: the resources that are already within you so that life
Speaker 1: feels less like a never ending fight and more like
Speaker 1: an ever evolving dance. You will learn the number one
Speaker 1: source of unhappiness that drains your energy and keeps you
Speaker 1: feeling stuck, and a simple mindset shift you can make
Speaker 1: right away so that life doesn't feel like such a
Speaker 1: constant struggle. This will be a live event and you'll
Speaker 1: have a chance to interact with me and with each other.
Speaker 1: I've really grown to love these community events where we
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Speaker 1: feed dot net slash live and I really would love
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Speaker 1: you'll find in time when you really truly can let
Speaker 1: go of the various things that we otherwise are constantly
Speaker 1: reaching forward grasping, you'll find a kind of freedom. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like
Speaker 1: 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. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Steve Hawkin. Steve was
Speaker 1: ordained as Zen Priest in nineteen seventy nine, and in
Speaker 1: nine he received Dharma Transmission, or the formal endorsement to teach,
Speaker 1: from Chakai Danen kategory Roschi. He's the author of several
Speaker 1: books on Buddhism, science, and philosophy. These include his most
Speaker 1: popular book, Buddhism Plain and Simple. In his most recent book,
Speaker 1: The and Delusion, he applies break through Eastern insights to
Speaker 1: seemingly indelible problems in Western science and philosophy. He founded
Speaker 1: Dharma Field Meditation and Learning Center in Minneapolis, where he
Speaker 1: continues to serve as senior teacher. I Steve, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. No Eric, it's good to be here. It's
Speaker 1: nice to have you back on again. Today we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about your book called The Grand Delusion, what
Speaker 1: we know but don't believe. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: we'll start like we always do, with the parable. In
Speaker 1: the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild
Speaker 1: and they said, in life, there are two wolves inside
Speaker 1: of us that are always at battle. One is a
Speaker 1: good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love,
Speaker 1: and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops
Speaker 1: and thinks about it for a second and looks up
Speaker 1: at their grandparents says, well, which one wins, and the
Speaker 1: grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 1: you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is an interesting story, and it does make you
Speaker 1: think a bit. But I would say many things come
Speaker 1: to mind, but one really kind of stuck off for
Speaker 1: me this time, in terms of what you feed and
Speaker 1: which one you feed, I would say, you know, we
Speaker 1: should feed them both, and but it depends on what
Speaker 1: you feed them. And you mentioned kindness that the good
Speaker 1: wolf shouls kindness, and we can show kindness to the
Speaker 1: bad wolf if we can identify the bad wolf. But
Speaker 1: sometimes it's difficult to know which is which. But I
Speaker 1: would say we can feed them both kindness and caring
Speaker 1: and love, and whichever one might be getting out of
Speaker 1: hand there a bit. If they know that someone cares
Speaker 1: and is giving him some kindness and feeding them some good,
Speaker 1: nourishing food, I think that might be the best best
Speaker 1: way to go. I love that. I don't recall anybody saying,
Speaker 1: you know, it's more about what you feed them. That's
Speaker 1: a that's an interesting perspective. And although we've had, you know,
Speaker 1: plenty of people that we've talked about, you know, showing
Speaker 1: kindness towards your bad wolf, which I think is important,
Speaker 1: but really thinking specifically about what the content of the
Speaker 1: food is is a really interesting idea. All right, let's
Speaker 1: go into your latest book called The Grand Delusion what
Speaker 1: We Know but Don't Believe. Could I started there just
Speaker 1: a second? Yeah, the actual title that I wrote the
Speaker 1: subtitle was what we know but can't believe, but that
Speaker 1: seemed a little harsh for uh, the reader just coming
Speaker 1: approaching the book right off. I'm hoping that when the
Speaker 1: reader gets through the book, uh, they might have that
Speaker 1: understanding to some degree, but it we don't believe it
Speaker 1: what we know because we can't and I explain all
Speaker 1: of that in the book, you know, So really the
Speaker 1: title would be what we know but can't believe, which
Speaker 1: probably seems like an odd thing when you first approached it,
Speaker 1: but it was pretty uh strange. I think for the
Speaker 1: you know, the publisher probably would have had our time
Speaker 1: with that word. So we changed it. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: think we can talk about why we can't believe the truth.
Speaker 1: Having read the book, I understand what you're saying. We
Speaker 1: may have to go step by step to get there.
Speaker 1: But let's start with the title the Grand Delusion. What
Speaker 1: is the Grand delusion? Well, the Grand delusion basically is
Speaker 1: that we devoutly believe in non emptiness, as Naga Juno
Speaker 1: would say, we believe in substantiality. We believe that things
Speaker 1: are whole and complete entities under themselves, separate and apart
Speaker 1: from everything else. And of course I myself, for each
Speaker 1: of us, I myself one of these things, and that
Speaker 1: puts us in a pretty difficult situation much of the time,
Speaker 1: where now we have to look all for ourselves and
Speaker 1: try to get what we can and greet and anger.
Speaker 1: These things begin to appear in the mind, and that's
Speaker 1: a pretty a common experience for us human beings. It's
Speaker 1: a delusion. The delusion is in thinking that there's actually
Speaker 1: something to this, that there's some actual substantiality here. And
Speaker 1: what I try to show in the book is that
Speaker 1: things aren't quite as substantial as they appear to be.
Speaker 1: But I also stressed the point and some people have
Speaker 1: missed this, even though I repeatedly say it in the
Speaker 1: book that I'm not advocating nothingness, because clearly isn't nothing,
Speaker 1: but it has a lack of substantiality about it. But
Speaker 1: when we open up to this and realize this, uh,
Speaker 1: now other things that are very puzzling for us, such
Speaker 1: as what is mind? What is consciousness? Uh, this all
Speaker 1: begins to clear up. We begin to see it an
Speaker 1: rotically different way. And the hard problem is identified by
Speaker 1: David Chalmers. Yeah, and uh back in the early nineties.
