Speaker 1: It's the universal understanding that hatred never ends. By hatred,
Speaker 1: but by love alone is yield. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for 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. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Jack Cornfield, who is one of the key
Speaker 1: teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. Over
Speaker 1: the years, Jack has taught in centers and universities worldwide.
Speaker 1: He's led international Buddhist teacher meetings and worked with many
Speaker 1: of the great teachers of our time. He holds a
Speaker 1: PhD in clinical psychology and His books have been translated
Speaker 1: into twenty languages and sold more than a million copies.
Speaker 1: And amongst all that, he is also a father, a husband,
Speaker 1: and an activist. Hi Jack, Welcome to the show. Thank you, Eric.
Speaker 1: This is really such an honor for me. I think
Speaker 1: I shared with you briefly in our post show conversation.
Speaker 1: You were one of the primary introductions to the dharma
Speaker 1: for me. I listened to you a lot in my
Speaker 1: early years of sobriety, driving around owned listening to old sounds,
Speaker 1: true cassettes. So it's a really special conversation for me.
Speaker 1: I'm really happy to be doing this. It's my pleasure.
Speaker 1: And when you say the dharma, do you think the
Speaker 1: people who are listening to what that word means? I
Speaker 1: think most of them do. Yeah, But if they don't,
Speaker 1: what we could spend the rest of the podcast breaking
Speaker 1: down the word dharma, But in this case, I would
Speaker 1: say the teachings of the Buddha. We're gonna have a
Speaker 1: conversation about a variety of different things, but let's start
Speaker 1: like we always do with the parable. In the parable,
Speaker 1: there is a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, and he looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do. Well, it's now become a famous parable in
Speaker 1: a lot of places. And it says in another way
Speaker 1: that in our consciousness as human beings, are all kinds
Speaker 1: of possibilities to cut harm. Talks about them as seeds.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's another language from wolves, but also fitting and
Speaker 1: depending which seeds you water, that will grow. So we
Speaker 1: know it is human beings if we water the seeds
Speaker 1: of anger, which is to say, if we practice it,
Speaker 1: and if that's something that becomes a response and it
Speaker 1: becomes easy and so forth, then gradually that becomes our
Speaker 1: way of moving through the world. If, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: with that same care and attention, we decide to water
Speaker 1: the seeds of kindness, or water the seeds of respect
Speaker 1: for another person who all going to be different than you,
Speaker 1: no matter how you're saying. You think of everybody's weird
Speaker 1: in their own interesting way, and you are too. And
Speaker 1: if we can see that kind of mystery with respect
Speaker 1: or sense of each human being has a certain dignity,
Speaker 1: and water those seeds, if you will or feed them,
Speaker 1: then that shapes our consciousness, before then that it shapes
Speaker 1: our life. One of the first verses in the most
Speaker 1: popular teachings of the Boddh of the Damapoda begins the
Speaker 1: mind and heart are the forerunners of all things. If
Speaker 1: you tend the heart and mind well, then beautiful things
Speaker 1: will arise. And if you do not, if you feed
Speaker 1: the angry wolf they hate the whole, the bitter or
Speaker 1: addictable for whatever it happens to be, then then that
Speaker 1: will lead you to suffering. And the beautiful thing is that,
Speaker 1: somewhere in our hearts we know this as human beings,
Speaker 1: we actually know that we can in fact turn ourselves
Speaker 1: toward what is in Sans Crugle's called sabanam is gracious
Speaker 1: or beautiful in our being. And even though we've in
Speaker 1: many cases we've suffered, and some people have had enormous trauma.
Speaker 1: The way out of it is not to repeat the trauma,
Speaker 1: but to look and see there's that there's another place
Speaker 1: to live, and if that place is really more the
Speaker 1: place of planting and nourishing the seats of love and
Speaker 1: stuff with that beautiful It leads me into our first
Speaker 1: question that I wanted to ask you, which is there
Speaker 1: are often two approaches to dealing with difficult emotions that
Speaker 1: are presented. One approach is to allow them to be
Speaker 1: what they are, to sit with them, to to use
Speaker 1: another tick knot han story, you know, invite them in
Speaker 1: for tea. You know, there's all these different approaches of
Speaker 1: allowing these emotions to be there. And then there's a
Speaker 1: whole lot of teaching in the Buddhist lineage and others around,
Speaker 1: as we said before, sort of letting go of the
Speaker 1: angry thoughts and cultivating the skillful thoughts, the more wholesome thoughts.
