Speaker 1: How are we supposed to behave in a way that
Speaker 1: is spontaneous and free, that doesn't harm others? Welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: 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 m Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: This is part two of our interview with shows on
Speaker 1: Jack Hobner, whose writing has won a Push Card Prize
Speaker 1: and has been published in The New York Times, Tricycle
Speaker 1: the Sun, the Best Buddhist Writing Series, Lions Roar, and
Speaker 1: other publications. His first book, Zen Confidential Confessions of a
Speaker 1: Wayward Monk, was chosen as one of NPR's Best Books
Speaker 1: of two thousand thirteen and won an Independent Publisher Book Award.
Speaker 1: His new book is Single White Monk Tales of Death, Failure,
Speaker 1: and Bad Sex, although not necessarily in that order. Here's
Speaker 1: part two of the interview. All right, we are back
Speaker 1: with part two of our episode with jose and Jack Hobner.
Speaker 1: We're not going to go through the whole parable again
Speaker 1: because Jack made such a mess of it in the
Speaker 1: first episode that I don't want to put everybody through
Speaker 1: that again. Now I'm just kidding, it would be repetitive
Speaker 1: to do it. Let's jump back in, and so I
Speaker 1: want to start with I can't help but bring it up,
Speaker 1: particularly since you included in your book and he made
Speaker 1: it fair game. So Leonard Cohen was my dream guest.
Speaker 1: He was the guy I wanted most on the show.
Speaker 1: And it's funny, I think I mentioned that to you
Speaker 1: and you told me, well, good luck his his monk
Speaker 1: name is Great Silence, and that sort of made me realize, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this probably isn't gonna happen. But you you talk about
Speaker 1: Leonard Cohen in the book because he was a fellow
Speaker 1: monk at the monastery. Yeah, that's correct. He's actually a
Speaker 1: monk before I was there. Um, so he took lay ordination,
Speaker 1: which meant he wasn't living full times on the grounds
Speaker 1: when when he was ordained, then he kind of ducked
Speaker 1: out of his very busy, influential life as a you know,
Speaker 1: an artist and an entertainer and a writer and a thinker.
Speaker 1: And Um went up to live at the monastery where
Speaker 1: I lived, and this before my time. He's there for
Speaker 1: about I think it was about six years, kind of
Speaker 1: on and off. I mean, there's a little cabin up there,
Speaker 1: and he wrote one of his albums up there, and
Speaker 1: so he was a pretty consistent practitioner for maybe I
Speaker 1: want to say, like forty years. And he had a
Speaker 1: very close relationship with my teacher. Yeah, you talk about
Speaker 1: in the book. You mentioned how your teacher was very
Speaker 1: old and you watched Leonard take care of your teacher
Speaker 1: in certain ways and how powerful that was for you.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about that absolutely? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: part of the thing I wanted to the subtitle the
Speaker 1: book was death, failure, and bad sex, and one of
Speaker 1: the things I wanted to cover. We talked about it
Speaker 1: in the last first part of this episode was was failure,
Speaker 1: um and success, and Leonard Cohen was probably the most
Speaker 1: outwardly successful man I've ever met. Um. I mean, he's
Speaker 1: a legend great artist, of profound artist, but when he
Speaker 1: was around us monks, he was one of us. This
Speaker 1: is not exactly your point, but we'll get back to
Speaker 1: your point. Um. It was really helpful for me to
Speaker 1: see that, to see a great artist humbling himself before
Speaker 1: something that was greater than him. And it wasn't my
Speaker 1: teacher as a person for me as a monk, um,
Speaker 1: it was what my teacher was devoted to and what
Speaker 1: we were devoted to as monks. A monastery is a
Speaker 1: great leveler. It was wonderful watching Leonard come into our
Speaker 1: practice space and throw himself into meditation, just like any
Speaker 1: of us would. He never told rank because when I
Speaker 1: was around, he never pulled rank because of his status.
Speaker 1: That was a great lesson. There's something bigger than our
Speaker 1: personal life, our professional life. Watching him and my teacher
Speaker 1: kind of how they related to each other. Oftentimes they
Speaker 1: would just sit in silence for an hour, two hours.
Speaker 1: Leonard would be sitting on a couch and legs crossed,
Speaker 1: just kind of looking forward, kind of hunt because I
Speaker 1: think his back was hurting at that time. He's very
Speaker 1: diminished physically, so it's kind of as a little elfin
Speaker 1: nomic Rabbi figure pukish grin my teacher. We were always
Speaker 1: trying to find the right chair for him because he
Speaker 1: was so old and he's just the meat was gone
Speaker 1: in his legs and his sciatic was like a red
Speaker 1: hot nerve seven. So he had this nice chair for
Speaker 1: him and he'd be sitting in that chair and the
Speaker 1: two of them are just sit in silence together and
Speaker 1: while one of Rossy would say something Leonard, and Leonard
Speaker 1: would say something back. It was a really beautiful thing
Speaker 1: to witness. You say, I'm going to just read again.