Speaker 1: Uh is, how do we get subjective experience from just
Speaker 1: electrochemical problem the seas in the brain and this sort
Speaker 1: of thing. And that's the hard problem. That's the one
Speaker 1: that hasn't been resolved. And people they can deal with
Speaker 1: the easy problems, so to speak, which aren't so easy themselves,
Speaker 1: but that's because these problems can be dealt with. The
Speaker 1: hard problem is something that we're imagining, and we're imagining
Speaker 1: it along with the idea that we have substantiality in
Speaker 1: the first place, or that same mind comes from matter.
Speaker 1: That's a belief. There's no evidence for that whatsoever. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of coincidental kind of things, but there's no
Speaker 1: actual proof proof of such a thing, and I try
Speaker 1: to supply in the book all sorts of things that
Speaker 1: might help us to doubt that a bit. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: start there. So the grand delusion being substantiality. And you
Speaker 1: talk early on about a question that Bertrand Russell famously
Speaker 1: posed that has been out there a lot, which is
Speaker 1: why is there something rather than nothing? It is perhaps
Speaker 1: the most basic existential question you could have, why is
Speaker 1: there anything here at all versus nothing? Right? And so
Speaker 1: you talk about your hard questions, right, this is about
Speaker 1: as hard a question as you get. What's your answer
Speaker 1: to that? How do you respond to that question? Well, again,
Speaker 1: it's based on the assumption that we actually have something,
Speaker 1: And that's kind of where I start with the book.
Speaker 1: In chapter two. We get to that point, and I
Speaker 1: spend the rest of the book then just showing why
Speaker 1: this might be the case. I realized right off, of course,
Speaker 1: that's an absurd thing to say that we don't have something.
Speaker 1: But what I mean is we don't have substantiality, and
Speaker 1: that that's really what I'm saying. Of course, right away
Speaker 1: it seems like I'm people will take it this way
Speaker 1: that I'm saying that, Well, if we don't have something,
Speaker 1: then we must have nothing. But that's kind of a
Speaker 1: false dichotomy there. Clearly this isn't nothingness. It's just playing obvious.
Speaker 1: There's site and sound and feeling in color and taste
Speaker 1: and flavor and thought and feeling. So this isn't nothing.
Speaker 1: But to think that there's an actual distinct separateness and
Speaker 1: ego or self but belonging to things, including ourselves, this
Speaker 1: is actually an illusion, and to believe it then that
Speaker 1: that's probably the grand illusion this these things in terms
Speaker 1: of substance and delusion. The grand illusion is to believe,
Speaker 1: to believe that, and to carry on as if this
Speaker 1: were the case. And I try to give some indication
Speaker 1: as to how this entangles is in all sorts of suffering.
Speaker 1: In fact, virtually all existential suffering can be done away
Speaker 1: with in a flash, if we could see through the
Speaker 1: the illusion of substantiality. Yeah, And I want to pivot
Speaker 1: to an idea that is late in the book for
Speaker 1: a second, because I think it helps listeners to hear
Speaker 1: what we're saying and maybe settle down a little bit
Speaker 1: and lean in a little bit more. And it's really
Speaker 1: the idea of two truths. So share a little bit
Speaker 1: about what we mean by the two truths. As soon
Speaker 1: as we start talking about like, well, the self is
Speaker 1: not here in the way we think it is, and
Speaker 1: it all of a sudden, people start going, but hang on, no,
Speaker 1: I mean I still got a mortgage to pay. I
Speaker 1: still got it. And you're like, yes, of course you do. Right.
Speaker 1: So I think recognizing that there's two truths that are
Speaker 1: coexistent at the exact same time helps us to go, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're not denying one of them, right, This is very important.
Speaker 1: It's a subtle thing. It's not easy to see, and uh,
Speaker 1: I spent years approaching it before suddenly I realized it. Well,
Speaker 1: that was mainly studying Nago Juna, and I suddenly was
Speaker 1: able to see what he was what he was getting at,
Speaker 1: because using my rational mind was just very logical, and
Speaker 1: I happen to be kind of a logic sort of guy.
Speaker 1: But I delve into something here that doesn't require the
Speaker 1: normal logic that we follow Aristotelian logic or Boolean logic
Speaker 1: or any kind of other kind of logic you might
Speaker 1: want to find, and in doing that, and then it's
Speaker 1: very difficult to see what it's taking place here, and
Speaker 1: then we fall into this grand delusion. Yeah, the thing
Speaker 1: is that we're not talking about like, well, that's right
Speaker 1: here in front of me, I have a cup, where
Speaker 1: do I hold it? There it is, We might speak
Speaker 1: of it, and then we talk about that the cup
Speaker 1: is empty. Well it's got water in it. We can say, well, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course it's got water in it. But the cup itself,
Speaker 1: there's no particular you thing they're about it at all,
Speaker 1: And that just seems like a very strange thing to say.
Speaker 1: And yet there's all sorts of ways we can go
Speaker 1: in and take a close look what we're attributing substance too,
Speaker 1: and that the say there's a particular cup and it's
Speaker 1: made of atoms that are made of quarks and electrons
Speaker 1: and things like this, and you you keep moving in.
Speaker 1: Eventually we don't seem to have any particle, any substance
Speaker 1: there at all. And yet here's the cup. And so
Speaker 1: there's like two truths right there. Yes, we have a
Speaker 1: cup in a conventional way. I put it down here
Speaker 1: before we started, and it's I could get some water
Speaker 1: if I needed. So that's one truth, conventional truth, relative truth.
