Speaker 1: You know, everybody's got an inner Gandhi and an inner
Speaker 1: aid Off Hitler, you know, and what do we do
Speaker 1: with that? Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time,
Speaker 1: great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 1: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think, ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest today is shows on Jack Hofner,
Speaker 1: author of Zen Confidential. He's a former screenwriter and stand
Speaker 1: up comic and eventually moved into a Zen monastery in
Speaker 1: the early aughts. He was drawn to the rigors of
Speaker 1: Zen practice, the deep end side of the tradition, and
Speaker 1: the fact that Zen monks can curse and drink alcohol Hi, Jack,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Hello, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: It's an honor. Yeah, well, we're really we're really happy
Speaker 1: to to have you. Also, your book, Zen Confidential was
Speaker 1: extremely enjoyable. It's one of those rare things that is
Speaker 1: both kind of on the same page, can be really
Speaker 1: funny and very poignant and touching at the same time.
Speaker 1: That's a rare skill. So we really, we really love
Speaker 1: the book. Oh, thank you very much. It was Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was held to right, So I'm glad somebody found
Speaker 1: it enjoyable. Yes, it was. It was great and ill
Speaker 1: we'll get into a lot of it as we as
Speaker 1: we go through the interview. So our podcast is called
Speaker 1: The One You Feed, and it's based on the parable
Speaker 1: The Two Wolves, where there's a grandfather who's talking with
Speaker 1: his grandson and he says, in life, there's a great
Speaker 1: battle going on inside of us between a good wolf
Speaker 1: and a bad wolf. The good wolf represents things like
Speaker 1: kindness and love and joy, and the bad wolf represents
Speaker 1: things like greed and fear and hatred. And the grandson
Speaker 1: stops and he thinks, and then he he looks at
Speaker 1: his grandfather and he says, well, which one wins? And
Speaker 1: the grandfather says the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start the interview off by asking you what that
Speaker 1: parable means to you in your life and in your
Speaker 1: work and writing. Bella, it's at all. It's a great
Speaker 1: parable on a number of levels. Um. When I first
Speaker 1: read it, you directed with your website I first read it. Um,
Speaker 1: I just thought it was a great piece of writing.
Speaker 1: Is one of those things that kind of kind of
Speaker 1: chump saw the page. Um. I sat with it for
Speaker 1: a little bit, um, and and then my my contrarian
Speaker 1: character started to kick in and I found I had
Speaker 1: actually just seen a video on the internet. It was
Speaker 1: this video going around of um of this family at
Speaker 1: a zoo and there was this cage with this big
Speaker 1: thick came as glass, and there was a big lion
Speaker 1: behind it, a big lioness actually, and there's a little girl,
Speaker 1: of course on our side of the glass. Um kind
Speaker 1: of kind of playing around with the lion a little bit, um,
Speaker 1: and you know, of course saying at a million hits,
Speaker 1: everybody loved it. But the lioness was kind of opening
Speaker 1: her mouth and pushing it against the glass, and the
Speaker 1: little girls putting her glass and her putting her hand
Speaker 1: up to the glass when the family's laughing and everybody's laughing.
Speaker 1: I kind of seen that video right around the time
Speaker 1: I discovered the story through your website, the parable um
Speaker 1: and and what hit me was And I gotta tell you,
Speaker 1: I've been sort of stuck with this ever since. UM.