Speaker 1: And so I'm kind of curious in your mind, how
Speaker 1: do you know when to do which of those things
Speaker 1: or how do those things work together, or just say
Speaker 1: a little bit about that, Well, how do you know
Speaker 1: is like riding a bicycle. You can tell a kid
Speaker 1: how to ride a bicycle, but they can't know till
Speaker 1: they're on the bicycle and they get it in their body.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I loved when I
Speaker 1: was teaching my daughter how to ride her bicycle, because
Speaker 1: I was foolish at first for a little bit, and
Speaker 1: she got honored little kid, and I held onto the
Speaker 1: back of the seat to steady it. And then somebody
Speaker 1: wise might have been my hex or someone around said no, no,
Speaker 1: you don't hold the bike, you hold their waist. And
Speaker 1: when I shifted from holding the bike to holding her waist,
Speaker 1: she could feel underneath how the bike was moving and
Speaker 1: when she was in the center, and when she was
Speaker 1: tipping on one side or another. And that's really so
Speaker 1: for us as well. So if you ask, you know,
Speaker 1: what's the right thing. Should we let it go, should
Speaker 1: we make space? Should we accept it? But you can't
Speaker 1: really let something go until you accept it in some
Speaker 1: way that it's there. Otherwise you're struggling against it, and
Speaker 1: it's as if you're pushing against yourself in some way
Speaker 1: that won't go anywhere. So a first step is to
Speaker 1: say this is the way it is. It's like this
Speaker 1: the suffering, or this difficulty, or these emotions beautiful or
Speaker 1: let us actually hold them, and then there can be
Speaker 1: a response to nurture ones that are helpful to say,
Speaker 1: all right, I see you, but I don't have to
Speaker 1: follow you. Maybe it's fear, or maybe it's anger or
Speaker 1: revenge thoughts and so forth. All right, I see that.
Speaker 1: Because we don't allow ourselves to see it, they work
Speaker 1: silent underneath and we get taken over. So part of
Speaker 1: the gift of awareness and mindfulness are mindful loving awareness
Speaker 1: to see that we contain all these seeds, going back
Speaker 1: to taking on as all the seeds you contain, not
Speaker 1: to deny it, which would be to deny our humanity.
Speaker 1: And you see it. Even the littlest kids. You know,
Speaker 1: they are cute and angelic and sweet and loving and
Speaker 1: so forth, and they also can be rageful and bitter
Speaker 1: meat evenly at all. One year old throws a tantrum,
Speaker 1: and you know, yanks, the other kids here, everyone, and
Speaker 1: that's all in us. All those possibilities are there. So
Speaker 1: you have to acknowledge that. And in some way, one
Speaker 1: of the beautiful things about practicing I won't even say
Speaker 1: practicing meditation per se, although that's the way to get there,
Speaker 1: but practicing mindfulness and mindful loving awareness is that you
Speaker 1: expand your window of tolerance. This is the neuroscientist phrase,
Speaker 1: so that you can actually being the presence of the
Speaker 1: rage and the hurt that's underneath it, because almost always
Speaker 1: when it's there, it's because there's either hurt or fear.
Speaker 1: And when you can tolerate the fear or the hurt
Speaker 1: with compassion, with kindness, when you hold on and say
Speaker 1: you know, this is part of being human, then you
Speaker 1: don't have to get so caught in it and react
Speaker 1: in ways that you often would regret. You say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is super painful, this is so hard, you weep,
Speaker 1: you grieve, you feel it. And then how do I
Speaker 1: respond in a way after accepting that this hurts so
Speaker 1: much or this is so scary, how do I respond
Speaker 1: in a way that actually planned seeds for well being
Speaker 1: for me and others in the future. I love that
Speaker 1: idea of it being like riding a bike, that it
Speaker 1: really is a feel thing. One of the things I've
Speaker 1: noticed is I've gone on in in my practice and
Speaker 1: in my life and lots of people I've worked with
Speaker 1: is that different things work for different people, and different
Speaker 1: things work for us at ferent times. It's like something
Speaker 1: that like, well, that worked for me two years ago,
Speaker 1: but now you know, I need a slightly different approach,
Speaker 1: or I need to feel into it. I like that.
Speaker 1: You know. It really is a feel thing. It's really
Speaker 1: noticing our own experience what happens for us instead of
Speaker 1: what do we think is the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: Guidance is helpful, but we have to trust our own experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: someone says, testing it in the laboratory of your own experience. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And it's different at different times. Yeah, I forget who
Speaker 1: said it. Might have been Oscar Wilde said, consistency is
Speaker 1: the hobgoblin of small mind. You know that it's always
Speaker 1: supposed to be this way, but in fact we are
Speaker 1: living organisms, like the trees around us that we interbreathe with.
Speaker 1: And you know, in seasons they unfurled our leaves, and
Speaker 1: in other seasons, as it's cold, they dropped they moved there.
Speaker 1: There are a responsive mechanism of or a life form
Speaker 1: in the field where they stand in that place, and
Speaker 1: we are too. And so the beautiful thing of mindful
Speaker 1: attention mindful, loving awareness is that we can find the
Speaker 1: rhythm that's right at this moment and how we nourish ourselves.