Speaker 1: How do you say? His monk'st named g con icon
Speaker 1: So that was Leonard's monk name, you said. Watching g
Speaker 1: Con serve our teacher un obsequiously and with intelligence, care
Speaker 1: and respect helped take the sting out of my own
Speaker 1: failures as a writer and as a man. You learned
Speaker 1: that there is something greater than artistic success. When you
Speaker 1: see a great artist humbling himself before it, I think
Speaker 1: that's just such a great thing to see. And then
Speaker 1: you talk about that he and Roshi had a similar project,
Speaker 1: a shared vision. Roshi taught it. Leonard sang about it,
Speaker 1: and you describe it as the union of contrary things
Speaker 1: and then their separation again and the struggle in between.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit more about that. That's
Speaker 1: a big one. But Um, the final song and Leonard's
Speaker 1: final album, which I was fortunate enough to meet with
Speaker 1: him before he died at his at his house and
Speaker 1: he played his album for me. And the last song
Speaker 1: is called Treaty Reprise, and that's referring to an earlier
Speaker 1: song on the same album. It's called Treaty and and
Speaker 1: in it he Leonard says, I wish there was a
Speaker 1: treaty we could sign. I wish there was a treaty
Speaker 1: between your love and mine. Um, Roshi was always talking
Speaker 1: about the union between can sound a little bit complex
Speaker 1: and esoteric, but if we returned to that principle of
Speaker 1: relationship and not looking at the world as as me
Speaker 1: and you. Let me give you example. I used to
Speaker 1: go into call on practice with my teacher and Um,
Speaker 1: you would do your bows before him and then you
Speaker 1: would give him your co on which he had actually
Speaker 1: given you. So the coon is a kind of problem
Speaker 1: that the teachers presented you with that doesn't have a
Speaker 1: logical rational answer, So it's a it's a it's a
Speaker 1: pretext to get in the room and interact with the
Speaker 1: teacher and for him to see where you're at and
Speaker 1: for him to help you um in your practice. And
Speaker 1: for a long time he would shake my hand. That
Speaker 1: was the teaching he was giving me. Just reach out
Speaker 1: and shake my hand, and that at one point I
Speaker 1: had this insight um or an experience where that we
Speaker 1: were two halves of one experience. And I'd always been
Speaker 1: looking at myself as being me separate from the things
Speaker 1: I'm interacting with in the world I'm living in. I'm
Speaker 1: just one half of a full experience. And I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff in Leonard's music and in
Speaker 1: Leonard's art that is straight out of Rosy's teachings. Uh
Speaker 1: Shinzen Young, who's a teacher I believe in the of
Speaker 1: Apastana tradition, translated for Roshy many many years. Choshi was
Speaker 1: Japanese impeccable English, so Shinsen would translate for him at
Speaker 1: retreats and um Shinzen's got a great clip on YouTube.
Speaker 1: People can look it up where he's talking about Leonard
Speaker 1: Cohen's song I think it's love Itself, and he completely
Speaker 1: dissect how that song is an artistic version or representation
Speaker 1: of of um My Teachers, kind of classic um to
Speaker 1: talk up to Zen Model, I would definitely have to
Speaker 1: check that out. I mean, I like Shin Zen. We
Speaker 1: had him on and uh, I'm going to do that
Speaker 1: this evening. Probably you go on to say that about Leonard.
Speaker 1: Was he an artist consumed by despair? No, his work
Speaker 1: was shot through with the opposite of despair. But in
Speaker 1: Leonard's world, the opposite of despair was not hope, it
Speaker 1: was clarity. Yeah, that was the sense that I got
Speaker 1: after listening to was his music for a while. There's
Speaker 1: sort of a schoolboy understanding of Leonard Cohen Um. Actually
Speaker 1: one of his reviews they said, you know to buy
Speaker 1: this album, purchase some razors along with it because you
Speaker 1: want to slip your wrists, which I would argue that's
Speaker 1: a superficial understanding of his music. I think there's a
Speaker 1: Catharsis in how he expresses things honestly and and with heart,
Speaker 1: especially at the end of his life, like he had
Speaker 1: this late career revival, which I which is so inspiring
Speaker 1: because there's a there's a quality of humbleness to it,
Speaker 1: but for something that's so much greater than himself. He
Speaker 1: uses images from the Bible as well as his Jewish heritage,
Speaker 1: as well as his practice with our teacher Brochet, as
Speaker 1: well as his work with um Ramesh Balsakar I think
Speaker 1: was his name in Indian Vedantic Guru um and he's
Speaker 1: offering us these these humble poems and songs um And
Speaker 1: I think I really subtle spiritual teachings. A lot of
Speaker 1: times you listen to something in his later work that
Speaker 1: sounds like a love song, but if you if you
Speaker 1: sit listen and contemplate, he's he's actually, I think, speaking
Speaker 1: to issues that are a lot bigger in principles that
Speaker 1: are a lot bigger than just a personal life love
Speaker 1: with a capital L kind of thing. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: love what you said there with you know that it
Speaker 1: was clarity because I've never been able to explain why
Speaker 1: or what it is about Leonard Cohen that I find
Speaker 1: hopeful and inspiring because again, at a superficial level, it's
Speaker 1: it's construed as depressing, but there's a there's a clarity
Speaker 1: um or something that shines through it that I've never
Speaker 1: really been able to put into words. I think that's
Speaker 1: about as good as as I could do. You know
Speaker 1: what what you said there, and it's just it is
Speaker 1: it is powerful stuff. And and I loved just knowing,
Speaker 1: you know, his life in Zen and all that was
Speaker 1: fairly well known, and and his humbleness. Um. You know.
