Speaker 1: If you're in the river, you cannot see river. But
Speaker 1: when you see river but weaver still there, you don't
Speaker 1: have to block the river. 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. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is Minor Ren Poche is a much loved
Speaker 1: accomplished Tibetan Buddhist meditation teacher. When not attending the monasteries
Speaker 1: under his care in India and Nepal, n Poche spends
Speaker 1: time each year traveling and teaching worldwide. Today, him and
Speaker 1: Eric discuss his new book in Love with the World
Speaker 1: Amongst Journey through the Bards of Living and Dying. Hello,
Speaker 1: Minor in Poche, thank you for being on the show.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to have you and welcome. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. But I much very happy to be here.
Speaker 1: It is a real pleasure to have you on. You
Speaker 1: are a very esteemed figure in Tibetan Buddhism, and I'm
Speaker 1: excited to get to talk with you. We will talk
Speaker 1: about lots of different things. One of the main things
Speaker 1: that I want to talk about is your book, Love
Speaker 1: with the World Amongst Journey through the Bards of Living
Speaker 1: and Dying. But before we do that, let's start like
Speaker 1: we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's
Speaker 1: a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second, and he looks up at his
Speaker 1: grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And
Speaker 1: the grandfather says the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do. Yeah. So for me, since childhood, I learned meditation.
Speaker 1: So according to our meditative teaching, we all have fundamentally
Speaker 1: wonderful nature sometime what we call basic in it goodness
Speaker 1: or the original purity or the inner well being. So
Speaker 1: there's many names. But then at the same time, what
Speaker 1: we call because we are not recognize our fundamental qualities.
Speaker 1: Sometimes what we call if we have ten qualities with us,
Speaker 1: nine is positive one negative. So normally what we see
Speaker 1: is only one negative one, and maybe we lost with
Speaker 1: that negative one. We exaggerate that, and even though we
Speaker 1: have nine good qualities within us, we don't see and
Speaker 1: we ignore that. So that is what we call ignorance.
Speaker 1: So therefore from the ignorance, then there's a lot of
Speaker 1: mental disturbance what we call clacies and the suffering like
Speaker 1: all the not pleasant and the difficult things may arises.
Speaker 1: But we have wonderful, great wonderful nature what we call
Speaker 1: we have skills, love and compassion, awareness, But ten shaal
Speaker 1: wiscom all this are there? So yeah, we can say
Speaker 1: they're trutings within us. But the important is. First important
Speaker 1: is how you recognize these qualities within you, and second
Speaker 1: important how you act on it. I want to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about what you said there, because
Speaker 1: I'm going to just read a line of yours that
Speaker 1: I read that I think is really important, And you say,
Speaker 1: if you're determined to think of yourself as limited, fearful, vulnerable,
Speaker 1: or scarred by past experience, I know only that you
Speaker 1: have chosen to do so. The opportunity to experience yourself
Speaker 1: differently is always available. And I think that's what you're
Speaker 1: speaking to here. It's not that those things aren't true,
Speaker 1: not that there's not some Yes, maybe I have been
Speaker 1: damaged by past experiences. Maybe I do have, as you said,
Speaker 1: the negative quality, but it's where I'm putting my attention,
Speaker 1: and that I can learn to experience myself very differently
Speaker 1: if I stopped sort of hanging on to these fixed qualities. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: totally true. So I had panic attacks when I was
Speaker 1: seven eight years old, and then I learned meditation when
Speaker 1: I was nine years old. So normally, my father said,
Speaker 1: our init quality it's always calm, free, pure, just like sky.
Speaker 1: So in my hometown we have wonderful sky, but our
Speaker 1: ignorant and glacious and all this ups and down, and
Speaker 1: for me the panic at that time, panic is like
Speaker 1: storm in the sky. Although we might have very stone
Speaker 1: and very turbulents of weather and storm, but the nature
Speaker 1: of sky is still free, still present, still always there.
Speaker 1: The storm cannot change the nature of sky. So of
Speaker 1: course we all have problems, We all do mistakes. Everybody
Speaker 1: has some events in the past, some encounter with problems,
Speaker 1: obstacle in our life. That's normal. But the very important
Speaker 1: is sometimes what we call obstacle is the opportunity. Actually
Speaker 1: we learn from problem, we learn from mistakes, we learn
Speaker 1: from suffering obstacle. So you know, one time my father said,
Speaker 1: if you're going somewhere and if you reach the dead end,
Speaker 1: there's huge wall in front of you. What you should
Speaker 1: do first, check out your backpack and throw the other
Speaker 1: side of the wall. So once you pay is the
Speaker 1: other side of the wall. Now what you will do.
Speaker 1: You will cross them this huge world. But you may
Speaker 1: not cross like that. It like that way, maybe that
Speaker 1: that way is impossible, but we have to accept that also.
Speaker 1: But there's the witch and ways you can cross the wall,
Speaker 1: So that is really important. We all have capacity, we
Speaker 1: all have potential, we all have wisdom, love and compassion
Speaker 1: within us. So it's really important that where which side
Speaker 1: of us we should look and discover and nurture and
Speaker 1: be with that. I think this is a very important.
Speaker 1: Staying on the same topic, you say that we often
Speaker 1: talk about ourselves and static mental postures such as I
Speaker 1: am an angry person, and there are attachment to these things.