Speaker 1: But then if we really get down to it, exactly
Speaker 1: then what exactly is the cup? And m as we
Speaker 1: go in and look for it physically we want to
Speaker 1: look for it seems to turn into no particular thing
Speaker 1: at all, and uh, and there's other ways we can
Speaker 1: we can look at it as well. You can have
Speaker 1: all kinds of uses that might take us beyond what
Speaker 1: we might commonly think that a cup has. But even
Speaker 1: when we get down for a close look here, we
Speaker 1: actually don't seem to have anything at all in particular
Speaker 1: that it is that we're calling a cup. Same thing
Speaker 1: is certainly true of more complex things such as you know,
Speaker 1: like for each of us myself, what exactly are you
Speaker 1: referring to there? And it isn't like there's some people
Speaker 1: understand Buddhist teaching as that the Buddha pointed out that
Speaker 1: there's no self, which is an extreme. There's nowhere where
Speaker 1: the Buddha actually said at least well, of course we
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what he said, but from the earliest
Speaker 1: recordings we don't really find that what he's pointing out.
Speaker 1: What Naga Jona clarified about five hund years after the
Speaker 1: time of the Buddha is that a self can't be
Speaker 1: found and what would it self have to be while
Speaker 1: it would have to be something that endures. You know
Speaker 1: that the remains itself from moment to moment, if it
Speaker 1: became something else within what senses it itself, you know. So,
Speaker 1: And there's all kinds of way. It's just one of
Speaker 1: many ways we can begin to look at this and
Speaker 1: the whole thing begins to kind of fall apart. But
Speaker 1: still we are in this world of this and that,
Speaker 1: you and me, cups and water and soil and sky
Speaker 1: and all of this. And yet at the same time,
Speaker 1: as we go in and investigate these things as I
Speaker 1: do in the book in various ways, they begin to
Speaker 1: lose well their substantial nature. And also then try to
Speaker 1: help the readers see that this has is a great
Speaker 1: deal to do with mind and consciousness, that the reality
Speaker 1: is of a mental nature. It's a sound and color
Speaker 1: and feeling and thought. But these don't really have any
Speaker 1: particular substance behind them. So when you say that something
Speaker 1: doesn't have any substance behind it, it's sort of what
Speaker 1: you were just describing. There are multiple ways to arrive
Speaker 1: at that right. One, as you said, is we if
Speaker 1: we start zooming in closer and closer and closer and closer,
Speaker 1: we eventually find nothing. Like you said, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: what quantum physics is, sort of saying like there's nothing there.
Speaker 1: You know, even if you stay as simple is that
Speaker 1: you know, energy equals masked uh you know squared Right,
Speaker 1: You're like, well, okay, it's so at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, it's just what's energy? Yeah, so yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's one way in. But but I don't go
Speaker 1: so far as to say nothing. We never get to nothing.
Speaker 1: It's just say, what you'll get to is it's something
Speaker 1: that you can't get hold of. Yes, that's what we have.
Speaker 1: That's that's the fabric of reality, is of that nature.
Speaker 1: It isn't nothing is that, but you'll never get hold
Speaker 1: of it. And one of the core ideas in your work,
Speaker 1: as I was saying to you before the call, I've
Speaker 1: noticed in in all your books and shows up again
Speaker 1: here is the idea that the reason we'll never get
Speaker 1: ahold of it is the minute we start trying to
Speaker 1: get ahold of it, we start applying concepts to it,
Speaker 1: which a concept cannot define or describe reality that right,
Speaker 1: but we believe it does. And until we begin to
Speaker 1: wake up to the fact that no, but never, And
Speaker 1: that's the two truths. Again, we have it in concept,
Speaker 1: that's the truth up to a point, But if you
Speaker 1: pursue that far enough, you realize that you actually haven't
Speaker 1: gripped reality itself. Reality remains kind of a mystery for us,
Speaker 1: which I talked about right at the very beginning of
Speaker 1: the book. Why is this the case, Well, it is
Speaker 1: because we think we can get hold of it. And
Speaker 1: that's what I'm trying to show in the book is
Speaker 1: and this is why we can't believe it in the end,
Speaker 1: the nature of reality, because we can't get hold of it.
Speaker 1: And so it isn't that we don't believe it is well,
Speaker 1: you know, we have all kinds of believe some things
Speaker 1: that we think we've gotten hold of. But if you
Speaker 1: stay with anything at all for a while, you start
Speaker 1: to realize how much how well they understand this. And
Speaker 1: you know, when you're granting realness or existence to this
Speaker 1: or that and or persistence, and if you look carefully enough,
Speaker 1: you realize it's that's never there, the persistence and that
Speaker 1: kind of absolute realness, It just isn't there. But it
Speaker 1: isn't nothing, but it has this very liquid and fluid nature,
Speaker 1: which bespeaks of mind and consciousness. This is what they are,
Speaker 1: and this is the nature of reality. This is the
Speaker 1: fabric of reality, is mind and consciousness. So that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that rather than substance and and and
Speaker 1: then we keep looking for, how do we get mind
Speaker 1: and consciousness from substance? How do we get the electoral
Speaker 1: chemical processes in the brain to yield subjective experience? And
Speaker 1: in the book, though identify that as the impossible problem.
Speaker 1: It's not just hard, it's it's you're never gonna then. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to read a line from the book that
Speaker 1: I really like, sort of talking about this mind thing.
Speaker 1: You said, you hear a bell, smell a rose, see
Speaker 1: a bird. Where does seeing, hearing, and smelling happen in
Speaker 1: the bell or the rose of the bird, in the
Speaker 1: sense organ that picks it up in the space in between,
Speaker 1: in the neurons of your brain. Remove any bit of
Speaker 1: this and there's no experience. So where is it happening?
Speaker 1: And I think that's such a great description of you know,
Speaker 1: when we talk about mind, what are we talking about?