Speaker 1: I I got to see him on one of the
Speaker 1: tours and it just was magical. I mean, he really
Speaker 1: was a special person. Yeah, he really was. And he
Speaker 1: gave everything he had to those tours. And I remember
Speaker 1: him telling me that without his Zen practice, he could
Speaker 1: have never done it. And I kind of got it,
Speaker 1: you know. And then practice, you're just throwing yourself into
Speaker 1: these intense retreats, and you know, you do things you
Speaker 1: didn't know you could do, you know. And and he
Speaker 1: said his practice really gave him um power and it
Speaker 1: desire to give back um to give fully to his
Speaker 1: to his audience. I got that sense. I mean, just
Speaker 1: one last point. You were talking about the clarity and
Speaker 1: what it what it is that resonates with his music
Speaker 1: that that isn't negative or nihilistic, And I just want
Speaker 1: to say, as a man, he always had a smile
Speaker 1: on his face, and he was always asking the people
Speaker 1: in the room what they need it. That was my
Speaker 1: experience of him. Um So, I always have the sense
Speaker 1: that he had a clear eye, that he was looking
Speaker 1: at society and life with and he was sort of
Speaker 1: bringing these insights to us with with a smile and
Speaker 1: an attitude of generosity and not bitterness or resentment. You
Speaker 1: can kind of hear that. I mean, it's great to
Speaker 1: know that that translated into his life because you could
Speaker 1: certainly hear it in the music, and there's a sly
Speaker 1: humor that runs through so much of it. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: is the funniest songwriter of the last century. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: am sad to see him go, But what a what
Speaker 1: a good life. Let's turn our attention to really what
Speaker 1: the second half of your book is about, and it
Speaker 1: is largely about the monastery that you're at and the
Speaker 1: teacher who was there. The teacher was involved in a
Speaker 1: I guess i'll call it a sex scandal for lack
Speaker 1: of a better word. Can you talk to me maybe
Speaker 1: just a little bit about the basics of of what
Speaker 1: you know, the facts there, and then I think it'd
Speaker 1: be we can go you know a thousand directions from there,
Speaker 1: but maybe just start with people who aren't familiar with
Speaker 1: that story. Mercy once told me the zen Master is
Speaker 1: not a saint, but sometimes it's helpful to act like one. UM.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I was attracted to about
Speaker 1: him as a teacher was that he never once provided
Speaker 1: a prescription for behavior for me. So what I took
Speaker 1: away from that after many years of working with him was,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to tell you how to live your life.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna tell you what's right and wrong. You
Speaker 1: do what you gotta do, but you better believe you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to take full responsibility for it. That was
Speaker 1: the sense I got from working with him. The other
Speaker 1: thing was he was not a teacher who said sex
Speaker 1: is bad. Ever, um part of life, and UM, if
Speaker 1: you're married, sex is going to be part of your
Speaker 1: relationship with your wife and part of your practice if
Speaker 1: you have a strong practice. So there was no part
Speaker 1: of life that was forbidden or off the table. Question
Speaker 1: was how do you practice within all the situations that
Speaker 1: arise and that you helped give rise to in your life.