Speaker 1: Narrows are experience and it induces them to repeat themselves. Yes,
Speaker 1: so I think very important that normally we have to
Speaker 1: make different between me and my emotion, me and my mistake,
Speaker 1: me and my panic. So my mother, you know, when
Speaker 1: I was young, when I did something mistake and my
Speaker 1: mother said, oh, you're this action is not good. But
Speaker 1: she never say you is not good. So I think
Speaker 1: this is a really important that we need to learn that.
Speaker 1: I think fundamentally everybody wanted to do good. Sometimes what
Speaker 1: we call the nature of tree and the habit of tree.
Speaker 1: So the tree, the nature of tree straightforward and the
Speaker 1: balancing the branches. But because of the wind, because of
Speaker 1: other situations, tree may have got this way or that way.
Speaker 1: But that is the not our true nature. So it
Speaker 1: is a really important that two gratitude, appreciate, recognize about
Speaker 1: our fundamental qualities. M I love that. I've never heard
Speaker 1: that habit of tree and nature of tree. It speaks
Speaker 1: to this idea that sort of what you're saying, this
Speaker 1: underlying goodness. You used a lot of different terms for it.
Speaker 1: The one I've heard in my Zen tradition is Buddha nature. Right,
Speaker 1: we all have Buddha nature, right, similar idea, But then
Speaker 1: we have all this conditioning that comes from the world.
Speaker 1: We are conditioned this way, we have this experience, and
Speaker 1: we're treated that way, and we have this fear. And
Speaker 1: so you're talking about dropping back into that underlying reality.
Speaker 1: How do you do that? Because that sounds great, but
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to do. So we can do a
Speaker 1: few things with that. One one of the easier is
Speaker 1: if we are not familiar with the meditation, then we
Speaker 1: learn to appreciate and gratitude. So maybe in the engine
Speaker 1: time what we call counting stone, so we have bright
Speaker 1: stone and duck stone, and then we count whatever we see.
Speaker 1: Try to observe, try to see the good things within yourself. Actually,
Speaker 1: there are so many good things there. But what happened
Speaker 1: at the beginning, we see negative part. So whatever we
Speaker 1: see negative, but we don't judge. Dug store and positive
Speaker 1: heart bright stone. But nowadays something not easy to find stone.
Speaker 1: So you get right now. So let me tell you
Speaker 1: a story. One time a couple came to me, and
Speaker 1: this couple is really struggle and they are having kind
Speaker 1: of like argument and fighting every day. The husband is
Speaker 1: always want to control, control everything, and why we is
Speaker 1: a worried. She's always worried. And then the both of
Speaker 1: them came to me and asked me, please pray for us.
Speaker 1: They're expecting some magic, you know, power of blessing that
Speaker 1: I give them, then the problem will solve. But Aciel
Speaker 1: I told them I don't have that capacity of power. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I cannot help, but I can guide you something. And
Speaker 1: the boat said, whatever from you, it's okay. So that
Speaker 1: I told them, okay, from today on, every day, you both,
Speaker 1: you know, dedicate thirty minutes of time to talk about
Speaker 1: positive things each other. And they both said, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good idea and they went back. After a few
Speaker 1: weeks later, they both came and they said, how our
Speaker 1: is too long? You know, they try to discuss positive
Speaker 1: things each other than yeah, when I've first time met
Speaker 1: you and you are really look kind bad, you know now,
Speaker 1: but that was twenty years ago, so then they cannot
Speaker 1: discuss and become quite so. Then they asked me what
Speaker 1: should I do? And I told them, okay, okay, I
Speaker 1: will give you a discount. So now just five minutes,
Speaker 1: and they both are very happy. Five minutes we can
Speaker 1: do that. They're gone and I haven't met them for
Speaker 1: one year. And after one year they both came and
Speaker 1: they said these five years changed. They lie. Actually now
Speaker 1: even thirty minutes not enough. I was nice, who what happened?
Speaker 1: You know? I asked them, and they said because they
Speaker 1: just discussed over five minutes and they kind of like
Speaker 1: lost stress and they found actually a lot of good
Speaker 1: things within each other. Actually they really deeper level. They
Speaker 1: kind each other. But they also know they both had personality.
Speaker 1: One is the one to control, one is you know
Speaker 1: what he and they give humor about sense of humor
Speaker 1: about each personality. When the husband go out come back,
Speaker 1: he knocked the door and he said the most the
Speaker 1: you know, powerful person is coming. And the wife open
Speaker 1: and the door and said, welcome, the most warrious person
Speaker 1: in the world is welcomes you. So he sends humor
Speaker 1: about their own personality, but they never give up continue transform.
Speaker 1: I think this is really important. Yeah, it's interesting because
Speaker 1: Skier in the West, there's a number of scholars of relationships.