Speaker 1: Because where does it end or begin? Yeah? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: well that's one way in which to it. It shows
Speaker 1: itself as not being something that you can grasp because
Speaker 1: if it had a beginning or an end their head
Speaker 1: boundaries or surfaces or something like this, you'd be able
Speaker 1: to get hold of it. But as we investigate any
Speaker 1: of these things, we begin to realize that the smell
Speaker 1: of the roses could be very distinct. If this is
Speaker 1: what you're smelling now in this moment, and you see
Speaker 1: what as a rose there across the room or something,
Speaker 1: and you know, and so we're giving it location and
Speaker 1: this sort of thing. But as you start to think about, well,
Speaker 1: where where is this experience of the smell taking place,
Speaker 1: we might say watching my nose or yeah, but the
Speaker 1: stuff that rolls over there, and uh, you know, and
Speaker 1: there's various ways. We just keep by asking questions and
Speaker 1: investigating what it is we're assuming, you will start to realize.
Speaker 1: And this is true of virtually everything that we experience
Speaker 1: in terms of substance, this, and that if we continue
Speaker 1: to observe these things, you begin to realize you cannot
Speaker 1: get hold of anything. This is the beginning of awakening.
Speaker 1: This is the beginning of actually seeing the true nature
Speaker 1: of what is taking place here. And with that it
Speaker 1: is a great deal of freedom of mind and ease
Speaker 1: that otherwise, uh might be quite elusive for us to find.
Speaker 1: I wanted to maybe go the direction you just sort
Speaker 1: of went there a little bit, which is to bring
Speaker 1: this back to a personal sense, because one way of
Speaker 1: hearing the last twenty minutes of you and I talking
Speaker 1: is who cares? Like? So what if I don't care
Speaker 1: about why there's something rather than nothing? You know, it
Speaker 1: seems like an interesting question to ponder, But from my
Speaker 1: day to day life, why does this stuff matter? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And in the sense of trying to bring you to
Speaker 1: some point where you can grasp this or that that
Speaker 1: would make you feel better or or fulfilled or you
Speaker 1: know this is meaningful for me or or whatever. That's fine,
Speaker 1: but see that none of that ever lasts. We constantly
Speaker 1: have to go get some more or defend ourselves better
Speaker 1: against whatever might be seemingly attacking us now. And that's
Speaker 1: what we're doing with this is it's I'm not supplying
Speaker 1: any answers in the book. I'm not telling you what
Speaker 1: it is you need to think or believe in fact
Speaker 1: him and I am asking you to constantly question whatever
Speaker 1: it is you you do settle down with. But what
Speaker 1: you'll find in time when you really truly can let
Speaker 1: go of the various things that we otherwise are constantly
Speaker 1: reaching for and grasping, you'll find a kind of freedom
Speaker 1: in an ease of mind and a relaxation. I don't know,
Speaker 1: we're at ease in the world rather than fighting with it.
Speaker 1: And this is, uh, well is that valuable to you
Speaker 1: or not? I don't know. But if you turn that
Speaker 1: into something, then it's kind of like, well, now you
Speaker 1: grasp me again. So we don't have to do that.
Speaker 1: But I would say to have mine that is peaceful
Speaker 1: and present and isn't locked in all kinds of infusion
Speaker 1: and wondering and where do we come from? Where are
Speaker 1: we going? What happens to me after I die? All
Speaker 1: these big existential things that can all be eradicated not
Speaker 1: by finding answers to these questions, but by seeing that
Speaker 1: the questions themselves are kind of derived from a misunderstanding
Speaker 1: of what the experiences in the first place. The experience
Speaker 1: of just this life, you wrote once, the deep hollow
Speaker 1: ache of the heart arises from a life in search
Speaker 1: of meaning. So say a little bit more about that.
Speaker 1: So you're describing a very specific experience the deep hollow
Speaker 1: ache of the heart because I'm out there trying to
Speaker 1: go what is the meaning of life? And once we
Speaker 1: get to that, the meaning of life, then we're starting
Speaker 1: to get to these bigger questions, right where all of
Speaker 1: a sudden going well, why what's the point? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: talk about can we resolve that? If so, how do
Speaker 1: we resolve that? Yeah, we can't resolve it, But we
Speaker 1: can't resolve it by pursuing our normal way. We're actually
Speaker 1: trying to get to an answer. It's like that question,
Speaker 1: why is there something rather than nothing? Well, we can
Speaker 1: start to see that this isn't in a sense, this
Speaker 1: isn't even a legitimate question, because, as I was pointing out,
Speaker 1: if we look carefully, we don't really seem to have something.
Speaker 1: And yet this is not nothing. But what we do
Speaker 1: is when we're trying to get to answer that question
Speaker 1: about the meaning of life and this sort of thing,
Speaker 1: we're constantly looking for something we can put there. Every
Speaker 1: now and then we might come upon something where you think,
Speaker 1: a ha, no, I have it. This is it, But
Speaker 1: now you have to defend it against other people who
Speaker 1: might have a different view of it or thought of
Speaker 1: it in a different way. Than you had, and or
Speaker 1: else we can just isolate ourselves in some way and
Speaker 1: live in some kind of blissful ignorance. But it's still
Speaker 1: we're holding to something which doesn't supply us with any
Speaker 1: kind of support. But if we wake up to the
Speaker 1: fact that you don't need that kind of support at all,
Speaker 1: right from the very get go, you don't need that.