Speaker 1: So he had over the years touched his female students. UM,
Speaker 1: I don't know how many I know there there was
Speaker 1: a large enough number that it was a problem over
Speaker 1: the years, Um, there was a wide range of responses
Speaker 1: amongst the women to this touch. And I really discovered
Speaker 1: that once the scandal finally broke, I discovered how hard
Speaker 1: it was too boy come up with any totalizing ideas
Speaker 1: about the situation. Ultimately, I learned poorly, but I tried
Speaker 1: to learn to just listen. You know, one person would
Speaker 1: tell me something. She would say that Roushi taught her
Speaker 1: a really important lesson about letting go of her idea
Speaker 1: is a good and bad when he touched her, and
Speaker 1: she's profoundly grateful and considers him the most important person
Speaker 1: she's ever met. And then she looked me, looks at
Speaker 1: me in the eye and says, you know, are you
Speaker 1: going to tell me that experience is not valid? You
Speaker 1: know that I have another student come to me and say,
Speaker 1: you know what, he touched me and it was really
Speaker 1: horrible and it turned me off the dharma and I
Speaker 1: left the center and I haven't really practiced them since
Speaker 1: are you going to tell me that? Still tell me
Speaker 1: that he's a great teacher. So all this stuff came out,
Speaker 1: UM in two thousand twelve when a when a former
Speaker 1: monk wrote a blog for a website saying, this teacher
Speaker 1: was doing this touching all these years and I'm blown
Speaker 1: the lid on it, and then that story just exploded.
Speaker 1: It hit at a time. I mean it's exactly like
Speaker 1: this time. I mean with Harvey Weinstein and now how
Speaker 1: Hollywood is going through the whole scandal now, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know there's something in the air, um that's bringing it.
Speaker 1: Probably the Internet on some level, because it gives people
Speaker 1: who are disaffected a chance to speak up. In the
Speaker 1: Buddhist communities in America, there were many of these scandals.
Speaker 1: I mean, they are almost the norm. They are a cliche.
Speaker 1: And ours ours came at a time where the culture
Speaker 1: really wanted to talk about scandals in Eastern based spiritual communities,
Speaker 1: and so, I mean the story went briefly viral. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was in the Daily Beast, it was in the Atlantic,
Speaker 1: I think it was big New York Times article about it, UM,
Speaker 1: And it had a huge impact on our community, and
Speaker 1: it raised a lot of questions and a lot of
Speaker 1: issues that a lot of sort of still kind of
Speaker 1: grappling with. We're talking earlier about good and bad and
Speaker 1: all of that and going beyond those certain things. And
Speaker 1: I think for you, you talk about it being the
Speaker 1: coon of a lifetime for you. Right. The Christians asked,
Speaker 1: how can add things happen to good people? And then
Speaker 1: your version of that is, well, how can good people
Speaker 1: manifest bad things? Or how can this teacher who was
Speaker 1: so profound in his teaching, so loving and kind to
Speaker 1: me and other people that I saw, also do these
Speaker 1: really bad things? Like how does all that come together?
Speaker 1: And how do you make sense out of that? I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's new, like you mentioned to to
Speaker 1: Buddhist communities. I mean, the other classic example would be
Speaker 1: Um trunk O Rimpoche right and the fact that he
Speaker 1: kind of drank himself to death right. And and I've
Speaker 1: you know, I've talked to some people who are students
Speaker 1: of his who are like, I don't have an answer,
Speaker 1: Like what can I really say? He was a profound
Speaker 1: teacher and he had these real problems, and I just
Speaker 1: find it fascinating. It sounds though, like you are no
Speaker 1: longer part of that monastery and that this had some
Speaker 1: role in that. Yeah, that's true. Okay, you just threw
Speaker 1: out a lot of stuff there and we could, we
Speaker 1: could have an episode three unpacking all of it. Um,
Speaker 1: so two parts. First, was inspired me to think you're
Speaker 1: mentioning Trunk inspired me to think about this. He was
Speaker 1: a truck and trumpery actually profound teacher, um and and
Speaker 1: supremely gifted, almost probably a genius in making esoteric Tibetan
Speaker 1: Buddhist principles totally accessible to Westerners by translating them almost
Speaker 1: into psychological concepts that we could grasp. Very wild personality.
Speaker 1: There were certainly instances where he behaved in a in
Speaker 1: a way that was surprising to a student but had
Speaker 1: a positive impact on them. And let's say that what
Speaker 1: that way was sexual, then there could be another instance
Speaker 1: where he behaves in the same way towards the student
Speaker 1: and it has a negative impact. The question isn't just
Speaker 1: how do good people do bad things? But how how
Speaker 1: are we supposed to behave in a way that is
Speaker 1: spontaneous and free but doesn't harm others. We have actually
Speaker 1: from our end, and we never know how they're going
Speaker 1: to impact people on the other end. And processing this
Speaker 1: experience with my teacher, really it makes me step back
Speaker 1: a little bit and check myself. UM, listen, more than
Speaker 1: I talk, pay attention to the person across from me,
Speaker 1: because it's really it's a really, really, really deep question.
Speaker 1: What is good? What is bad? What do people owe
Speaker 1: each other? What is the proper relationship between a student
Speaker 1: and a teacher. Isn't the job of a teacher to
Speaker 1: push buttons? When is the teacher gratifying him or herself
Speaker 1: rather than pushing that student's button. I mean, they're really
Speaker 1: um there. There's questions that are not going away. And
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I wrote that chapter of the
Speaker 1: book and that part of the book was to talk
Speaker 1: about it. Um And I don't I apologize. I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't bring these issues up without mangling them because
Speaker 1: they're much deeper than I go. But I think it's
Speaker 1: important to talk about that because I think it's gonna
Speaker 1: happen again. There's gonna be there's right out there right now.