Speaker 1: They study relationships and they found that, you know, it
Speaker 1: really takes like five positive remarks to make up for
Speaker 1: like one negative remark. And so you've got to make
Speaker 1: an effort. What can I see in this other person
Speaker 1: that's positive? And I think we'd apply this right back
Speaker 1: to ourselves looking inside. And I heard you say once
Speaker 1: talking about your panic attacks, and you said that your
Speaker 1: father said to you, even in your panic attacks, underneath
Speaker 1: it is love and compassion. Explain that, because I think
Speaker 1: that's a really important point that even in what we
Speaker 1: consider something negative about ourselves, if we go deep enough,
Speaker 1: we find something else. Yeah. Actually we find what we
Speaker 1: call awareness, love and compassion and wisdom. And this tree
Speaker 1: is the actually fundamental call it or panic. Why pannis
Speaker 1: exists because of awareness, love and compassion and wisdom. Actually,
Speaker 1: without that, panic cannot exist. So what we call ocean
Speaker 1: and wave, the wave is panic. But what is ocean
Speaker 1: is the water, sky and cloud, cloud, is panic. But
Speaker 1: without sky we cannot have cloud. So actually, of course
Speaker 1: there's a step by step practice. Normally I teach this
Speaker 1: as course. I do level one, never two. So of
Speaker 1: course is take some time. Maybe I will say okay, now,
Speaker 1: maybe I focus on the love and compassion. So when
Speaker 1: we really look at the word is love and compassion.
Speaker 1: Love meaning looking for something nice, looking for happiness, looking
Speaker 1: for virtue, looking for meaning for you, for others, for everybody.
Speaker 1: So there's a seeking, there's a longing, there's a motivation.
Speaker 1: So that is the love to have this to you
Speaker 1: and everybody. Compassion is wanting to free from problems, obstacles, mistakes, uneasiness.
Speaker 1: So that is the fundamental essence of love and compassion.
Speaker 1: So why we have panic, Actually we don't like something
Speaker 1: or we are craving something. We are looking for happiness
Speaker 1: may not happening and we don't like that. So everybody
Speaker 1: looking for happiness. Actually, maybe you are now listening to
Speaker 1: this broadcast. Why you are looking for happiness? And why
Speaker 1: are you're listening now? Maybe you're drinking coffee or tea
Speaker 1: looking for happiness. And each movement of your body, each
Speaker 1: glimpse of your eyes is looking for happiness, So that
Speaker 1: is actually love and compassion. But then normally we don't
Speaker 1: go deber level into panic. We start on the service level.
Speaker 1: So service level, there's a panic, there's a concept, there's
Speaker 1: some depression, could be hatred, so many different things of
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blaha ya ya yarra. But then
Speaker 1: when we got debt and devor actually there's a genuine love,
Speaker 1: compassion of wisdom. Can you share briefly the difference between
Speaker 1: those three, So love and compassion, awareness and wisdom. We've
Speaker 1: talked about love and compassion. Let's talk about awareness and
Speaker 1: wisdom briefly and how those are used in the terminology
Speaker 1: you're using. So awen is the mean annoying our mind
Speaker 1: the fundamental quality what we call clear and annoying. So
Speaker 1: mind actually is and another word for the mind sometimes
Speaker 1: what we call clarity luminosity. Normally when we think of
Speaker 1: a mind is thought, emotions, feeling, memory. But these are
Speaker 1: what we call function of mind or mental factors, or
Speaker 1: the sometimes what we call ready and of the mind,
Speaker 1: not the extra mind. So what is the extra mind?
Speaker 1: Clear and annoying? But that is not easy to find
Speaker 1: because it cannot be grabbed by conceptual mind. You need
Speaker 1: to find when you know how to be with it.
Speaker 1: So rather than looking or controlling, just be and that
Speaker 1: luminosity or clarity or awareness. It's the fundamental of panic,
Speaker 1: essence of depression, essence of thought, essence of memory. Like
Speaker 1: ocean and the wave, the wave is ocean. Actually without water,
Speaker 1: how you can have wave. So awareness is basically the
Speaker 1: space that everything is happening in. Would that be another
Speaker 1: way of describing it? Yes? Yes, great, So the awareness,
Speaker 1: love and compassion are one actually, and that is the
Speaker 1: basis of whatever happening in our mind, the basis of
Speaker 1: the all this thought than wisdom wisdom? Yes, so wisdom
Speaker 1: is I think, although recognizing all these are wisdoms, so
Speaker 1: wisdom is quite difficult to understand. So you need to
Speaker 1: prout to step by step. Got it? So you do
Speaker 1: talk a lot about this ocean and wave idea, and
Speaker 1: I like it. And you say that when most beginners
Speaker 1: start with the idea that meditation is supposed to be peaceful, right,
Speaker 1: if they feel peaceful, they conclude they're doing it right.
Speaker 1: If we're not, then we conclude we're doing it wrong.
Speaker 1: And when the waves come, we say we cannot meditate
Speaker 1: or we assume the presence of waves means we're not
Speaker 1: meditating correctly, say a little bit more about that. So
Speaker 1: there are two types of meditation, I think in the world.
Speaker 1: So for my lineage is what we call object oriented
Speaker 1: meditation and subject oriented meditation. The object oriented meditation and
Speaker 1: meaning whatever kind of meditation, you have to have objects,
Speaker 1: objects important, breath, body, feeling, taught, emotion, whatever, objects important.
Speaker 1: But my lineage is subject subject meaning the awareness. So
Speaker 1: awareness is with us all the time. Actually, and you
Speaker 1: don't have to really not need to even meditate normally,
Speaker 1: what we can just be let it be as it is.