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, Okay, is there such a thing
Speaker 1: in nature as a bad wolf? For example, you've got
Speaker 1: that lioness. If that painted glass wasn't there should be
Speaker 1: devouring that child. UM. You know, is that a good
Speaker 1: animal or a bad animal? I mean, in a lot
Speaker 1: of senses, we havethropomorphized what's natural UM, and inside of
Speaker 1: us we have I think metaphorically speaking UM both and
Speaker 1: somewhere along the line in our process of consciousness or
Speaker 1: process of development is people we UM labeled them good
Speaker 1: or bad UM. And that process is completely necessary, completely
Speaker 1: necessary that UM. It creates kind of a divide within
Speaker 1: us between kind of our natural selves and our UM
Speaker 1: the self. I have to function in the human world
Speaker 1: and maybe function in a you know, more spiritually ethically
Speaker 1: advanced way. So I have to say, you gave me
Speaker 1: a bit of a call, and you probably weren't expect
Speaker 1: him to do that. But um, yeah, well, I think
Speaker 1: that's interesting because one of the questions I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you was about the middle way. The middle way
Speaker 1: is a is a concept in Buddhism that that tends
Speaker 1: to be one that is fairly well known, and I
Speaker 1: think it's normally sort of talked about, at least in
Speaker 1: popular interpretations of it, as being sort of right down
Speaker 1: the middle, not too excessive one way or the other.
Speaker 1: But throughout the book you talk about that in a
Speaker 1: very different way, and I think that kind of relates
Speaker 1: to what you're getting at a little bit with the
Speaker 1: with the Wolf parable. Could you explain a little bit
Speaker 1: more about how you interpret the middle way? Yeah, I can't.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know what you're talking. You know. When
Speaker 1: I wrote that book, I wrote it. Um, I started writing,
Speaker 1: and I guess maybe, uh, maybe about a year into
Speaker 1: my time at the monastery, UM, I'd kind of dropped
Speaker 1: the writing path completely, told myself I wasn't gonna do it. UM,
Speaker 1: I was going to concentrate on meditation, manual labor, chanting,
Speaker 1: doing simple things completely. I was done with um uh,
Speaker 1: the creative path. UM. Then about a year into my training, UM,
Speaker 1: I woke up one day with kind of a few
Speaker 1: lines running through my head, which eventually kind of became
Speaker 1: the whole book. UM. But UM, as I wrote that book,
Speaker 1: it was I was sort of, you know, I was
Speaker 1: in a bit of my honeymoon phase as a spiritual practitioner. UM.
Speaker 1: May not seem like it's from the book, but it
Speaker 1: was more of more of a honeymoon phase than not. UM.
Speaker 1: And what I talked about in the book is UM
Speaker 1: in a sense, the middle way. The middle way is
Speaker 1: not the Doling way, which would mean kind of a
Speaker 1: tepid um. UM. I'm not gonna put it. It's it's
Speaker 1: not a it's not a tepid path as that as
Speaker 1: I've explored it, UM in the sense you you have,
Speaker 1: as we've been talking about these these two wolves, these
Speaker 1: two sides within your nature, and in a sense, they
Speaker 1: have to they have to find expression and they have
Speaker 1: to find completion. UM. If we don't UM. You know,
Speaker 1: Young talked about the shadow side. UM. If you repress this,
Speaker 1: and this is my experience, if you repress it or
Speaker 1: try and push it off or deny it, it's going
Speaker 1: to come out in your life somehow. So you have
Speaker 1: this shadow side. UM. You know, everybody's got. Everybody has
Speaker 1: an inner Gandhi and an inner aid off hipper, you know,
Speaker 1: and what do we do with that? And and my
Speaker 1: experience and Zen practices um. In some sense, and you know,
Speaker 1: don't press me on this because I'm not sure exactly
Speaker 1: what I mean in terms of specific articulation, but in
Speaker 1: some sense, the two have to meet and cancel each
Speaker 1: other out. And that's when you find your fullest express
Speaker 1: as a human being, to repress one and indulge the other,
Speaker 1: or indulge one and repress the other. You've got some
Speaker 1: kind of internal struggle going on, some kind of lack
Speaker 1: of completeness, some kind of inauthenticity. Um. And and you
Speaker 1: know that's where a lot of human struggle comes in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you that that comes up. And you've got some some
Speaker 1: lines in the book that are that are really excellent.