Speaker 1: You never told us exactly how many downloads you have,
Speaker 1: but we assume there's a lot of people listening to
Speaker 1: your podcast, and and there's probably somebody out there saying,
Speaker 1: you know, my teacher is touching me and I'm allowing
Speaker 1: it to happen. And what do I do with that?
Speaker 1: What do I owe him. Um, is this something I
Speaker 1: need to do? Um, I think we. I think it's
Speaker 1: important to talk about these things, especially talking about the
Speaker 1: things within these communities. So to the second part of
Speaker 1: your question, one of the reasons I decided to go
Speaker 1: ahead and share this experience. And I tried to just
Speaker 1: share my experience around Roscy as a teacher and and
Speaker 1: my community within the scandal, and not speak to anybody
Speaker 1: else's experience because I got put in my place so
Speaker 1: many times within our community and the many meetings we
Speaker 1: had around this issue for doing just that, speaking to
Speaker 1: other people's experience and interpreting it a certain way. So
Speaker 1: I thought it was important to write this book. Um.
Speaker 1: Sharing these things made it such that some thing that
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about for a while, ever since my
Speaker 1: teacher died, UM, kind of came to pass, which is
Speaker 1: that it's probably time for me to move on. And
Speaker 1: some people were uncomfortable with me writing about these things
Speaker 1: within our community, and there was a bit of a
Speaker 1: showdown about it, and I made the choice. You know what,
Speaker 1: a lot of things are coming together in this moment.
Speaker 1: They're telling me it's time to go and go I
Speaker 1: did tell me podcast host, I think you'd be great.
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about, you know. I mean, I bought
Speaker 1: a car and I drove to northern California and I
Speaker 1: hung out by the ocean for a while. Then I
Speaker 1: house sat for somebody in San Francisco for two weeks.
Speaker 1: Then I drove across the country and I stayed with
Speaker 1: my parents for a little bit. Um, I met up
Speaker 1: with a friend, did some traveling. You know. I sat
Speaker 1: in a monastery for thirteen years, actually ten years in
Speaker 1: a monastery and three years at a temple. Just spent
Speaker 1: a lot of my time kind of staring at one
Speaker 1: spot on the floor with a soft gaze for breathing
Speaker 1: in and out. And I've really been enjoying traveling and
Speaker 1: being in the human world again and sweating and traffic
Speaker 1: and worrying about money and thinking about having a relationship
Speaker 1: with a woman again, and bringing my practice off the
Speaker 1: mountain and into the world. Yeah, it's a different way
Speaker 1: to live. It's certainly I'd like to get some time
Speaker 1: on the other side of it, you know. I've I've
Speaker 1: always thought, you know, I'd love to live in a
Speaker 1: monastery for a period of time. But yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of in your book, you you sort of describe it
Speaker 1: as both exciting and terrifying and terrifying. Yes, it's becoming
Speaker 1: slightly less terrifying. I mean I have to preface this
Speaker 1: all with it, you know, as then Buddhist monk does
Speaker 1: not stay up in the ter monastic training center forever.
Speaker 1: So Um, the path is to go to do your training.
Speaker 1: You start out as a student. Then you become a monk,
Speaker 1: and you shave your head, you take tonture, you get
Speaker 1: a new name, you get your robes, and you begin
Speaker 1: to Initially, when you're just a student, you're taking responsibility
Speaker 1: for yourself and your practice. When you become a monk,
Speaker 1: you're beginning to take responsibility for the context that the
Speaker 1: active takes place in. And you have specific responsibilities depending
Speaker 1: on your role. And the environment is teaching you to
Speaker 1: step out of yourself and to begin to take responsibility
Speaker 1: for things around you and to treat them the way
Speaker 1: you would treat yourself. And eventually you have to go
Speaker 1: off the mountain automnastic environment and and they call it
Speaker 1: um the oxhorting pictures, which is a famous Buddhist parable.
Speaker 1: You you're in the marketplace again. You're the man with
Speaker 1: no rank living um and manifesting the pharma in the
Speaker 1: quote real world will I'll certainly be interested to see
Speaker 1: where it takes you. I assume writing will remain a
Speaker 1: part of it. Indeed it will. Yeah, let's talk about
Speaker 1: an interesting story that you tell I can't remember it exactly.
Speaker 1: You're mentioning that you were with I believe he was
Speaker 1: a Christian teacher of some sort, and you guys start
Speaker 1: talking about demons. Does this ring a bell? That was
Speaker 1: what I was sick with pancrotitis, and I left the
Speaker 1: monastery for several on the longest side been away. I
Speaker 1: had to go on zonka, which means you're officially leaving
Speaker 1: the monastery. I wasn't easy, but I had to go.