Speaker 1: But you can use object of course, but object is
Speaker 1: to support awareness, to recognize the awareness. So for that case,
Speaker 1: when we begin to learn meditation, for my lineage is
Speaker 1: even when you watch your breath, the awareness important. Then
Speaker 1: there's a thought, emotion, feeling, whatever, let them come, let
Speaker 1: them go. You can even aware of dull, even full,
Speaker 1: you can aware of panic, depression, hate it. Then everything
Speaker 1: becomes support for awareness. So what we call when you
Speaker 1: see the river, you're out of river. So if you're
Speaker 1: in the river, you cannot see river. But when you
Speaker 1: see river, that means you're out of river, but river
Speaker 1: still there. You don't have to bullo up the river.
Speaker 1: Maybe you can enjoy the river, you know, do some exercise,
Speaker 1: walk along the river while watching the river. And if
Speaker 1: the river become waterful, even better, you know. But normally
Speaker 1: what happened we are fall in the river, lost in
Speaker 1: the river. Then if river become waterfall dangerous, you know,
Speaker 1: a big problems. So sometimes I make a little bit
Speaker 1: funny name for this horizontal liberation and vertical liberation. So
Speaker 1: most people expecting horizontal meaning the gap. If I meditate
Speaker 1: in my mind, there's no blahlahlalah, no ya, I need
Speaker 1: to have peace, empty, specious, think of nothing. But that
Speaker 1: is the horizontal, the gap between pass and the future.
Speaker 1: But the vertical meaning you can have thought. You can
Speaker 1: help emotion everything, but you are baby with that, so
Speaker 1: a VanNess it become bigger than taught because than panic,
Speaker 1: becaut than emotion, and you are not the emotion, you
Speaker 1: are not the talk. Actually we can have both. Of course,
Speaker 1: we don't need to choose whatever it comes to us.
Speaker 1: But eventually, by practicing like this awareness, then we will
Speaker 1: free ourselves, not by controlling, not by creating, just being
Speaker 1: assid is right because you describe the fact that no
Speaker 1: matter what happens, these waves are going to keep coming.
Speaker 1: That's the nature of mind. You know. The nature of
Speaker 1: mind is it's going to think, it's going to have thoughts,
Speaker 1: it's going to have emotions. So even if we were
Speaker 1: to take your horizontal you know, I want this gap
Speaker 1: between things. Those gaps are by the very nature of
Speaker 1: the way the mind works somewhat limited. You just we
Speaker 1: don't sit down and shut it off. I'd like to
Speaker 1: think of it from a neuroscience perspective. It's not like
Speaker 1: you can sit down and start meditating and just power
Speaker 1: down all the neurons in your brain. They don't have
Speaker 1: an off switch. Yeah, I love this concept of horizontal
Speaker 1: versus vertical. Vertical says I don't have to have space
Speaker 1: between thoughts. I need to have space around thoughts. And
Speaker 1: so one way I've heard this described is so you
Speaker 1: start with an object, like you're saying, okay, paying attention
Speaker 1: to my breath. That's the content of awareness. But then
Speaker 1: I turned my attention to what is the content arising within,
Speaker 1: which is the awareness. So then we don't need to
Speaker 1: look for peace, come joy or dull confusion, because all
Speaker 1: these are just cloud anyway eventually. So the most important
Speaker 1: is the awareness become more silients, love and compassion to
Speaker 1: become more vivid. So once we found the space, we
Speaker 1: can have clouded. Actually we can have taught an emotion.
Speaker 1: Nothing wrong to have taught any emotion. In fact, it's good.
Speaker 1: You know if by a mint attention then thought the
Speaker 1: emotion all are gone. Then if we are becoming a
Speaker 1: robot or becoming line, become penetry. What's Upon a time
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Speaker 1: dot com slash wolf. You say, I finally discovered the
Speaker 1: only reliable liberation from suffering, not trying to get rid
Speaker 1: of the problem. Say more about that. Yeah, so that
Speaker 1: is the really fundamental teaching that I've been practicing. So
Speaker 1: once we've discovered this basic innate goodness, the awareness, the clarity,
Speaker 1: love and compassion and wisdom no matter what happened in
Speaker 1: your mind is always there, then no need to do anything.
Speaker 1: Just be who you are and you are perfect from beginning.
Speaker 1: So sometimes what we call um sas liberation liberate by itself,
Speaker 1: not by blocking changing or fighting with the thought any emotions.
Speaker 1: The problem becomes solution extra day. You say elsewhere that
Speaker 1: it's our preoccupation with the problem that nails it in place.
Speaker 1: So I think this is a similar idea that we're
Speaker 1: saying here. It's by trying to get rid of the
Speaker 1: problem or our preoccupation with the problem, we basically are
Speaker 1: grabbing onto it and we're not allowing the nature of
Speaker 1: impermanence of change to have and because we're grasping at it. Right,
Speaker 1: So when I was young, I had panic attacks. But
Speaker 1: what is the most problem during those days? The panic
Speaker 1: or panic is worse than panic. Fear or panic a
Speaker 1: version of panic, so that makes panic longer. That is
Speaker 1: the feeding food for the panic. So you can try
Speaker 1: maybe sometimes I make one funny meditation called pizza meditation.
Speaker 1: Maybe we can try piece of meditation for the pizza meditation.
Speaker 1: For a few seconds, you're not allowed to think of pizza, okay,
Speaker 1: now not I cannot think pizza even one second. What happened,
Speaker 1: Pizza comes. So when we say no pizza, actually more
Speaker 1: pizza will come. So that is what we call the
Speaker 1: service level of mine. The monkey mind does, so monkey
Speaker 1: mine always does the opposite. When we say no, monkey
Speaker 1: mind say yes. When we say yes, monkey mind said no.