Speaker 1: And intuitively we know it can be lost from our
Speaker 1: childhood and we can be traumatized in all kinds of ways,
Speaker 1: but with attention, we can reclaim and we can learn
Speaker 1: what's good for our heart, good for our body and mind.
Speaker 1: In your recent book, No Time like the Present, you said,
Speaker 1: whatever the situation, widen the space, remember vastness, allow ease
Speaker 1: and perspective. And I'd like to ask you for some
Speaker 1: strategies for doing that. But first I'm going to share
Speaker 1: one of mine, which is there is something for me
Speaker 1: about listening to you and the way that you speak
Speaker 1: that helps me remember vastness and widen the space. So
Speaker 1: that's one tool, hearing people who speak to us. What
Speaker 1: are some other ways of doing that, of remembering vastness,
Speaker 1: of widening this space, because the more knotted up we are,
Speaker 1: the harder this seems to be. So they're literal ones
Speaker 1: like get out of the house, go outside, walk in
Speaker 1: the woods, climb a hill and climb the mountain. Get
Speaker 1: some sense of a bigger perspective that you can look
Speaker 1: out over the landscape and widen the sense of time,
Speaker 1: so that there you are in the middle of oh
Speaker 1: he said, and she did. And I might get fired
Speaker 1: or you know, they're going to do this, or I
Speaker 1: might lose that. And then reflect on the end of
Speaker 1: your life, how much will this really have mattered? Because
Speaker 1: at the end of the life the things that mattered.
Speaker 1: Did I love well? You know, did I give myself
Speaker 1: to life? There will be ups and downs and praise
Speaker 1: and blame and joy and sorrow. We all have this
Speaker 1: and gain and lost. Nobody is exempt from this. So
Speaker 1: getting a temporal perspective and saying, let me look back
Speaker 1: at this, Okay, this is the season. It's a tough one.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll write a novel based on how tough it was,
Speaker 1: you know, or tell the story to someone. But you
Speaker 1: get a temporal perspective, you get vast time, and then
Speaker 1: you also can reflect that whatever you're going through is
Speaker 1: not the end of the story, that it's actually a
Speaker 1: story in process and it will change. In fact. The
Speaker 1: great semestress Suzuki Roshi, who wrote Send Mind Beginner's Wine,
Speaker 1: founded Scisco's in Center. His phrase for the teachings was
Speaker 1: so simple, he said, not always so and we get
Speaker 1: stuck in thinking that fear, the hurt, the anger, the difficulty,
Speaker 1: because that's what you're talking about, that they're always going
Speaker 1: to be there, and they're not. In fact, you're not
Speaker 1: going to always be there. First of all, in the
Speaker 1: same way you are today, you'll be a different person
Speaker 1: in a decade or two or three. You will if
Speaker 1: you dove that long and even beyond. You know, there's
Speaker 1: like they're not going to be there. In that way,
Speaker 1: they're not the end of this story. In another way
Speaker 1: of widening the perspective is to become the field of compassion,
Speaker 1: to feel that we as human beings born into this
Speaker 1: human incarnation, we are bound to have unbearable beauty and
Speaker 1: an ocean of tears. And if your eyes and your
Speaker 1: heart are open in this world in which removed through,
Speaker 1: both are true. And it doesn't matter whether you're a
Speaker 1: zillion error, you know someone who has lost everything. It's
Speaker 1: just the truth of the way things are. And when
Speaker 1: you see that, you can start to feel a kind
Speaker 1: of deep compassion for the journey of life. Everybody struggles
Speaker 1: at some times. Everybody has longing and love and hope
Speaker 1: and fear. This makes us up and to step back
Speaker 1: and become the compassionate one, which is one of the
Speaker 1: names for the Buddha or for your own Buddha nature,
Speaker 1: if you will, not to make anybody into a Buddhist,
Speaker 1: but to say that you are actually a Buddha in training,
Speaker 1: to have that tenderness of heart that says we're in
Speaker 1: this and human life is unbearable, beauty and the hotian
Speaker 1: of tears. It has all of this, and we can
Speaker 1: hold it with a huge heart. And their practices to
Speaker 1: do this is a nice thing. I was invited to
Speaker 1: be part of the first White House Buddhist leadership gathering
Speaker 1: under a former president. You might imagine it wasn't the
Speaker 1: most recent one prior, but it was under Barack Obama,
Speaker 1: and there was a hundred and twenty different Buddhist teachers
Speaker 1: from both immigrant communities and convert communities and people you know,
Speaker 1: all over and they were doing amazing things. They were
Speaker 1: running soup kitchens and building schools. They weren't just meditating
Speaker 1: and sitting quietly, but there was this whole sense of
Speaker 1: engage ment, of compassion. And I gave one of the
Speaker 1: last talks kind of summarizing what we've learned and said
Speaker 1: to people. You've you know, heard all these things that
Speaker 1: folks are doing. And I said, in almost every tradition
Speaker 1: you hear that it's important to care for people, to