Speaker 1: And I was um in Hartford, Wisconsin, staying at my
Speaker 1: parents place. And there's a nice, interesting, beautiful church called
Speaker 1: Holy Hill out out there. It's kind of this Bucolic
Speaker 1: setting with the church perched at the top of it.
Speaker 1: It kind of ran into a priest there, and yeah,
Speaker 1: he's some interesting words of advice, and I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what exactly you're thinking of. Well, I thought it was
Speaker 1: interesting that he talks about, you know, fighting demons, and
Speaker 1: that you're asking him like well, how do you fight
Speaker 1: these demons? And he says, how should I know they're
Speaker 1: your demons? Yeah? Then you go on and you you say,
Speaker 1: and this line it goes back to the wolf parable
Speaker 1: a little bit, this idea of not ostracizing the bad
Speaker 1: wolf for caging the bad wolf, but you cannot defeat
Speaker 1: your demons, for they thrive on the fight itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like an addiction you start. I mean, sometimes you
Speaker 1: manifest the demons, like when you're really angry and filled
Speaker 1: with a sense of self righteousness, right, you know, they
Speaker 1: overtake you. Other times you're pushing them away and trying
Speaker 1: to ignore them, and they and they come back stronger. Um.
Speaker 1: The practice that I learned was just you let the
Speaker 1: thoughts and feelings arise. You don't hold onto them, you know,
Speaker 1: push you know, push them down. You let them come
Speaker 1: and go like the weather. But that has been my
Speaker 1: experience is that oh yeah, your little demons, your little
Speaker 1: inner demons, they're just looking they're just they're just looking
Speaker 1: to mix it up, you know. They're just looking for
Speaker 1: that energy, that aggressive energy pull you in. It's like
Speaker 1: it's like trolls online. This is what your demons are like.
Speaker 1: If you engage. If you engage with them, that's that's
Speaker 1: all they need. No matter what you put out there,
Speaker 1: they're going to twist it to their advantage and pull
Speaker 1: you in deeper. So if your demons are like your
Speaker 1: inner troll, inner online trolls, yeah, I think that's great.
Speaker 1: I think it's this And it's what you said a
Speaker 1: second ago about you know, meditating and letting thoughts and
Speaker 1: emotions come and go. It's I'm getting a real taste
Speaker 1: in my own life about how much resistance causes me
Speaker 1: pain and keeps me ensconced in that sort of very
Speaker 1: small sense of self. And it's a realization I think
Speaker 1: I go through at a slightly deeper level every year.
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's just all about what I'm resisting, and
Speaker 1: then I seem to forget that for a while and
Speaker 1: then but I just I think Shenzen Young is the
Speaker 1: one who has put into equation, you know, suffering equals
Speaker 1: pain times resistance, you know, pretty beautiful. Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 1: And I just more and more, like I just recognize that,
Speaker 1: like it is my resistance to what's happening that is
Speaker 1: really responsible for the vast majority of my suffering in life,
Speaker 1: and yet it's a hard thing to let go of. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know it said, it's very subtle, but
Speaker 1: I mean, my my feeling is, uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: teachings tell me that you don't read. If you resist that,
Speaker 1: you're in trouble. You have to make relationship with with
Speaker 1: your life. And there's gonna be painful things your life.
Speaker 1: And the key to not suffering is not to reject
Speaker 1: the pain, but but to somehow make relationship with the
Speaker 1: situation that you're that that you're in. I mean, my
Speaker 1: my teacher talked about um this quote that you know,
Speaker 1: the true monk is the person who makes it their
Speaker 1: business to make the two mutually opposing activities, So the
Speaker 1: activity of living, living in the activity of dying, the
Speaker 1: activity of good and the activity of evil both completely
Speaker 1: their content. I sit with that a lot, because much
Speaker 1: of my suffering arises from life being a certain way
Speaker 1: and me resisting it, fighting it, trying to change it,
Speaker 1: wishing it was another way. And then there's the you know,
Speaker 1: feeling bad about myself because I resist things, and and
Speaker 1: on and on and on. Let's talk about you refer
Speaker 1: to yourself. I think as a middle manager of the
Speaker 1: middle way which made me laugh. Um, I love the
Speaker 1: idea of the middle way, and I think different people
Speaker 1: have different interpretations of it. But talk to me about
Speaker 1: what the middle way means to you. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: it relates specifically to this model that my teacher taught again,
Speaker 1: where you you know, the self isn't fixed or solid.