Speaker 1: So then actually you don't have to do anything with
Speaker 1: the monkey mind because essence of monkey mind is awareness,
Speaker 1: love and compassion and visdom. So be with that. My
Speaker 1: producer Chris is finally interested in meditation, though he has
Speaker 1: listened to hundreds of these episodes not cared about meditation.
Speaker 1: But now that you've mentioned pizza meditation, I think we
Speaker 1: finally have him on board. He has been doing pizza
Speaker 1: meditation for years. He's a meditation master of pizza. Apparently
Speaker 1: you have a phrase that you used in the book
Speaker 1: that is used in your lineage, which is adding wood
Speaker 1: to the fire. Describe a little bit about what adding
Speaker 1: wood to the fire is and why on earth would
Speaker 1: we want to do this. So, although my lineage of meditation,
Speaker 1: awareness is important, so awareness, love and compassion vista with
Speaker 1: us all the time. But then in order to discover
Speaker 1: that it is quite tyfficult at the beginning, sometimes it's
Speaker 1: difficult because too easy and too close to us so
Speaker 1: become difficult. So first we need to learn a step
Speaker 1: by step practice of meditation. Meditation with objects then let
Speaker 1: go of object what we call object less meditation or
Speaker 1: open awareness meditation. Then eventually make what we call transform
Speaker 1: clacious ignoring, a support for meditation, hated, craving, pride, jealousy.
Speaker 1: So CLASSI has transformed into meditation, becomes support for meditation,
Speaker 1: and then they lose the power, but we don't need
Speaker 1: to block them. Subliberate poison become medicine. Then suffering, so
Speaker 1: eventually panic, depression, stress or physical illness, whatever. But of
Speaker 1: course we have to balance. If you seek, you have
Speaker 1: to check with the doctor. Of course it's very important
Speaker 1: for the relative level. But just checking may not solve
Speaker 1: the problem. So the problem might be there. Maybe we
Speaker 1: transformed the suffering and support for meditation. Eventually, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever problem comes in the life, then all this has
Speaker 1: become adding wood to the fire. So fire is the
Speaker 1: recognition of awareness, love and compassion, of wisdom, whatever comes
Speaker 1: in our lives. So at the beginning, we have to
Speaker 1: make fire with tiny wood with the position of the wind.
Speaker 1: Once the fire become bigger, let wind come and we
Speaker 1: can add various would even b would the fire become bigger.
Speaker 1: So that's the analogy. I think it's interesting because your
Speaker 1: book in love with the world, journey through the Bards
Speaker 1: of Living and dying, you actually leave your monastic living
Speaker 1: to go out into the world old and essentially add
Speaker 1: wood to the fire. And what I think is interesting
Speaker 1: is that you sort of had to go out to
Speaker 1: find wood to put on the fire, whereas I think
Speaker 1: it's almost the opposite problem for a lot of people
Speaker 1: who live life outside of a monastery is it's almost
Speaker 1: as if when we start, there's too much wood in
Speaker 1: the fire already. We didn't get to train with the
Speaker 1: little wood, right, it's been burning all along, and now
Speaker 1: at whatever age we get to sixty, we go, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to start to train in developing or I
Speaker 1: think the word you would use is not developing love
Speaker 1: and compassion awareness is discovering or recognizing because they're already there, right,
Speaker 1: so recognize and I want to start to recognize them.
Speaker 1: But boy, there's a lot of wood on the fire already.
Speaker 1: So would it be safe to say that in to
Speaker 1: use your analogy of you know, you start by putting
Speaker 1: little pieces of wood on the fire. If we're gonna
Speaker 1: work with our afflictions, if going to work with our suffering,
Speaker 1: that maybe we work with some of the easier parts
Speaker 1: of it to start with versus the hardest parts. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's correct, that's correct. So at the beginning we always
Speaker 1: need to start something easy, something say, something you can do,
Speaker 1: so transform small things for me, like although I learned
Speaker 1: meditation from my father and many great meditation teachers, and
Speaker 1: they always recommend that, don't work with the panic right away,
Speaker 1: even when you transform panic into awareness, compassion, whatever that
Speaker 1: practice you're doing. If you feel the panics too strong,
Speaker 1: you cannot watch, you cannot find a love and compassion
Speaker 1: within that, then let go look for another emotion. So
Speaker 1: what I did is panic is quite strong with me,
Speaker 1: but I don't have so much anger normally, so I
Speaker 1: create anger and meditative with anger, I feel good. You know,
Speaker 1: I can find a VanNess with that English sometimes I
Speaker 1: cannot find an ventness with that panic, so I take time,
Speaker 1: step by step, step by step. I want to ask
Speaker 1: you a question about sensation. You say, sensation is the
Speaker 1: link between the object and the mind. So we have
Speaker 1: an object in the outer world, it causes a sensation
Speaker 1: in us, and we register that in the mind, usually
Speaker 1: as I like it or I don't like it, good
Speaker 1: feeling bad, feeling in Buddhist psychology or analysis. I've I've
Speaker 1: heard that the first thing that arises is pleasure or
Speaker 1: pain or neutral. So I experience an object and immediately
Speaker 1: comes pleasure, pain or neutral. Is that somewhat accurate in
Speaker 1: your understanding, Bud. The first appear as optic, so what
Speaker 1: we call let's say less we can talk through the ice.