Speaker 1: develop your connection and compassion, to attend the earth well,
Speaker 1: to live with a loving heart. I mean, it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter whether it's Christian or Jewish or Muslim, or you know,
Speaker 1: some other behind or into all of that, the spiritual traditions,
Speaker 1: I said, the beautiful thing that we have as a
Speaker 1: heritage in the Buddhist world is that we have practices
Speaker 1: to do it. I read a passage that says ancient
Speaker 1: passions thousands of years old that in a wise society,
Speaker 1: one cares for the vulnerable and the elderly, and one
Speaker 1: NEETs and listens to one another with respect. And so
Speaker 1: I said, these are beautiful ideas. You can read them
Speaker 1: the Bible, you can read them in louds of But
Speaker 1: the beautiful thing is that their practices to learn to
Speaker 1: do it. And if you undertake a training in compassion,
Speaker 1: for example, it's a very simple meditative practice, and you
Speaker 1: do it over and over, planting the seeds, if you will,
Speaker 1: or feeding that wolf or whatever, till the wolf actually
Speaker 1: morphs into a lapdog, or at least a great, big,
Speaker 1: happy whatever it is, your favorite golden retriever or something.
Speaker 1: When you feed that wolf, it turns out it's not
Speaker 1: a wolf at all. It's actually this loving being. But
Speaker 1: that there are practices and they're not that complicated, and
Speaker 1: modern neuroscience has shown that even a little training transforms
Speaker 1: your heart and mind. Because our education is so out
Speaker 1: of directed. You learn the A, B C s. You
Speaker 1: learn reading, writing, rhythmetic, all those things. That's half of
Speaker 1: the education. But how do you tend yourself when you're afraid,
Speaker 1: which we all get. How do you tend yourself when
Speaker 1: someone hurts you, when you get angry? How do you
Speaker 1: practice forgiveness? How do you find compassion for the people
Speaker 1: around here suffering so you don't close yourself off and
Speaker 1: they aren't closed to you. And again, the beautiful thing
Speaker 1: is that there are simple practices that we can do
Speaker 1: that Noundera signs shows transform your heart and mind and
Speaker 1: you can live in a different way. And I said
Speaker 1: so with the White House gathering, I said, it's not
Speaker 1: just that these are beautiful aspirations from Plato or Lautsu
Speaker 1: or the Great Stages. But here's how we can do them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's one of the things I've always loved about Buddhism
Speaker 1: is that sense of there is practice, there's something to
Speaker 1: do besides read in and believe in. It's what I
Speaker 1: loved about a early on For me too, there was
Speaker 1: a series of steps. There was, yes, something I could do.
Speaker 1: You know, part of me has a doing nature. I've
Speaker 1: learned to tone that down as part of my spiritual path.
Speaker 1: That does lead me into one of of things I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you, which is the spiritual landscape is
Speaker 1: vastly different today than it was as you were coming up.
Speaker 1: And it's vastly different even for me. You know, when
Speaker 1: I started, like I want to learn to meditate, and
Speaker 1: I found a transcendental meditation course in Columbus, Ohio is
Speaker 1: the only thing. There are so many options, so many choices,
Speaker 1: so many different practices. How does someone go about even
Speaker 1: starting to sort out? Like? Where do I want to start?
Speaker 1: What makes sense for me? Do I want to do insight?
Speaker 1: Do I want to do breath meditation, compassion meditation? Do
Speaker 1: I want to be in the zen tradition? Like? There
Speaker 1: are so many options? What some guiding ideas that people
Speaker 1: might use as a way to orient themselves in this
Speaker 1: paradox of choice. Well, the paradox of choice is also
Speaker 1: one of the kind of American sufferings that we have
Speaker 1: market and there's eighty seven kinds of beer, light beer,
Speaker 1: and you know, European beer in Japan Ea spirit you know,
Speaker 1: come on already, how many kinds of what you do?
Speaker 1: And now this the spiritual supermarket is the same. My
Speaker 1: recommendations are relatively simple because actually we have an innate
Speaker 1: wisdom and us. Some of you are body people who
Speaker 1: are listening, and you know that to meditate also it
Speaker 1: would help to engage your body. And so yoga and
Speaker 1: meditation together is a good way to start because it
Speaker 1: kind of grounds you in your body. You know, some
Speaker 1: of you are drawn in an artistic nature to poetry
Speaker 1: and so forth, and there are you know, they're kind
Speaker 1: of poetic ways of entering reading poetry and beginning to sense, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a kind of creativity underneath. So partly it's to
Speaker 1: take stock of your own nature. I tell people to
Speaker 1: try them and to start with the name brands that
Speaker 1: there's a reason why so many people are doing some
Speaker 1: of the larger communities of practice and try a mindfulness
Speaker 1: practice There are a lot of different versions mindfulness of
Speaker 1: body or mindfulness of feeling. But find something that's good.