Speaker 1: There is a great freedom, you know that comes with this,
Speaker 1: an unspeakable freedom. But we can feel it, we can
Speaker 1: know it, we can realize it. That's why our normal
Speaker 1: pursuit of we're trying to answer the deep existential questions
Speaker 1: looking for answers is not where to go. But starting
Speaker 1: to realize the kind of the emptiness, the lack of
Speaker 1: substantiality within the questions themselves, and seeing that rather than
Speaker 1: being oh my god, no, everything's gonna fall up, that's
Speaker 1: not true, you also realize that you've been free all along. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I often think about finding meaning, and I make this analogy,
Speaker 1: which I'm not sure whether you would think is a
Speaker 1: good one or not. But trying to figure out meaning
Speaker 1: through the mind doesn't work. It's like the example I
Speaker 1: give his imagine, I walked outside my door and you know,
Speaker 1: I live right by a road and I saw a
Speaker 1: dog that had been hit by a car and it
Speaker 1: was laying there suffering. Right, If I try to argue
Speaker 1: why me taking care of that dog matters, I can't
Speaker 1: really make a good ultimate argument because eventually you get
Speaker 1: to what You're just one person and it's one dog dog,
Speaker 1: and there's billions of dogs, and suffering is endless, and
Speaker 1: you're just a planet floating in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 1: and on and on and on. There is no resolution.
Speaker 1: But in that moment, you could not argue me out
Speaker 1: of believing that taking care of that dog was important,
Speaker 1: because that emerges from someplace beyond a rational meaning. It's
Speaker 1: a response of the heart that just happens. I couldn't
Speaker 1: convince you why it's meaningful, but you could not convince
Speaker 1: me it was not meaningful, right, because it would just
Speaker 1: appear to me. And and that's how I've often thought
Speaker 1: about this idea of trying to find meaning by asking
Speaker 1: rational questions, is that that's not where you can find it.
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, the fact that stopping to help the
Speaker 1: dog and you'll do it, and it isn't because I
Speaker 1: don't know, well, it could be because you think well,
Speaker 1: this is right, this would be what a good person does.
Speaker 1: And you can have all kinds of rational thoughts like
Speaker 1: that your heart is also going off for the suffering
Speaker 1: of the dog. And in all of us what is
Speaker 1: important here and this is really the true form basis
Speaker 1: of morality, really, which very few of us ever find.
Speaker 1: It's not in rules and regulations and thou shalts and
Speaker 1: dulshal nots. And this is what a definition of a
Speaker 1: good person or a bad person. It is in acting
Speaker 1: and seeing things in terms of wholeness, in terms of totality.
Speaker 1: And it's like with the two wolves at the beginning.
Speaker 1: And that's why I said, we feed the both. We
Speaker 1: don't throw one out or something, but watch what you're
Speaker 1: feeding them. You know, Kindness is something of the whole.
Speaker 1: The opposite of that is something of the part or
Speaker 1: the self, where this faction against that faction. So in
Speaker 1: helping someone who's suffering or a dog, and now it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter a plant even that's suffering in some way,
Speaker 1: this is action. And if your heart is there, that
Speaker 1: your heart is with the whole and with taking things
Speaker 1: as a whole. It isn't because it's right or wrong
Speaker 1: or because we can start to argue about these things
Speaker 1: and try to justify it. Now there's nothing to justify.
Speaker 1: You're acting a lollness, and the kindness extends to everything,
Speaker 1: even the air around us. You know, in the earth
Speaker 1: you live in a ratically a different way, and your
Speaker 1: heart and mind are at peace. And I wouldn't say that, well,
Speaker 1: this justifies than being kind to animals. There's no argument
Speaker 1: for that. Also, sometimes you're in a situation where it's
Speaker 1: not really clear what to do, or for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: you might not act here where you did there. And
Speaker 1: if then if you ask yourself, Eve, well why why
Speaker 1: did I do that? I wouldn't spend too much time
Speaker 1: with that. It's just because you're not gonna come up
Speaker 1: with or that you're not going to get something you
Speaker 1: can grasp there. Um, you're just gonna make your head spin.
Speaker 1: But it's just in your heart. We can learn to
Speaker 1: keep our heart open to do everything to the whole.
Speaker 1: That's the treat with kindness. That's why I said at
Speaker 1: the beginning to the treat the so called bad wolf, well,
Speaker 1: well treat them both, because it's hard to distinguish. How
Speaker 1: do you know for sure at the bad wolf there
Speaker 1: but if you treat everything with kindness, and we're kind
Speaker 1: it comes from you know, we're referring to our own kind.
Speaker 1: That's all you would treat those who are of your
Speaker 1: own kind. But if you can let that sense of
Speaker 1: what's of your own kind extent of everything, and you're
Speaker 1: there and there's no no need to justify anything, and
Speaker 1: the understanding of why you feel peaceful and calm and
Speaker 1: more at ease in the world than you would have
Speaker 1: otherwise becomes really apparent. One thing that you say very
Speaker 1: often is you make the distinction between perception and conception,
Speaker 1: and that that distinction is a big one, is a
Speaker 1: really important one. Describe what each of those are and
Speaker 1: what is so important about being clear about what's going
Speaker 1: on there. Yeah, well, perception is it's more subtle in
Speaker 1: this but the easiest way to talk about it at first,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't quite capture the whole thing. But perception
Speaker 1: is basically, you know, what we take in through our senses.
Speaker 1: There's all kinds of problems with me saying it that way,
Speaker 1: because there's a dinner's I and me and my senses
Speaker 1: and that. But just to kind of get us into
Speaker 1: the general ballpark, that's what we're talking about here. But
Speaker 1: the thing is, will take whatever sense object is appearing
Speaker 1: in the mind now, and we'll start to conceptualize about it.
Speaker 1: First of all, we'll turn it into a thing, into
Speaker 1: something that seems to have substance and it is a
Speaker 1: particular thing and that sort of thing. I use the
Speaker 1: example in the book where I say, I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's a common experience that it has happened to
Speaker 1: me where I'm often some distant place or something, and
Speaker 1: then I hear some kind of a rumbling sound and
Speaker 1: I wonder, was that thunder or was that a plane
Speaker 1: I heard in the distance or something like that, And
Speaker 1: the perceptual experience is that, well, there's that sensation. I
Speaker 1: don't even know if I want to call it sound.