Speaker 1: You've got an inside and there's an outside, and give
Speaker 1: yourself completely to the circumstances that you're in. And that
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean like you give your you write a
Speaker 1: check to the Zen Center for all your life savings
Speaker 1: or something. I mean we're not necessary talking about traditional,
Speaker 1: say Western Judaeo Christian notions of giving. But if you're
Speaker 1: sitting there doing your dishes and you want to go
Speaker 1: check your email instead, maybe you just give yourself to
Speaker 1: the feeling of the plate in your hands, the activity
Speaker 1: of scrubbing the mall off your um dishes. So the
Speaker 1: middle way is collapsing the distance between self and other,
Speaker 1: dissolving that distance and the two come come together. It's
Speaker 1: not picking one thing or another, you know. Um, the
Speaker 1: mind is like a pinball and it's just bouncing from
Speaker 1: one thought an idea to another. And when you give
Speaker 1: it what it wants it wants something new. Um, So
Speaker 1: you're always chasing things. When you just obey your that
Speaker 1: little dog inside you that's always yapping. The middle way
Speaker 1: for me is the practice of dissolving that sense of
Speaker 1: self in complete giving. And my mentor taught me there's
Speaker 1: two ways you can give. You receive or you initiate.
Speaker 1: So my teacher would was manifesting this principle when he
Speaker 1: would shake my hand, because when you think about it,
Speaker 1: when you shake your hand, you're reaching out, you're initiating,
Speaker 1: and you're receiving their hand. So the two halves are
Speaker 1: becoming one, and the sense of self is dissolving in
Speaker 1: a in a sense of we right. Um. Then of
Speaker 1: course you step, you separate and now you're you're separate again.
Speaker 1: So you can't stay in that unity or that connection
Speaker 1: symbolized by the touching of the hands. You can't stay
Speaker 1: in that heaven realm forever. You've got to come back
Speaker 1: to the world. Used to say, you know, there are
Speaker 1: no toilets and no restaurants, and of them, you know,
Speaker 1: So the messy part of human existence is the eating
Speaker 1: and the shipping is beautiful. The middle way, we don't
Speaker 1: reject the human world and we don't attach to the
Speaker 1: heaven world. It's the middle way right between the two paths.
Speaker 1: Just like the Buddha who Soco Buddha figure. He lived
Speaker 1: the life of a glorious prince. I mean you read
Speaker 1: about his early life, which is somewhat apocryphal and somewhat mythical.
Speaker 1: You read about his early life and it was like
Speaker 1: he was living at a combination between like Hugh Hefsner
Speaker 1: mansion meets a cultural center or something. I mean, he
Speaker 1: had all the pleasures that he wanted. He was a
Speaker 1: Kardashian basically, yeah, with like a super high i Q
Speaker 1: or something and everything you could possibly want, power, money, facts, talent.
Speaker 1: But he didn't find happiness there. So he threw all
Speaker 1: that aside. He went into the um forest and he
Speaker 1: starved himself. They said if he touched it, if he
Speaker 1: touched his belly, he grabbed his spine and he was
Speaker 1: so thin. And when he found is his ego survived
Speaker 1: that experience as well. So his ego was fed by
Speaker 1: the life of being a Kardashian, and his ego was
Speaker 1: fed by the life of being a spiritual or nuncient.
Speaker 1: So he decided to practice the middle way. Wait, right
Speaker 1: down the middle. We need two extremes. As this show
Speaker 1: has gone on, I think more and more that has
Speaker 1: become the teaching for me that I just see it
Speaker 1: in in so many aspects of life that like you
Speaker 1: say that right down the middle of the two opposites,
Speaker 1: it's not a mediocrity. There's just a wisdom in rejecting
Speaker 1: the extremes. Um. Although I'm drawn to them in a
Speaker 1: certain way, I certainly think that they led me astray
Speaker 1: many times, and I can see so much of human
Speaker 1: suffering coming from being at one extreme or the other.