Speaker 1: And I have a thing online that's free called Mindfulness
Speaker 1: Daily together with Tara Brock. It's free, it's forty days,
Speaker 1: it's fifteen minutes a day, seven minutes of meditation, seven
Speaker 1: minutes of instruction. How do you deal with body pain?
Speaker 1: How do you deal with emotions regret or longing? How
Speaker 1: do you deal with repeated thoughts that come in healthy ways?
Speaker 1: Try a few, and we're Americans, we know how to
Speaker 1: shop right. But go to a place that sells good
Speaker 1: stuff and you can feel it, that has some integrity,
Speaker 1: and then listen to what resonates in your heart, because
Speaker 1: in the end, that's where it matters. Does this feel
Speaker 1: like it's leading? There's a phrase onward leading. Is it
Speaker 1: leading me to greater well being or understanding or tenderness
Speaker 1: with myself and the world that I'm in and that
Speaker 1: people around that I care are about? And some of
Speaker 1: it is one great Tibetan bamba called the pretense of accident.
Speaker 1: That you think you're looking, but there's some other way
Speaker 1: in which the universe also is waiting for you. Something
Speaker 1: kind of mysterious and I can't even explain that. But
Speaker 1: we're embedded in the universe that is really orderly. It's
Speaker 1: not like it's totally chaotic or wouldn't exist. And there's
Speaker 1: something about how when the heart is ready to open
Speaker 1: and understand um. Also, the teachings appear in their way,
Speaker 1: and you trust yourself and that if it feels off,
Speaker 1: can it drop it and listen and go try something else.
Speaker 1: As you went through your spiritual path, I've heard you
Speaker 1: reference having a number of different teachers over the years,
Speaker 1: or studying in a number of different traditions, and I'm
Speaker 1: kind of curious, how did you decide when it was
Speaker 1: time to work with somebody different or to expand your path?
Speaker 1: How did you navigate that? As someone who is thirty
Speaker 1: years into a spiritual path of my own, these are
Speaker 1: questions that come up for me, you know, do I
Speaker 1: stay in this tradition that I've been in for several years,
Speaker 1: or do I follow a curiosity or a leaning of
Speaker 1: the heart in this direction or that direction. I'm kind
Speaker 1: of curious how you did that as you navigated your path. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a kind of interesting arc. I mean, sometimes you
Speaker 1: just find a particular teaching or teacher or tradition that
Speaker 1: just speaks to you, know, and it might be a
Speaker 1: rabbi who does the mystical teachings or Buddhist then teacher
Speaker 1: or whatever it is, and you just feel touched by it,
Speaker 1: and so you try that, you do it, and you
Speaker 1: get engaged and see what happens. Now. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: a lot of times people say, well, I don't know
Speaker 1: and I'm not drawn to something, So then try a
Speaker 1: few things. We know how to shop or Americans, right,
Speaker 1: that's kind of our middle name. And you try if
Speaker 1: you and sense what feels like it fits for your
Speaker 1: own body and mind, what sense that it has integrity
Speaker 1: and honesty, that has love, that it's not like secret
Speaker 1: in some way. That then under the secrecy, all kinds
Speaker 1: of things can be hidden. And after you've done that
Speaker 1: for a bit, and pick one and do it long
Speaker 1: enough to see the fruit of it, to feel as
Speaker 1: I did in meditation, or maybe you did into your
Speaker 1: twelve step work that you talk about when you go
Speaker 1: to your twelve step meeting. And first it's tentative, and
Speaker 1: then as you go along you realize these are tools
Speaker 1: and I'm becoming a different person. I was identified with
Speaker 1: that part of myself that's an addict, and that's who
Speaker 1: I took myself to be, and they're helping me realize
Speaker 1: that's not who I am, and they work. So you
Speaker 1: try it. Then after you've done it and you feel
Speaker 1: like you have somehow been nourished and transformed. And sometimes
Speaker 1: you look around and you say, well, I was really
Speaker 1: nourished in these ways by this meal. But I hear
Speaker 1: they have a great salad over there and fantastic desert.
Speaker 1: They realized, oh, now I want to explore again. But
Speaker 1: the oloration isn't kind of drilling lots of shallow wells
Speaker 1: because you can't stick with something. It's actually feeling like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I have a practice or a tradition that's really changed me.