Speaker 1: But immediately we try to conceptualize it, well, was that
Speaker 1: a plane or is it, you know, thunder, And then
Speaker 1: we start to go with that. And what cannot be
Speaker 1: doubted is the actual perceptual experience. But when we conceptualize
Speaker 1: it now it was a plane, Well, that can be doubted,
Speaker 1: and you might be mistaken, but we cannot be mistaken
Speaker 1: about the perceptual experience. And so there's a subtle difference there. Well,
Speaker 1: it might be subtle, but it's also huge in terms
Speaker 1: of how we might react to things. It's important to
Speaker 1: make that distinction. There's a much there's a great deal
Speaker 1: that comes from that. And all of our suffering, our
Speaker 1: human suffering, is tied up in the way we conceptualize
Speaker 1: the world. And if we realize that this is just
Speaker 1: our take on the world, it doesn't necessarily have to
Speaker 1: be wrong or or right or anything like that. It's
Speaker 1: hard to justify that any go in any direction. But
Speaker 1: we do need to conceptualize or experience in order the
Speaker 1: function in the world. So it isn't like conception is bad.
Speaker 1: And here's where, uh, you know, belief comes in and
Speaker 1: two where all of a sudden might take on the
Speaker 1: world is correct and right, and I believe it, and
Speaker 1: I'd lose everything if this weren't true. And you know
Speaker 1: all the kind of worries and threats that come about.
Speaker 1: And it's a kind of insanity, but it captures most
Speaker 1: of us unless we just wake up to the actual
Speaker 1: flu with nature of what it's being experienced. Here there
Speaker 1: is the sensation of say a sound, do we have
Speaker 1: to name what it is? Well, maybe we do it
Speaker 1: depending on what situation. If it's a say, you're in
Speaker 1: some jungle somewhere, and it could be a big cat
Speaker 1: that made some sound, it might be good to distinguish.
Speaker 1: But you know, so, I'm not saying conceptualizing is out
Speaker 1: of the question, but we have to realize that whatever
Speaker 1: we conceptualize isn't necessarily the way things are. If we
Speaker 1: don't look at this carefully, we'll be lost to that
Speaker 1: and we freeze ourselves into a particular viewpoint or a
Speaker 1: belief system or something like this. And virtually, I won't
Speaker 1: say all human stuffing comes with it, but that's a
Speaker 1: great deal of it right there, and there's no basis
Speaker 1: for any of it. You said earlier that seeing things
Speaker 1: more clearly, or if we were to see things clearly,
Speaker 1: would relieve all the existential human suffering like that, But
Speaker 1: that doesn't relieve all suffering. It relieves the suffering of
Speaker 1: a type. Is that sort of your feel or your
Speaker 1: belief on it or I guess it depends how you
Speaker 1: define suffering. Yeah, if there's some deep disturbance in the
Speaker 1: heart and the mind, this is coming from, you know,
Speaker 1: holding onto some delusional you know thought of some sort
Speaker 1: to the extent that we can be freed from this
Speaker 1: and relieved of this, will be relieved of a great
Speaker 1: deal of suffering. And what's important about this is that
Speaker 1: with that now our mind can settle down, and with
Speaker 1: a quiet and settled, tranquil mind, we can more easily
Speaker 1: see the nature of what is actually taking place here.
Speaker 1: This is sanity. Now to the extent that we can
Speaker 1: truly see what's going on, will be perfectly sane. But
Speaker 1: to the extent that we're caught up in what I
Speaker 1: believe about this, what I think about that, what must happen? No, No,
Speaker 1: we're kind of heading down the road of insanity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's important to wake up to this. Uh well, wake
Speaker 1: up to the fact that whatever it is you're gripping
Speaker 1: isn't ultimately true. Here's the two truths. Again. It might
Speaker 1: be relatively true, it might be functional and useful in
Speaker 1: particular circumstance, but ultimately there's a freedom beyond that. You
Speaker 1: say somewhere that the difference between a Buddha and ordinary person,
Speaker 1: the difference is not in perception, it's in conception. To
Speaker 1: a buddha, to a person with right wisdom, there's no
Speaker 1: and I think this word is key. There's no habitual
Speaker 1: overing if perceptual experience with concepts, with ideas, beliefs and notions,
Speaker 1: preformed habits of thought that are used to explain experience.
Speaker 1: And I think that the really important word there is
Speaker 1: habitual overlaying, because as we've said, putting things into concepts
Speaker 1: and forming things is a useful thing in certain cases,
Speaker 1: but in most of us we don't even know we're
Speaker 1: doing it. It just happens like that. And so the
Speaker 1: difference is in being able to choose, or maybe to
Speaker 1: move more freely between conception and perception. Yeah. Well, perception
Speaker 1: is always there if we turn our attention to it,
Speaker 1: but we have to learn to recognize it and see
Speaker 1: just what that is. It is always present. The conceptual
Speaker 1: take isn't they come and go? And the conceptualizing the
Speaker 1: mind can actually go quiet, But the perceptual aspect, it
Speaker 1: is very quiet, but it doesn't go away to the
Speaker 1: extent that we can start to wake up to what's
Speaker 1: going on there. We can calm ourselves when we're in
Speaker 1: a situation of great stress. It's just a very healthy
Speaker 1: mind way to go. But I want to say all
Speaker 1: of this without implying that our conceptualized versions of things
Speaker 1: are bad or wrong. I wouldn't say that. They can
Speaker 1: often be mostly probably very useful and functional. They can
Speaker 1: also be a pernicious and bring a lot of suffering
Speaker 1: into the world too. But it isn't a matter of
Speaker 1: trying to get rid of these things, or like getting
Speaker 1: rid of the bad wolf. You know, No, just take
Speaker 1: care of these things. But the sanity with which we
Speaker 1: can take care of these things is coming from that
Speaker 1: mind which is open to the whole, and this would
Speaker 1: be more resembles the mind of perception. There's a debate
Speaker 1: in spirituality between a sudden awakening and a gradual awakening.