Speaker 1: So we have the ice here, those tongue body, first
Speaker 1: what we call the organ, the object and the consciousness
Speaker 1: they meet first millisecond whatever when they meet. The eyes
Speaker 1: doesn't see the object yet, so like signs saying the
Speaker 1: light touched to the eyes. And then next whatever millisecond,
Speaker 1: the image appeared on the ice. And that time, maybe
Speaker 1: for you, image appear as beautiful, not beautiful, nice image,
Speaker 1: not nice image, nootle image. Then after that sensation comes
Speaker 1: the image nice pleasant sensation, image not nice unpleasant, And
Speaker 1: from noodle that there is some neotle sensation normally not
Speaker 1: easy to recognize. Then what happened the conception mind grab
Speaker 1: that oh this is good, this is not good. I
Speaker 1: needed how I look for that in the future, I
Speaker 1: mane it. So then the bla comes, but it's kindible.
Speaker 1: What we cause circle, the suffering is circle. So whether
Speaker 1: this object is a nice or not nice, it depends
Speaker 1: on your habit, your past mental like like trauma in
Speaker 1: a way, or kind of imprint. So for some people
Speaker 1: when they look at the pizza, nice image. For some
Speaker 1: people when they look at the pizza are not nice image?
Speaker 1: Or some people need to it depends on your habit,
Speaker 1: depend on how the imprint comes to you. So the
Speaker 1: imprints again, go to this process and then make new
Speaker 1: imprint again, and we will see again that objects become
Speaker 1: like so object seeing. Then would you call that perception
Speaker 1: and then sensation? Yeah, So if the detail level object image,
Speaker 1: recognize sensation again, describe and become imprint and stay in
Speaker 1: the mental street. And so that sensation of pleasant, unpleasant,
Speaker 1: neutral is happening so quickly and so far below the
Speaker 1: conscious level. Based on these imprints that you're describing, Can
Speaker 1: they change? Of course you can change. So how do
Speaker 1: you go about doing that? So I'll give you an
Speaker 1: example from my life here in the US. The people
Speaker 1: when they're doing outdoor work, they have these gas powered
Speaker 1: leaf blowers. They're really loud, and when I hear them,
Speaker 1: I instantly don't like it. I don't like it. I'm
Speaker 1: irritated by it. I don't want it, but I recognize that,
Speaker 1: like the gas powered leaf blower is just an object, right,
Speaker 1: It's just a sound. Okay, So all right, I'm far
Speaker 1: enough along that I recognized. Okay, the problem isn't the sound.
Speaker 1: The problem is how I'm reacting to the sound and
Speaker 1: yet it's happening so split second. I can't seem to
Speaker 1: get in between those things. So how do you start
Speaker 1: to change that on something like that? So view meditation
Speaker 1: application we have to work with the three areas. So
Speaker 1: view starting from cognitive level. Meditation start with the feeling
Speaker 1: or experiential level. Application start with the habitual level or
Speaker 1: the tendency level. So the view is you look for
Speaker 1: the reason. So maybe that noise it's just you're disturbing
Speaker 1: for some other people, maybe they hear unpleasant noise, or
Speaker 1: what is the cause and condition that really bothering you?
Speaker 1: So you can look for many different reasons that you
Speaker 1: can find, and you can you can start new believe.
Speaker 1: What we could view view is believe and then the
Speaker 1: second meditation you're gonna work with that sensation. Normally, certainly
Speaker 1: an unpleasant sensation comes to the body without knowing that
Speaker 1: maybe some sometimes from heart, sometime from the head, sometimes
Speaker 1: from the gut, something from the shoulders. Certainly unpleasant like
Speaker 1: way we feel the entire body in one second. So
Speaker 1: what we can do be with that sense that you
Speaker 1: don't need to look for the reason, just accept and
Speaker 1: the be the sensation. Sensation becomes support forul awareness or
Speaker 1: find the love and compassion within the sensation or wisdom.
Speaker 1: So from the feeling level experiential level, you can walk
Speaker 1: with that and that has automaric healing balls. And by
Speaker 1: these two the view and experiential level, the meditation together,
Speaker 1: try again again, can you have to build new habit?
Speaker 1: Ze comes, bring this two, noise comes, bring the two together.
Speaker 1: There's a lotalized, a lot of noise become. It doesn't
Speaker 1: disturb to you, and it's okay and silalist. Let the
Speaker 1: noise comes, awareness comes, noise comes, love and compassion comes.
Speaker 1: And then that is become supportful love and compassion awareness.
Speaker 1: And it was are there any things that we encounter
Speaker 1: you can't make that change with? So for example, physical
Speaker 1: pain seems like as humans, we all react to physical
Speaker 1: pain with go away, right, that's our natural reaction. Can
Speaker 1: we change that? Like the noise I'm describing. I can
Speaker 1: tell you that I don't know anybody who would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a nice sound. Almost everybody be like, imagine a
Speaker 1: really loud, bad motor running in your ear. You'd be like, well,
Speaker 1: it would be sort of jarring, you know. So are
Speaker 1: there some things that as our nature we're going to
Speaker 1: never be able to relate to that way? Or is
Speaker 1: everything malleable in this fashion? In general? It checks some time.