Speaker 1: And now I hear that there's some beautiful things, some
Speaker 1: hard practices there, some body practice that I could learn
Speaker 1: from as well, and then they become a compliment. And
Speaker 1: that how it was for me. You know, I had
Speaker 1: such deep training as a Buddhist monk with two very
Speaker 1: different styles of masters. And then after a time when
Speaker 1: I came back and I was living and did my
Speaker 1: graduate work and was teaching graduate work in psychology, we
Speaker 1: have to pass along all the things I learned as
Speaker 1: a Buddhist monk. I would hear of some amazing teacher
Speaker 1: or some beautiful teaching, say, oh, I'd like to go
Speaker 1: listen to that and glean and learn great things and
Speaker 1: be inspired. Because we do. We treed each other, We
Speaker 1: resonate with one another, We get inspired by others. Yesterday
Speaker 1: I had the privilege of being part of a kind
Speaker 1: of group podcast with father Greg Boyle. He's the founder
Speaker 1: of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, which is the largest
Speaker 1: gang intervention community in the world. Probably people a year
Speaker 1: come through their doors. They take people who are lost
Speaker 1: on the streets, who have been a added by their parents,
Speaker 1: who are in the undeclared war in their neighborhood, people
Speaker 1: who live in the kind of poverty and lack of opportunity.
Speaker 1: The gangs are like the only thing that's offered to
Speaker 1: them and brings these kids in broken often or you
Speaker 1: know some in out of prison meets them, loves them
Speaker 1: and says, you know, you're a worthy human being. You
Speaker 1: maybe have been dealt a really tough hand, but I
Speaker 1: see who you really are. Now, come and try the
Speaker 1: things that we're doing and see how it goes for you.
Speaker 1: We welcome you, and it's extraordinary to see the transformation
Speaker 1: of these human beings. And he does it in this
Speaker 1: very simple way. It's not like on a high horse
Speaker 1: at all. He's just down with where humans. And it's
Speaker 1: so tender and I can't recommend tattoos on the heart
Speaker 1: more highly. It's a reminder that no matter how how
Speaker 1: things are, and we do get caught in things and
Speaker 1: esses of life that are really painful. I readd My
Speaker 1: Heart's Offense, my eyes cheer up at times I go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what it means to touch that which is
Speaker 1: difficult with the heart of compassion. It is an absolutely
Speaker 1: beautiful book. I remember, I think I listened to that
Speaker 1: one on tape. My memory is notoriously terrible, but I
Speaker 1: have an actual remembering of sitting in a parking lot
Speaker 1: listening to part of that book, and the same as you,
Speaker 1: sort of tearing up as I was listening to it
Speaker 1: because it's just so beautiful. Yeah, And that's what we
Speaker 1: can do for each other. That's why when in the
Speaker 1: Buddhist teachings the three refuges, the first is the refuge
Speaker 1: of Buddho, which means to see the Buddha nature and
Speaker 1: every being you meet, that there's a possibility of a
Speaker 1: secret beauty and in every single being, even if they're
Speaker 1: misguided and lost of times and so forth, that underneath
Speaker 1: there's that child of the spirit that was born in
Speaker 1: there to be able to begin to see the world
Speaker 1: with those eyes as father Greg does when people come
Speaker 1: in the door, you know, out of prison and all
Speaker 1: tattooed and fighting with everybody, and underneath you know they're
Speaker 1: a child who was terribly mistreated on the streets are
Speaker 1: at home. So to see the Buddha nature in every being.
Speaker 1: Dharma is a word that means the truths, the path,
Speaker 1: the teachings that liberate the understandings, and we all have
Speaker 1: access to that. It's not held by Buddhism or some
Speaker 1: other tradition. It's the universal understanding that hatred never ends
Speaker 1: by hatred, but by love alone is healed. The universal
Speaker 1: understanding that everything changes and if you hang on too
Speaker 1: tight you get rope burnt. You know that actually you
Speaker 1: have to be able to grow each day and each
Speaker 1: year in new ways. And then these profound teachings that
Speaker 1: our heart heres and goes this is true, and then
Speaker 1: the third refugees and refuge in community. That we can't
Speaker 1: do it alone. Known ever does it alone. The whole
Speaker 1: fiction of the lone cowboy in the American Independence and
Speaker 1: so forth, it's nonsense. That cowboy on their horse. Somebody
Speaker 1: bred those horses for generations. The saddle was the result
Speaker 1: of a thousand or five thousand years of people learning
Speaker 1: to tan leather and work it and created into that,
Speaker 1: you know, the bridle and the metal, and it started
Speaker 1: back in the Bronze Age and before it when metal
Speaker 1: was beginning to be extracted by or and people learned.