Speaker 1: And as we think about this idea of what causes
Speaker 1: us to be not awake, is this layering of conception? Right,
Speaker 1: continuing to layer on conceptions are the degrees in your
Speaker 1: mind of being closer to awake Because I'm doing less
Speaker 1: conceptualizing with awakening, it's not relying on the conceptual at all.
Speaker 1: So in the realm of conceptualizing, you know, there's here
Speaker 1: and there's there, and there's you and me and all
Speaker 1: of this sort of thing, And this is relative reality.
Speaker 1: Everything's moving around a bit. But what we're talking about
Speaker 1: is waking up, getting a full blown understanding or realization
Speaker 1: of the perceptual experience. Since we're already there, we've been
Speaker 1: there all along, there's no way of approaching it, we're
Speaker 1: getting close to it or anything of this sort. Those
Speaker 1: kinds of terms approaching, moving, getting closer, that all belongs
Speaker 1: to the conceptual and you can't really apply that then
Speaker 1: to well, can I get closer to the perceptual? No,
Speaker 1: not really, because they're already in it. You can't get
Speaker 1: any closer than that. That's why we talk about waking up.
Speaker 1: We don't talk about figuring it out. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just a matter of seeing it. But if we
Speaker 1: use the analogy of let's say a diamond, right, the
Speaker 1: diamonds there, I'm already awake, right, but it's covered in things,
Speaker 1: you know, but it would be covered in this analogy.
Speaker 1: I think what it would be covered with would be
Speaker 1: our concepts, our ideas, and as a result that we
Speaker 1: don't notice the diamond for what it is. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: wonder to the degree in which there is instead of
Speaker 1: four inches of dirt, there's an inch of dirt, right,
Speaker 1: we're scraping. But but I do agree, ultimately you zen
Speaker 1: practice describes it often. I've had some experiences of it.
Speaker 1: There are moments where the whole veil sort of falls away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to the extent that we keep playing with the conceptual,
Speaker 1: we kind of deprive ourselves of that. And and it
Speaker 1: isn't again like we have to get rid of the conceptual.
Speaker 1: There's literature that speaks that way that you know, but
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. That's going too far. Yeah, But it's just
Speaker 1: at some point realize there's something very quiet that's going
Speaker 1: on all the time that we're not paying attention to.
Speaker 1: And to the extent that we can suddenly open up
Speaker 1: to that, that's when these moments of insight might strike.
Speaker 1: Not necessarily in every case, but that's what we're opening
Speaker 1: up to. It's a vail will to all of us
Speaker 1: at any time. And if you can get the mind
Speaker 1: to settle down, be quiet, get a little tranquility there,
Speaker 1: could you know, finally open up widely for us if
Speaker 1: once we actually see this true whole nature of reality
Speaker 1: and things won't be the same after that. We'll go
Speaker 1: back into the conceptual, but with a different understanding than
Speaker 1: we had before. Yep, for sure. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk with you a little bit about coons, because coons
Speaker 1: are away, it seems of moving away from the conceptual
Speaker 1: and I wanted to read something you wrote about coons
Speaker 1: and then maybe we can discuss them. But you said,
Speaker 1: people think of Cohen's as riddles or problems that need
Speaker 1: to be solved. But that's not the case at all.
Speaker 1: With every coon. The point is not to arrive at
Speaker 1: an answer through our ordinary conceptualizing minds. Rather, the point
Speaker 1: is to see for ourselves that our concepts can never
Speaker 1: provide us with a satisfying answer. And I think that's
Speaker 1: such a great definition of how coons work. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: throw us back into that space where you really can't
Speaker 1: grasp it, which we find frustrating at first. You approach
Speaker 1: a coon and it just seems inscrutable, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just you can't identify anything there or read anything into it.
Speaker 1: But that's because we'll approach it what our conceptualizing mine.
Speaker 1: But we actually have the mind that sees it all
Speaker 1: right all along, and really what it sees is that
Speaker 1: there's not a problem here, But when we grasp we'll
Speaker 1: see it as a problem, that there are problems here
Speaker 1: and things that need to be figured out. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: we don't really get to the end of what the
Speaker 1: problem is until we can see that we're gripping something
Speaker 1: that doesn't hold up, doesn't make sense. It isn't really
Speaker 1: a part of the world. It's something we've imagined. So
Speaker 1: in your work with coons, do you still you know,
Speaker 1: as a senior teacher, still work on coon's yourself as
Speaker 1: part of your practice. Yeah. Well, my tradition is Soto's
Speaker 1: in which is different than say Rinsy, where they would
Speaker 1: use cons uh and you'd assign cons to students to
Speaker 1: help bring them along and you go from quan to
Speaker 1: kana and this sort of thing. In the Soto tradition,
Speaker 1: we spend more time just looking at the different cons
Speaker 1: and the teacher would work with them by just discussing
Speaker 1: the con, looking at the corn and rather than turning
Speaker 1: it over and saying, Okay, what figured this out? I
Speaker 1: don't know, So I don't know what goes on there.
Speaker 1: In Dogan Zenji, who was a great teacher from the
Speaker 1: thirteenth century, but Sotos and to Japan from China, his
Speaker 1: approach to the Qan, his approach to everything, and he
Speaker 1: doesn't see things in terms of that we're going along
Speaker 1: some kind of graduated course. We move from one step
Speaker 1: to another and to another. It's more a matter of
Speaker 1: we study this, we look at this, we steep in this.