Speaker 1: Along those lines, I'll just read one of them because
Speaker 1: I think for our listeners though, it gives a sense
Speaker 1: of what you're talking about. And it says, this is
Speaker 1: the middle way, not getting stuck in a dream, not
Speaker 1: getting stuck in a nightmare, but fully and completely waking
Speaker 1: up right at the zero point where the too meet
Speaker 1: dream and nightmare, pray and play, pleasure and worship Friday
Speaker 1: night fucking and Sunday morning sacraments. And I thought that
Speaker 1: was very And you talk about your mentor in the
Speaker 1: book and how and that's what I was really drawn to,
Speaker 1: was this idea of bringing all those things together. And
Speaker 1: another thing that you had in the book several times
Speaker 1: I think your mentor said to you that I wanted
Speaker 1: to explore further, and I think it ties in is
Speaker 1: it's you say that the cause of separation is the
Speaker 1: means for connection. The answer and the problem are always one.
Speaker 1: Can you unpack that a little bit more? Oh? I
Speaker 1: wish I could again, bringing it back to the wolf metaphor. Um,
Speaker 1: we've all got a nature, we've got human nature, and
Speaker 1: at some point within our process, um, we have to
Speaker 1: do it. We have to divide things into good and bad.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, for example, I've I've recently sort
Speaker 1: of quit smoking again. Um. Now, in matters of like addiction,
Speaker 1: where for example, nicotine, it's sort of very clear. You
Speaker 1: feed the monkey, you take another cigarette, then you take
Speaker 1: another cigarette, and at some point, um, the need keeps
Speaker 1: feeding itself and you have to keep feeding the need.
Speaker 1: And there's there's Um, that's a bad wolf. U. Matters
Speaker 1: of addiction, I think it's very clear. Um in other
Speaker 1: matters showing the trump or refichetes to that, and teacher
Speaker 1: talks about how anger and lust, Um these are, these
Speaker 1: are energies, and he talks about working with them. UM.
Speaker 1: And I've found that to be to be valuable in
Speaker 1: my practice. And if we try and cut off parts
Speaker 1: of ourselves and deny that they're there, we we run
Speaker 1: into trouble. What I was taught is that which this
Speaker 1: self is that you give it away. UM, you apply it.
Speaker 1: So it's it's a means um to connect. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's kind of it's funny. I mean you know, Uh,
Speaker 1: whenever you have a great spiritual teacher, you're going to
Speaker 1: find them laughing a lot because the situation is actually
Speaker 1: kind of funny. Um. I'm separate, and I acknowledge that
Speaker 1: I have this I himself, and yet that separateness is
Speaker 1: by definition, the opportunity to connect. If I wasn't separate,
Speaker 1: I couldn't connect. We would already be connected. Um, there'll
Speaker 1: be no difference between us. UM. So in this practice
Speaker 1: I've been taught, So you give yourself over and over
Speaker 1: and over UM. And when we do sitting meditation practice,
Speaker 1: we give yourself to the breath, right, so you completely
Speaker 1: connect with the outbreast. You give everything inside you, the
Speaker 1: environment around you, UM, specifically your oxygen. But when you
Speaker 1: when you inhale, you take your environment in, You take
Speaker 1: your whole environment into you, and you connect. So my
Speaker 1: mom always asks me, you know, what are you doing
Speaker 1: when you sit? What are you thinking about? All day?
Speaker 1: And you know, I try and tell her I'm not thinking.