Speaker 1: All those things are woven into that moment of that cowboy,
Speaker 1: and our lives are like that. We're woven interdependently into
Speaker 1: the fabric of things. And when we open to this,
Speaker 1: especially in a spiritual life, learning how to transform our heart,
Speaker 1: we realize we need each other, We belong to each other,
Speaker 1: and the actually need when we're down someone else, you
Speaker 1: know it in a A that's what A is about, actually,
Speaker 1: or whatever twelve step program you've been in, that we
Speaker 1: need others to remind us when we forget, and we
Speaker 1: can remind others, we become that beacon. And it's in
Speaker 1: this way that we become woven back into the world
Speaker 1: that our hearts been cut off from, Archbishop Tutu says
Speaker 1: in Africa, when you ask someone how they are, they
Speaker 1: usually answer in the plural we are well or we
Speaker 1: are not well, because even if they're well physically, maybe
Speaker 1: their grandmother is ill, and because who they are is
Speaker 1: not just this isolated human being, but woven into the community.
Speaker 1: The only possible responses we are well or we are
Speaker 1: not well. We are in this together. I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about a chapter in your book, No Time Like
Speaker 1: the Present that is all about trust. And I've joked
Speaker 1: on this show before. In the work I do with
Speaker 1: my spiritual director, literally every conversation ends up back at trust.
Speaker 1: It just seems to always come back to that, And
Speaker 1: so I wanted to ask a little bit about You
Speaker 1: just talked about one of the things the Buddhist tradition
Speaker 1: talks about trusting in, which is trusting in taking refuge
Speaker 1: in Buddha, dharma, and sanga. What are some of the
Speaker 1: other things that you personally trust in, you know that
Speaker 1: when you're feeling uncertain afraid, that you're able to trust in.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at that chapter trying to remember if I
Speaker 1: said anything worthwhile. You know, one of the great sense
Speaker 1: sayings is that enlightenment or awakening is one with the
Speaker 1: trusting heart. There's a practice of trusting in the big picture.
Speaker 1: That your body breathe fifteen that was in breath to day,
Speaker 1: your heart pumps ninety thousand times a day, you're in
Speaker 1: this ever pulsing field of life that inter breathes with
Speaker 1: the trees and the bushes and the turning of the
Speaker 1: seasons around you, and that you're part of something so
Speaker 1: much bigger, and our little minds get okay, this is
Speaker 1: who I am. As if we're completely separate, you can
Speaker 1: relax and say it and open and feel that it's
Speaker 1: not that you are breathing, you are being breathed, and
Speaker 1: that there's something so much bigger caring for you, which
Speaker 1: is this universe. It's earth to you. So that's a
Speaker 1: way to open to trust. You begin as you get quiet,
Speaker 1: to also trust your inner knowing, because ordinarily we've been
Speaker 1: taught to look outside for the answers to things. And
Speaker 1: now our culture used to be television. Now it's online,
Speaker 1: feeds us all this stuff, talk about the wolves. It
Speaker 1: feeds us gorgeous things, and it feeds this garbage and
Speaker 1: feeds just that that which is skillful and healthy and
Speaker 1: that which is really unhealthy. And when you why yourself,
Speaker 1: you know, and even in the confusing times when you
Speaker 1: don't quite know, you know that you don't know, and
Speaker 1: that you have to wait and be patient and listen.
Speaker 1: That knowing isn't given to you yet. But in all
Speaker 1: of that, if you listen to your body, it will
Speaker 1: tell you really what it needs to be well and healthy.
Speaker 1: If you listen to your heart and your instincts, most
Speaker 1: often they'll say this is the way to go to
Speaker 1: live with some well being and beauty and dignity in yourself,
Speaker 1: which is your birth right, your self confidence. And it's
Speaker 1: not just intuition, but it's a kind of inner knowing.
Speaker 1: And when you begin to live with trust, which you
Speaker 1: could say is the opposite of fear in a certain
Speaker 1: way in the psyche or in the heart. It's not
Speaker 1: that fear doesn't arise. You need to say, oh, fear,
Speaker 1: I know you, you know. Tick not On would say,
Speaker 1: invited in for tea a little bit. Yeah. It tells
Speaker 1: its stories and it has its reasons trying to protect
Speaker 1: you things you for trying to protect me, I'm okay
Speaker 1: right now, I'll find my way. So trust them is
Speaker 1: the opposite of fear. It allows fear to be there,
Speaker 1: but sense that you are part of something mysterious and
Speaker 1: huge that's given life to you in this form. It's
Speaker 1: never done it before. It's kind of amazing, you know,
Speaker 1: with all the seven billion people and the trillions of
Speaker 1: life forms on Earth, and we don't even talk about
Speaker 1: the stars and the galaxies. Says I'm going to make
Speaker 1: a new one. Howland, Let's try this one. You know,
Speaker 1: whoever it is, it's a cosmic creative process, that's life.
Speaker 1: And that you're not an accident, even if you were
Speaker 1: an accident to your parents, Oh my god, he said,
Speaker 1: we didn't plan to have this get But that's not true.