Speaker 1: At some point the shackles may drop away and we
Speaker 1: finally realize where we are and what's going on. And
Speaker 1: so it's it has more of a flavor like that.
Speaker 1: But we'll use the coins in the way I use
Speaker 1: coins most of the time. On occasion I have assigned
Speaker 1: a con or two to to somebody because it might
Speaker 1: be a particular thing there that it would help them
Speaker 1: if they could see themselves. I don't want to tell
Speaker 1: them what to see. They have to see it for themselves.
Speaker 1: But otherwise, most of the time when I'm teaching with cons,
Speaker 1: I'm just lecturing on the pointing out there's all sorts
Speaker 1: of things that are going on here, and different ways
Speaker 1: of looking at our experience than we might, you know,
Speaker 1: habitually you know, fall into and uh, you know, so
Speaker 1: that we use it in a different way of that sort.
Speaker 1: I gave a description of kind of the sotal approach
Speaker 1: to this, and I wrote an introduction to a book.
Speaker 1: It was The Iron Flute. It's a collection of total
Speaker 1: cons a total collection which is unusual and uh, that
Speaker 1: came up with tuttle back, I don't know, around the
Speaker 1: year two thousand or so. Well, actually at our center
Speaker 1: where I teach. On our website you can find it
Speaker 1: if people there, and you can look at texts that
Speaker 1: are there. I forget the title of it now, but
Speaker 1: it's but it's on coins, and so it'll give you
Speaker 1: a kind of a total take on coins. That's a
Speaker 1: bit different from the RNZA, which is more commonly known
Speaker 1: the rnzay. The tradition I've been studying in is white plums.
Speaker 1: So it's it's a little of both, right, it's I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what am I getting. Example that you know,
Speaker 1: I'm getting some asota and some some rinzai. So yeah,
Speaker 1: well that that was from zum Rochi, I believe, so yeah,
Speaker 1: so and and he was trained in both. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: Cohens were a big piece I want to talk about.
Speaker 1: There's a phrase in Zen that I've always loved. I
Speaker 1: don't know what order these are commonly set in the
Speaker 1: way I always hear it is great faith, great doubt,
Speaker 1: great determination. You write a little bit about great doubt,
Speaker 1: and you say great doubt is not like ordinary doubt.
Speaker 1: Share a little bit more about you know, when we're
Speaker 1: talking about great doubt, what do we mean normally? Well,
Speaker 1: it is it's it's it's a counter to believe and
Speaker 1: we believe this. Yeah, but if you believe this, well
Speaker 1: not there's room for doubt. Doubt will be there. It
Speaker 1: might be very minute and you don't notice it, you know,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of opposite end of the balance scale
Speaker 1: with belief. An adult could increase and uh and actually
Speaker 1: take over it. So there might still be a little
Speaker 1: thread of belief left in there. Uh. But this is
Speaker 1: when we're doubting and ordinary things or not just ideas
Speaker 1: and thoughts, but also you know, people and and uh
Speaker 1: and even objects of various kinds that we might you know,
Speaker 1: can being the again the doubt like here again, I
Speaker 1: have this cup in front of me. Here I can
Speaker 1: be again to doubt the realness of this cup in
Speaker 1: any number of ways. But great doubt does come with
Speaker 1: that question why is there anything at all? You know,
Speaker 1: you know, why is there something rather than nothing? Which
Speaker 1: I believe was originally voiced by Leibnitz, but I first
Speaker 1: learned about it through reading bertrand Russell. As I pointed
Speaker 1: out in the book there. But for someone who actually
Speaker 1: tastes this, say you're out on a alr night, doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be anything quite like that, perhaps, but you
Speaker 1: look up at the vastness of the sky and then
Speaker 1: the stars and all of this. At some point it
Speaker 1: could overwhelm you, like what you know, why why this
Speaker 1: at all? How can anything be? You know? And when
Speaker 1: you get to the point where you you even doubt
Speaker 1: the hand in front of your face, I mean truly
Speaker 1: doubt it, you truly realize you see that there's no reality,
Speaker 1: no substance to it. That's great doubt. But then what
Speaker 1: you need to see, hopefully it won't they do long
Speaker 1: You realize, yes, but there's a hand here, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know so with great doubt it it doesn't destroy
Speaker 1: everything momentarily maybe, and then everything is kind of recharged,
Speaker 1: but in an irahically different way. That's what was kind
Speaker 1: of depicted in that phrase of you know, before I
Speaker 1: studied zand mountains or mountains and rivers were rivers, and
Speaker 1: then I studied this stuff. Mounds are no longer, mountains,
Speaker 1: rivers no longer. If you can move from that one
Speaker 1: quickly to the third one when you realize but here's
Speaker 1: there's a hand here, even though you realize there's no hand,
Speaker 1: there's no particular thing that's the hand, and yet here's
Speaker 1: a hand. Now there's a full awakening, and we've broken
Speaker 1: through the great doubt, and we also, uh now can
Speaker 1: understand the nature of mind and consciousness and that what
Speaker 1: is being experienced here it is is just that there's
Speaker 1: a long pole great Chinese and Master said there is
Speaker 1: only the one mind, besides which nothing exists. And from
Speaker 1: the way that's written, I can tell he saw this,
Speaker 1: he realized this himself, and we can experience that great
Speaker 1: doubt and break through. This is what we're realized. This
Speaker 1: is what we'll see and there won't be any question
Speaker 1: about it. Well, I think that is a beautiful place
Speaker 1: for us to wrap up with that idea that you know,
Speaker 1: we can see for ourselves. We can see for ourselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you, Eric, Yeah, thank you so much. Steve. It's
Speaker 1: always a pleasure to talk with you. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed it very much talking with you. If what
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