Speaker 1: We're doing an activity when we sit. There were practicing
Speaker 1: the most basic relationship possible between oxygen and my loan,
Speaker 1: between the carbon dioxide I released in the environment and
Speaker 1: my environment. The separation is means to connect. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of a tricky thing. That's the hard part to
Speaker 1: get the call on the spiritual practice. At another point
Speaker 1: in the book, similarly, you talk about it. I think
Speaker 1: it's a really it's a profound insight that that most
Speaker 1: of us miss and I know I certainly am guilty
Speaker 1: of missing and thinking about. And you basically talked that
Speaker 1: the people in your life don't get in the way
Speaker 1: of your spiritual practice. The people in your life are
Speaker 1: your spiritual practice. And I think that's you talk about
Speaker 1: it in a monastery, and I think you also reference
Speaker 1: what it's like in a family, that that those are
Speaker 1: the people that that help you actually engage in the
Speaker 1: spiritual practice and in a lot of ways monitor where
Speaker 1: where you are, how you're doing. Oh yeah, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: glad you brought that up, because that that is a
Speaker 1: lesson that I will I will never ever ever stop learning,
Speaker 1: especially as something of a missing block. Um. Yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 1: I mean everybody has this idea that you're going to
Speaker 1: go to the mountaintop and you're going to kind of
Speaker 1: just get up into that horrified air, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: walk into the zendo meditation hall and it's going to
Speaker 1: be the enlightenment factory, and you're gonna go in one
Speaker 1: end you're sloppy, messy self, and you're gonna come out
Speaker 1: the other end fully formed and enlightened being. And you
Speaker 1: never really think about the other people that are going
Speaker 1: to be around you in that equation. Um, And think
Speaker 1: about a monastery is you're packed in really tight with
Speaker 1: these people. Um, you know, it's kind of like family
Speaker 1: in the sense that you didn't you wouldn't choose of
Speaker 1: your own accord to be around these people, and yet
Speaker 1: there they are, and they're in every aspect of your life. Um.
Speaker 1: And we got to saying at the at the monastery
Speaker 1: that you know, all the all of us practitioners were
Speaker 1: like rocks in the bag and shaped around and everybody's
Speaker 1: knocking off everybody else's sharp edges. And it's really true.
Speaker 1: I mean other other people, family, um, coworkers, absolute mirrors
Speaker 1: for for who we are and where we're at and
Speaker 1: and if we can interact with them skillful, they'll be
Speaker 1: our teachers every time. I mean, that's one thing I've
Speaker 1: learned that a monastery. I mean, I know, I know,
Speaker 1: when I was not living in a monastery, I always
Speaker 1: did how this fantasy about moving to a monastery and
Speaker 1: pursuing the spiritual path, And now that I've done it,
Speaker 1: it's funny I come out the other side and I
Speaker 1: want to just tell people, you don't have to go anywhere.
Speaker 1: Your teachers are all around you. Do your meditation practice
Speaker 1: half an hour of sitting a day in the morning,
Speaker 1: half an hour in the morning, half an hour in
Speaker 1: the evening, whatever it is that you need to do
Speaker 1: to ground yourself. But otherwise, Um, make full relationship with
Speaker 1: your surroundings and with the people in your life and
Speaker 1: the world, and the people in your world are going
Speaker 1: to give you every single lesson you could possibly need.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a reason most of the world doesn't
Speaker 1: go to a monastery is because really we don't need it.
Speaker 1: All that we need is right in front of us,
Speaker 1: bothering the heck out of us. Yeah, and actually I
Speaker 1: am one of those people who has harbored that fantasy, like, well,
Speaker 1: if I could just get off to a monastery and
Speaker 1: and do all that, it would be different. And your
Speaker 1: book was a very good way of disillusion me of
Speaker 1: that of that idea. And I get it, you know,
Speaker 1: the way you explain it makes a lot of sense
Speaker 1: that how a lot of the things that we use
Speaker 1: to distract ourselves in life from other people and interpersonal
Speaker 1: situations and problems, you simply don't have the there. So
Speaker 1: everything is is magnified because there's nothing else to focus on. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's well, it's like that. I mean, monastery politics are
Speaker 1: like um the way was Kissinger described university politics in
Speaker 1: the sense that the the in fighting is so intense
Speaker 1: because the stakes are slow. Yeah, you talked about as
Speaker 1: we were going through that last part, you mentioned that
Speaker 1: spiritual teachers will will tend to laugh a lot. And
Speaker 1: at one point in the book you talk about you
Speaker 1: bring up the idea of levity, which I think is
Speaker 1: an underappreciated virtue, and you you tie that then to
Speaker 1: the human spirit. Can you can you tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit more about how you see levity and humor
Speaker 1: in the spiritual process or even in just living a
Speaker 1: good life. It's interesting, um search Colin used to talk
Speaker 1: about how um you know, he he always wanted to
Speaker 1: make a point with his humor. Humor for me is all,
Speaker 1: it's a kind of opening when I laugh. I'm never
Speaker 1: unhappy when I laugh, And I'm never ever ever in
Speaker 1: a bad space when I laugh when I'm in When
Speaker 1: I'm in a bad space, I'm clenched tight and and
Speaker 1: I cannot appreciate it. Um, I cannot appreciate my life. Um.