Speaker 1: Of course, everything can be changed from the mental level,
Speaker 1: but you cannot change pain. Pen is there, but the
Speaker 1: reaction to the pain can be changed. Sometimes what we
Speaker 1: call getting old sick natural suffering, So sometimes we cannot change.
Speaker 1: But fear of getting old is worse than getting old,
Speaker 1: so that can be changed. Maybe we can set up
Speaker 1: your book here for a minute, because I found it
Speaker 1: really remarkable. Can you describe the basic premise of what
Speaker 1: you were trying to do in the book. So this
Speaker 1: book is that my last book. And I went to
Speaker 1: wondering retreat actually just you know, leave my monastery everything
Speaker 1: and go on the street without much support by myself.
Speaker 1: So I have a lot of wonderful experience though they
Speaker 1: are very difficult, and I was kind of naive that
Speaker 1: just go on the street, then I will be fine.
Speaker 1: It's not like that, but actually I really learned a lot.
Speaker 1: One of the real lessons is what I call if
Speaker 1: you love the world, the world loves your back. So
Speaker 1: then the title the book title name in Love with
Speaker 1: the world. Why, as we discussed here, awareness, love and comparaition, wisdom.
Speaker 1: It's the fundamentally essence of all of us. So when
Speaker 1: we more and more connect with those things and actually
Speaker 1: we find wonderful people, cause and conditions and the courage,
Speaker 1: and you will find a solution also if there's a problem.
Speaker 1: So first month was quite difficult. I was almost die
Speaker 1: because of the I did foot poison. But then I
Speaker 1: didn't die. I come back. Then I have really great
Speaker 1: appreciation that just being alive and the street where I'm
Speaker 1: staying there street become like my home. Look at the trees.
Speaker 1: Trees become like what I call the tree made by love.
Speaker 1: So now the before what I feel is unsaved. Here
Speaker 1: there's the problem. Oh there's a danger, of course, now
Speaker 1: I know they're relatively as the danger, but still everything
Speaker 1: becomes like my home. So now that's the first one,
Speaker 1: and after that I spent more than four years. Actually
Speaker 1: everything is quite good. So what I call this is
Speaker 1: really important part of the book transformation self transformation, obstacle
Speaker 1: become opportunity. So you describe in the book that you
Speaker 1: leave your monastic life. You are a highly revered figure
Speaker 1: in your monastic life, and and while you may not
Speaker 1: be considered wealthy, you live the life in which you
Speaker 1: never really had to do things for yourself. You had
Speaker 1: people who took care of your basic needs so that
Speaker 1: you could focus on your meditation practice, deepen in your spirituality,
Speaker 1: all of that. So you had a tendency, had all
Speaker 1: this stuff, and you suddenly decide, I'm walking away from
Speaker 1: all of that and I'm just going to head out
Speaker 1: into the world and see what happens. It's a little
Speaker 1: bit like the Buddha leaving his the legend of the Buddhist,
Speaker 1: you know, had all his needs met and he decided
Speaker 1: to wander out into the world. So similar thing. What
Speaker 1: I found so striking about the book, at least in
Speaker 1: the beginning, is how jarring this was for you. Like
Speaker 1: you went out and all of a sudden, you go
Speaker 1: from living in a monastery and being taken care of
Speaker 1: too basically being on a train in India and describe
Speaker 1: a little bit about how jarring these things were for you,
Speaker 1: because I think it's really powerful because it speaks to
Speaker 1: what we've just been talking about, which is your initial
Speaker 1: reaction to all those things. You were able to overcome
Speaker 1: that and and now relate to those things totally differently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So my name is the Rimpuches. So like intepretent tradition,
Speaker 1: the high title, wherever I go, I have these attendees
Speaker 1: and someone taking care of me so I can do
Speaker 1: study and teaching and learning all these things. And then
Speaker 1: I was teaching around the world since two thousand two
Speaker 1: tho and there's a lot of students, and I have
Speaker 1: a few monasteries. I become head of the monastery, and
Speaker 1: I wrote the book. The first book is a Joy
Speaker 1: Living that's become bestseller. So normally what I describe myself
Speaker 1: as like Dharama prince, so everything is a wonderful condition
Speaker 1: everything then kind of pride comes or I'm the teacher
Speaker 1: Abbett writer and the teacher a lot of students, so
Speaker 1: we have this practice about the wandering retreat. I have
Speaker 1: this in my mind. So when I was young, my
Speaker 1: mother used to read The Great wondering. Many theaters in
Speaker 1: the past, like so it's kind of bad time story.
Speaker 1: People who wander, wandering retreat, Yeah, wondering retreat. And I
Speaker 1: have this idea that I really want to, you know,
Speaker 1: leave everything and do the one unity. I did that,
Speaker 1: but at the beginning I never went alone by myself anyway.
Speaker 1: So that time I have to buy a basic train ticket,
Speaker 1: and everybody's lying there that I'm in India, and everybody
Speaker 1: pushing each other. I was way the way. Many people
Speaker 1: come and I become always last, last, last, and someone
Speaker 1: pushed me behind. So finally I got the ticket. Then
Speaker 1: we are waiting at the train station. Everybody pushed inside.