Speaker 1: In a lot of ways. Might work at the monastery
Speaker 1: actually brought me to a certain extremes and then I
Speaker 1: was able to relax. Okay I went there, you know,
Speaker 1: and then go to an opposite extreme, Okay, I went there.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you actually do have to go to the extremes
Speaker 1: order to find find the middle way. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: another thing we can learn from the Buddha's life. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a path. I mean, he didn't just wake up
Speaker 1: one morning and say, you know what middle way? I mean,
Speaker 1: he had to go to the extremes. You know. It
Speaker 1: brings me back to what I was thinking talking about
Speaker 1: earlier if you could do do what you have to
Speaker 1: do in life, but but you'll have to take responsibility
Speaker 1: for it, and gradually maybe you mature and ripen and
Speaker 1: develop and realize it's not so interesting or sexy or
Speaker 1: profound to chase the life of a Kardashian. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: just a different version of ego gratification. If I chase
Speaker 1: a purely spiritual path that completely rejects the world and
Speaker 1: says it's bad, Like, maybe there really is a possibility
Speaker 1: to wake up right here and now in the present moment,
Speaker 1: no matter what I'm doing, no matter what situation I'm in,
Speaker 1: whether it's standing at a line at Trader Joe's, you know,
Speaker 1: and part of you wants to die. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: speaking from personally to pick. I want to get on
Speaker 1: Facebook and on my phone, and if I'm gonna do that,
Speaker 1: maybe I do that, but bringing a quality of attention
Speaker 1: and focus to it. I'm waking up in the present
Speaker 1: moment instead of chasing pleasure or spiritual success. In the
Speaker 1: last episode, I promised ayahuasca, So we're not going to
Speaker 1: go into the whole thing. You got involved in that
Speaker 1: at least at one time, and people can read the
Speaker 1: book and it's not not really big deal. But what
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about, though, is one of my favorite,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite parts of the book where you're
Speaker 1: describing this friend of yours who he says, you know,
Speaker 1: he insists the the plant has no side effects. But
Speaker 1: I have noticed at least two very troubling developments since
Speaker 1: he started doing these ceremonies. A fondness for t shirts
Speaker 1: with howling wolves on them, and a tendency to sign
Speaker 1: off his emails with love and light. Yeah, that sort
Speaker 1: of thumbs up my feeling feelings about a lot of
Speaker 1: the americanization of the aahuasca practice, which actually runs many, many,
Speaker 1: many millennia back, and it's very deep, taking um enthogenic
Speaker 1: or hallucinogenic plants as part of a ritual and part
Speaker 1: of experience. And I did take ayahuasca a few times,
Speaker 1: more out of curiosity than anything, and it's found it
Speaker 1: to be a very very interesting experience. Um. And boy,
Speaker 1: that that would be a whole podcast in it of itself. Um,
Speaker 1: It's not something I'm pursuing um as a practice. It
Speaker 1: compliments practice in interesting ways. And I think I needed
Speaker 1: to a jolt after thirteen years of zen monastic life
Speaker 1: wanted to try something a little bit different and that
Speaker 1: you know, I mean when you're in the Zend circles,
Speaker 1: that those circles inevitably overlap with the ahauasca circles because
Speaker 1: people with spiritual practice outside of the conventional traditional practices
Speaker 1: in America tends to meet each other. Yeah. We had
Speaker 1: a guest on spring Washam who's part of the Spirit
Speaker 1: Rock teaching community, who also leads ayahuasca retreats in Peru,
Speaker 1: and we were just talking about how like the controversy
Speaker 1: that she's stirring up with that, and it's just an
Speaker 1: interesting You're right, you do come across these same sort
Speaker 1: of circles and and it's it's interesting discussion. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a very it's a very interesting discussion. I mean, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't recommend ayahuaska to anyone, at least not in the
Speaker 1: same way that I would recommend zazaan or meditation, although
Speaker 1: I wouldn't necessarily even recommend that. If people find it
Speaker 1: and they want to do it, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: go for it. And for me, it was very interesting,
Speaker 1: very profound, and I'm still processing it. You know, when
Speaker 1: you take a plant or ingest a substance that changes
Speaker 1: your mind set. The temptation is to fall in love
Speaker 1: with that change and to fixate and attached to it
Speaker 1: and start projecting, um all kinds of stories around it,
Speaker 1: and none of that is then by any stretch of
Speaker 1: the imagination. But I also think that in a lot
Speaker 1: of Zen communities there's a kind of a tightness about ayahuasca.
Speaker 1: You know. Then then people can be a little bit
Speaker 1: anal retentive sometimes. And um, I'm not saying that that
Speaker 1: the ayawaska is part of the Zen practice or even
Speaker 1: my practice, but it was very interesting as a Zen
Speaker 1: monk to participate. I mean I went to Peru and
Speaker 1: did it three times there. Um I did two times
Speaker 1: in another context, and I don't know if I'll do
Speaker 1: it again. But you know, to participate in a in
Speaker 1: an ancient spiritual shamanic ceremony in the jungle as a
Speaker 1: Zen Buddhist monk, I would not take that experience back. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's definitely. You know, everybody's got to find
Speaker 1: what what thing works for them. And to save myself
Speaker 1: getting into lots of trouble, the one you feed is
Speaker 1: not officially endorsing taking ayahuasca. We're not taking ayahuasca. Save
Speaker 1: save the comments. I get it anyway. Thanks Jack so
Speaker 1: much for coming on for doing two episodes with us.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend Single White Monk, Tales of Death, Failure,
Speaker 1: and Bad Sex. It's funny, it's spiritual, it's it's a
Speaker 1: great book. Nice work. Thank you so much. I appreciate that,
Speaker 1: and thanks for having me on. It was really fun
Speaker 1: to come talk to me again. It was definitely fun
Speaker 1: to talk, so thank you for doing it. We'll talk again.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Okay, take care, okay, bye bye. Thanks everybody
Speaker 1: for listening, and thanks to Casper Mattress for supporting this episode.