Speaker 1: And when I'm laughing, there's usually some some measure of
Speaker 1: surrender that's going on, and I think that's kind of key.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a happy surrender when I'm laughing. The
Speaker 1: situation is much much bigger than us in many senses.
Speaker 1: I think we're sort of born who we are into
Speaker 1: circumstances that aren't necessarily going to change. And being able
Speaker 1: to accept this and work with this and have some
Speaker 1: humility about it and again surrender to it is is
Speaker 1: the key to I think, really sinking down into your
Speaker 1: life and living a deep and meaningful life. And um humor,
Speaker 1: I think is a is a byproduct of that, or
Speaker 1: laughter is a byproduct of that humor. I actually haven't
Speaker 1: given too much thought to I think it just comes
Speaker 1: to my character. I think when you fail a lot
Speaker 1: in life, you tend to drift forwards humor as sort
Speaker 1: of a um as sort of a coping mechanism. My
Speaker 1: partner Chris just raised his hand as being included in
Speaker 1: that club. I think, I think we we all relate
Speaker 1: with relate with that idea, and we've had a tendency
Speaker 1: to make fun of each other right at our our
Speaker 1: most painful moments, which is an extraordinarily great thing to
Speaker 1: do in a lot of cases, because it does it
Speaker 1: it opens up and releases that clenching a little bit
Speaker 1: and and does give a sense of levity. You talked
Speaker 1: about this idea of things that don't change and accepting change.
Speaker 1: And in the book you say that you've spent much
Speaker 1: of your life trying to change who you are, such
Speaker 1: that who you are has in many ways become a
Speaker 1: person who tries to change. And then you go on
Speaker 1: to say, how do you change that has been at
Speaker 1: the monastery helped you with that, that idea of being
Speaker 1: a continual self improvement project. Yeah, I mean before I
Speaker 1: went to the monastery, before I really did a spiritual practice, UM,
Speaker 1: I don't think I had a context for myself. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it was in a sense of all about me.
Speaker 1: There was something wrong with me. I was too skinny,
Speaker 1: or my grades weren't good enough. Um. Or I had
Speaker 1: some emotional problems, wasn't good with girls, um, not smart enough,
Speaker 1: not successful. It's always something that I was not enough
Speaker 1: or something that I was too much of. And so
Speaker 1: there's this sense that that the real me that I'm pursuing,
Speaker 1: it's right around the corner. You know, life is this
Speaker 1: big labyrinth, it's this big me. But the answer, the
Speaker 1: real me, the great eye that I'm going to become,
Speaker 1: just right around the corner. I just have to I
Speaker 1: just have to read this new book. I have to
Speaker 1: apply this new method of thinking. You know, I could
Speaker 1: chase something new, and it's always you get a little
Speaker 1: bit further and then it's something new, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean it's a timer, it's a fantasm or a mirage, um,
Speaker 1: you know. And then there's a sense that well, when
Speaker 1: I finally become this real meat, and then I can
Speaker 1: start living Finally, all my ducks are going to be
Speaker 1: in a row and I can start living my life.