Speaker 1: When the train comes, the door is totally blowed by
Speaker 1: people and inside people push come out, and I was
Speaker 1: like push inside. So I don't have control, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm on the Eventually I cannot touch my feet to
Speaker 1: the ground. Then I lived inside the train. In the train,
Speaker 1: I was thinking I moved a little forward, but somehow
Speaker 1: I stuck. I look back. I have small backpack, you know,
Speaker 1: that's true. Person between me and backpack, you know, And
Speaker 1: in the train, some of the goat comes, cow comes,
Speaker 1: very smalling. So then I was really shocked. You know,
Speaker 1: I never thought like that way. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of emotion comes. Little fear or unsafe, unpleasant sensation come
Speaker 1: with this train lead and when arrived there, what should
Speaker 1: I do? So so many emotion comes? So meanwhile I
Speaker 1: try my best to practice practice. I did four and
Speaker 1: have year's retreat. The only thing that really protect me,
Speaker 1: said me, It is my practice. Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: amazing as you described the book, to see you sort
Speaker 1: of overwhelmed with these very human emotions. It would be
Speaker 1: the equivalent of a listener of the show me going
Speaker 1: from living a somewhat comfortable, upper middle class Western life
Speaker 1: to suddenly going and being homeless on the streets of Mexico.
Speaker 1: It would be about the equivalent, right, And that's what
Speaker 1: you did. And and like any of us, would you
Speaker 1: have all the normal feelings. I'm afraid, I'm disgusted, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm being given food that I'm like, what is this?
Speaker 1: And what's so fascinating in the book to me is
Speaker 1: how as all that's happening, you're applying your practice to it,
Speaker 1: and you are in real time working to transform these
Speaker 1: emotions using these qualities we've been describing, using loving, kindness
Speaker 1: and compassion, using awareness, using wisdom, you're actually transforming these things.
Speaker 1: And then you go on to get incredibly sick. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if we describe it as a near death experience,
Speaker 1: but you were very close to death. You finally get
Speaker 1: so sick, so dehydrated, you lose consciousness and you wake
Speaker 1: up in a hospital. But that experience of that close
Speaker 1: to dying also was a deep awakening experience for you. Right, yeah, So,
Speaker 1: actually I don't have much money, A few thousand Indian
Speaker 1: rubies and that money gone within three weeks. Actually, so
Speaker 1: I I went from Bodgaya to Gara Nazi and Ani
Speaker 1: to Kush past Nirvanaairvana die there. So first I rand
Speaker 1: a small kind of like gets us basically it's only
Speaker 1: a few too, that means three four dollars. And after
Speaker 1: finish my money, then I have to stay on the street.
Speaker 1: Then I move from a guest house on the street.
Speaker 1: Then I have to beg food. So first I never
Speaker 1: beg food in my life. I feel very shy and
Speaker 1: you know, nervous. And first I went to this street
Speaker 1: kind of like shop. Normally I buy food there. It's
Speaker 1: very cheap. So I went there and tell them all
Speaker 1: my money is gone, can you give me some left
Speaker 1: left upper food? And that person knows me and tell
Speaker 1: me come in the evening. So I went there in
Speaker 1: the evening and got the food, and from the food,
Speaker 1: then I started diarrhea in the midnight. So four or
Speaker 1: five days diarrhea, no medicine for no money for the medicine.
Speaker 1: Drink the water only there's a no hand has to
Speaker 1: do like this. Then water comes and we have to drink.
Speaker 1: So then in the end, somehow I cannot even look
Speaker 1: for water. My body become really failing. Actually I cannot
Speaker 1: really see. All the sense of gone, and my body
Speaker 1: began paralyzed. And what I did is normally what we
Speaker 1: call dying meditation. So there's a very cillier description when
Speaker 1: you die. What happens first stage, second stage, and all
Speaker 1: these stage are happening to me. There's a dissolution of
Speaker 1: element what we got falling, floating and then melting, and
Speaker 1: then in the end the blew away, like when all
Speaker 1: this experience are there. But at the same time awareness
Speaker 1: become more clear, actually more vivid, deeper level. In the end,
Speaker 1: I cannot see, cannot think nothing, but a vent is
Speaker 1: so present and even there's no really thought there. So
Speaker 1: normally when we think about apple, so there's image of
Speaker 1: apple there that is also gone. So there's no time
Speaker 1: from no back, not up, not down, so peaceful joy
Speaker 1: and their sense of love and compassion without object what
Speaker 1: we call nonconceptual love and compassion. So I was in
Speaker 1: that state for a few hours. Then after that I
Speaker 1: come back. So when I come back, then everything is
Speaker 1: become really wonderful, to street become like my home, and
Speaker 1: the wind blow to my face and the body before
Speaker 1: the wind is quite hot during that time, very unpleasant feeling,
Speaker 1: but now it's really unpleasant. So this is a really
Speaker 1: in my I described this very detail in my book.
Speaker 1: But normally I'm saying that don't try. Don't try at home,
Speaker 1: you know, So if you want to really have this meditation. Now,
Speaker 1: when I think about this, it's kind of like it's
Speaker 1: like so as imission, So don't try that at home.
Speaker 1: But in our life, we have a lot of problems,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned before, So try to transform whatever problem
Speaker 1: comes to our mind and make friends of it. Debt, well,
Speaker 1: that is a great place for us to wrap up.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for taking the time to come
Speaker 1: on the show. It is a real honor to have
Speaker 1: you on and I have really enjoyed this conversation and
Speaker 1: talking with Thank you. Thank you very much. If what
Speaker 1: you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making
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