Speaker 1: Of course, we know what happens. You know, you're you're
Speaker 1: eighty years old, and you and you realize you just
Speaker 1: spent your life trying to become something and um, you're
Speaker 1: always waiting for something right around the corner. You're always
Speaker 1: waiting for what comes next. But of course what comes
Speaker 1: next is the end. I mean that's the ultimate. What
Speaker 1: comes next? Um, what meditation did, what legal monastery did
Speaker 1: was I mean this type of threat zen that I
Speaker 1: practice nzi zen is pretty severe. You sit in the
Speaker 1: meditation hall and there's a officer there and he's going
Speaker 1: to correct you if you move, He's going to shout
Speaker 1: at you if you shift. Um, there are all there's
Speaker 1: all this form and all all sorts of rules and
Speaker 1: guidelines and regulations about what you can do and what
Speaker 1: you can't do. It's all designed to get you to
Speaker 1: sit down in one spot and settle into yourself. And
Speaker 1: what I find happens is, um, stuff starts coming up.
Speaker 1: And normally, if I was out in the world, left
Speaker 1: to myself, UM, I would act those emotions out somehow.
Speaker 1: I would get a cup of coffee so I can
Speaker 1: get my coffee buzz if I'm feeling agitated about something,
Speaker 1: or I would send an angry email or a passive
Speaker 1: aggressive email. UM. Or I would even just manifest this
Speaker 1: inner life in kind of a subtle way, just shifting
Speaker 1: in a certain way, moving my body in a certain way. UM,
Speaker 1: sitting down and in one spot and just getting to
Speaker 1: know myself. Getting as these thoughts and these emotions rise
Speaker 1: up and dissolve away, rise up and dissolve away. Start
Speaker 1: to realize, you start to get like I said, you
Speaker 1: start to get famili yourself a little bit um and um,
Speaker 1: you stop taking kind of the Meat project so seriously.
Speaker 1: This idea that we're people who always think we have
Speaker 1: to change, That's that's what we that's what we are.
Speaker 1: We're on this constant self improvement. You called it the
Speaker 1: Meat project, This constant self improvement where we feel like
Speaker 1: we have to become better than we are. Yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: that's right and just and this is and this is
Speaker 1: in one sense where I think that actual formal spiritual
Speaker 1: work is really helpful, um in the sense that it's
Speaker 1: it's a very um ritualized, straightforward way of showing you,
Speaker 1: for me anyways, showing you how to live. I was
Speaker 1: telling you a student this the other day. It's like
Speaker 1: to read the old suits us. It's like the Buddha
Speaker 1: is the ultimate spiritual superhero. You know, it's this amazing,
Speaker 1: fantastic fake here. I mean, it's very alluring to want
Speaker 1: to try and change into that being. You come, you
Speaker 1: sit down in a cushion, and it's a different story.
Speaker 1: You're all your rich, crazy, interesting, beautiful, mundane, um fascinating
Speaker 1: banal humanness rises up and then you play with it
Speaker 1: for a while and it plays with you, and eventually
Speaker 1: it dissolves, rises up and dissolves, and you don't get
Speaker 1: any better and you don't get any worse. Um. You
Speaker 1: you're just you're just hopefully you're becoming more alive and
Speaker 1: more awake. Where the stories in the book that I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed was the story of you working in the
Speaker 1: kitchen and uh and the character t Bone. Do you
Speaker 1: think you could give the listeners a mini version of
Speaker 1: that story? Yeah, I, UM, I was terrified, terrified to
Speaker 1: work in the kitchen when I moved to the Zen center. UM.
Speaker 1: After I spent a little bit of time in the kitchen,
Speaker 1: I got a helper UM because it was a really
Speaker 1: just a really eccentric, crazy, classic kind of Zen character
Speaker 1: comes m barreling through the generally speaking, when someone's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, crazy or lazy, they wind up in the
Speaker 1: kitchen at a Zen monastery. UM. So we're in this
Speaker 1: enclosed space, UM, having to work together and UM. Basically,
Speaker 1: over the period, I think it was in there with
Speaker 1: me for about two months, basically we just started driving
Speaker 1: each other crazy. UM. And one thing I kind of
Speaker 1: learned through this process was, first of all, I had
Speaker 1: to face a lot of my my mother issues. I
Speaker 1: guess you could say what I learned working in that kitchen,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of a classics in lesson. UM. First
Speaker 1: of all, I had become my mother in the sense
Speaker 1: that I was hurt and UM in sort of impatient
Speaker 1: and overly disciplinary towards my kitchen worker. But being on
Speaker 1: the other side of that equation, Um, I realized what
Speaker 1: my mother had gone through and she was raising me um,
Speaker 1: and I had to kind of really look at myself
Speaker 1: and say, I was actually a brat. I was actually
Speaker 1: probably I was certainly worse than my other brothers and
Speaker 1: sisters in a lot of ways. Um. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't all hurt even though as a young man
Speaker 1: I was still I think I was worse than your
Speaker 1: average child in the same sense that this kitchen worker
Speaker 1: that I had was just out of control crazy. I
Speaker 1: mean he was, um, you know he uh he was.
Speaker 1: He loved to freestyle wrap, so he spent all his
Speaker 1: time kind of creating wraps to make fun of me. Um.
Speaker 1: He was sort of passive, aggressive things behind my back,
Speaker 1: like hiding the salt shaker in another part of the room,
Speaker 1: and it was just constant source of aggravation. So he
Speaker 1: was definitely a very bad worker. And in a sense, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had to look at myself and say, you know what,
Speaker 1: I was not a great kid, and my mom had
Speaker 1: to put up with that for year after year after year,
Speaker 1: and so I really came to u. Yeah, certainly for
Speaker 1: the first time in left I think I grew up
Speaker 1: a lot when I was in that kitchen for the
Speaker 1: first time in my life, I sort of related to
Speaker 1: the to the parental point of view instead of the
Speaker 1: rebellious child point of view. And speaking of of the
Speaker 1: mother part of that. Can you tell us about what
Speaker 1: happened when U t bones mother came to visit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was classic. Um. This guy, this guy was like
Speaker 1: a Summerai when it came to zen um inter personal
Speaker 1: battles and there was nothing you wouldn't do. He was fearless.
Speaker 1: So his his mother and father came visited the Zen Center,
Speaker 1: and we're all in the kitchen and we're washing dishes.
Speaker 1: So at one point I started trying to feebly, I
Speaker 1: started trying to fight back with the bone in the kitchen.
Speaker 1: So when he would we had a yo mama thing going.
Speaker 1: So you know your you know your mom is so
Speaker 1: fat or your mom is so slutty, that kind of thing. Um.
Speaker 1: So so for a while I was speaking to his
Speaker 1: his mother's um slatternly ways. Now, of course I've never
Speaker 1: met his mother. I had no idea who she was.
Speaker 1: But then she came to visit as at the Zen Center,
Speaker 1: and so we're all kind of washing the dishes, hanging out.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to put on my good zen face, and
Speaker 1: t Bone just starts um mentioning all these things that
Speaker 1: I had said about his mother. You know, you you know,
Speaker 1: my mother's here. You seem to have a fetish for
Speaker 1: large breast. Do you want to aren't my mother's breast semormous?
Speaker 1: So he kind of, you know, that's sort of funny,
Speaker 1: you know, but he wouldn't stop going on and on
Speaker 1: and and and the uncomfortable thing was his his his
Speaker 1: parents didn't really stop him from doing this. They didn't
Speaker 1: really say anything to him. Kind of, I think, I
Speaker 1: don't I mean, I don't know how you spend I
Speaker 1: don't know how you raise a child like this. Um,
Speaker 1: But I mean he has some some mental issues which
Speaker 1: I don't get into. But um, you know, they clearly
Speaker 1: they were very very patient. But he went on, I mean,
Speaker 1: listed everything I had ever said about his mother, and
Speaker 1: I believe me, in the in the dark night of
Speaker 1: the soul and kitchen, I had leveled many a foul
Speaker 1: insult against his mother, and he repeated every last one
Speaker 1: of them to her in that kitchen. You know, my
Speaker 1: mother's here, you said that she deserves a minimum wage
Speaker 1: for her services at the brothels and Nevada. Would you
Speaker 1: like to speak to that now? Oh? Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: pretty good. So he, uh did did did t Bone
Speaker 1: make it? Is he's did he make it through monastery training?
Speaker 1: Did he did? He go on to other things? He's
Speaker 1: a fascinating character. He is a fascinating character. We're friends
Speaker 1: on Facebook now, so apparently he doesn't hate me too badly. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, he's a he's a he's a musical genius,
Speaker 1: and he's actually a wonderful guy. I know. I think
Speaker 1: like many of us, he came to his end center
Speaker 1: when he was Um wasn't at a high point in
Speaker 1: his life, in his career or his personal life. But
Speaker 1: in actuality he's He's a great guy, a beautiful guy,
Speaker 1: amazing guitar planers, and now I think he's I think
Speaker 1: he's actually teaching people how to play guitar. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: the story it comes across that you really learned a
Speaker 1: lot from him, and that part is so well told.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it and laughed a lot during that.
Speaker 1: I think we're coming up near the end of our
Speaker 1: time here, is there anything on the topic of the
Speaker 1: theme that you'd like to cover that you don't think
Speaker 1: we have talked about, or anything you want to add
Speaker 1: in general. Well, I think I'm babbled enough, don't you. No,
Speaker 1: I think it's been good. Yeah, I really appreciating of
Speaker 1: the kamana and and talk a little bit um. And
Speaker 1: I have to say, I have to keep sitting with
Speaker 1: the good wolf bad wolf analogy. It's important, Um, we
Speaker 1: have these we have these these flawed, m crapping, emoding, um, fascinating, precious, beautiful, interesting,
Speaker 1: wonderful human selves. And that's an absolute reality. And within
Speaker 1: that reality there's good and bad. There really is good
Speaker 1: wolf and bad wolves. Like I said, I can't be
Speaker 1: feeding the nicotine wolf anymore. It's a very clear example
Speaker 1: of a bad wolf and a good wolf. And on
Speaker 1: the other hand, Um, there is some aspect of our,
Speaker 1: of our of our shared reality that beyond good and evil,
Speaker 1: yon good and bad, beyond distinction. And and how we
Speaker 1: bring these these two things together. I mean, that's our
Speaker 1: that's our human life, that's our that's our mission, our
Speaker 1: journey and our job. So in a sense, the good
Speaker 1: wolf bad wold parable is a bit of a can
Speaker 1: for me, which I'll keep working on. Well, thank you
Speaker 1: very much for joining us. Like I said, I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed the book and I encourage the listeners to read it.
Speaker 1: There is a tremendous amount of humor and insight in it.
Speaker 1: So um with that, Jack, thanks very much, it was
Speaker 1: good to have you. Thank you Eric, and thank you Chris.
Speaker 1: Take care you too. Bye. You can learn more about
Speaker 1: shows on Jack and this podcast in our show notes
Speaker 1: at one you feed dot net slash shows on and
Speaker 1: if you don't know how to spell that, that's s
Speaker 1: h O Z A N and just kind of you know,
Speaker 1: pay us back for the favor of me telling you
Speaker 1: how to spell. You can go on iTunes store and
Speaker 1: pretty much give us a five star rating across the board.
Speaker 1: Thanks