Speaker 1: You weren't an accident. You came because the universe and
Speaker 1: the conditions of this amazing life of consciousness said yes
Speaker 1: and outtime for this being again to arise. And so
Speaker 1: you shift to trust. It's your birth ride, and you know,
Speaker 1: you lose it. I mean, I think about little babies.
Speaker 1: If they aren't held, and if they don't have secure
Speaker 1: attachment and things like that, people don't have a sense
Speaker 1: of trust and they have to relearn it. But the
Speaker 1: beautiful thing is that it's never too late that actually
Speaker 1: you can learn that. You can learn it with people
Speaker 1: you care about, you can learn it, and practices like meditation.
Speaker 1: I remember doing this training with guys coming out of prison,
Speaker 1: and there's a guy who would come out of nine
Speaker 1: years in prison Louisiana, and he had become the stage
Speaker 1: of that prison. People would go to him. He had
Speaker 1: seen so much and he'd been through so much, and
Speaker 1: he said, you know, I've been through it all. I
Speaker 1: don't want to fight the world anymore. I want to
Speaker 1: live with it. And all these other people around him
Speaker 1: wanted to listen to him because he had a kind
Speaker 1: of deep trust that you could get through anything and
Speaker 1: that what would really true and matter to you in
Speaker 1: the end couldn't be taken from you, and people wanted
Speaker 1: to sit around his light. You know, it seems that
Speaker 1: the place that trust breaks down for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and where it breaks down for me is when I'm
Speaker 1: very attached to particular outcomes. I think I need this
Speaker 1: to be happy, this needs to go this way, this
Speaker 1: needs to go that way, And then of course what
Speaker 1: I do is I go, well, I don't trust in
Speaker 1: anything to make that particular outcome happen. And for me,
Speaker 1: it's been about, as you said, opening up into a
Speaker 1: wider field of experience, trusting that what's happening can be
Speaker 1: lived with, can be born. Can you give any example, Well,
Speaker 1: let's say, for example, I am thinking of five years
Speaker 1: ago I left my career and software developed. No, it's
Speaker 1: been like three years. Sorry, about three years ago. I
Speaker 1: left that to do this podcast full time, do the
Speaker 1: coaching work that I do full time. And there's a
Speaker 1: leap there, you know, I financial leap. So then I'll
Speaker 1: have moments where I'm like, well, I don't trust that
Speaker 1: this is going to work out. I don't trust that
Speaker 1: will make enough money. I don't trust that. So I'm
Speaker 1: very attached to that it has to work out this way.
Speaker 1: You know, this is what I want to have happen,
Speaker 1: and so I have to work really hard to make
Speaker 1: that happen. I'm the one that has to make it happen.
Speaker 1: And then with it, you can see images of yourself
Speaker 1: out on the street with a shopping card as a
Speaker 1: homeless person, like, Okay, if this doesn't work out, it's
Speaker 1: all going to go downhill. I'll start using again. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the mind that has no pride, and when
Speaker 1: it gets a little bit nervous, and we're wired to
Speaker 1: be nervous, we're wired to survive, and then it spends
Speaker 1: out all these stories. I mean, what did you do?
Speaker 1: What help you? Oh? I think back to what we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier. I have to widen my perspective and
Speaker 1: I have to say, like, this is what my current
Speaker 1: self thinks that it would prefer, but it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be that way. And often I don't know what's
Speaker 1: best for me. I don't know even what will make
Speaker 1: me happy, and that letting things be is always the
Speaker 1: path that leads me to more freedom. And so I
Speaker 1: I sort of just open back up to vastness, that
Speaker 1: idea of letting things be the way they are beautiful.
Speaker 1: So you, in many ways, you answered the question for
Speaker 1: yourself in a way that really worked. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: we all get afraid we're wired that way. We don't
Speaker 1: have to let that run our heart, we don't have
Speaker 1: to let that run our life. It's an a large
Speaker 1: Sometimes you pay attention this is important, or care and
Speaker 1: so forth, and I think the first thing is just
Speaker 1: to acknowledge it and do it kindly and say yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of times we can feel insecure young when
Speaker 1: that fear comes. Yeah, I understand, they're there, It's okay,
Speaker 1: these are understandable, and remember there's a much bigger picture.
Speaker 1: We have other ways we're going to make it, and
Speaker 1: only that you know, fear is sometimes I describe it
Speaker 1: as the membrane between who we think we are and
Speaker 1: something new that wants to happen. And so it's like
Speaker 1: one of those little lights on the dashboard of the car,
Speaker 1: you know that something. When fear comes, it's like about
Speaker 1: to grow. You're about to stretch and grow, and to
Speaker 1: grow requires that you take a little bit of a
Speaker 1: risk and say, Okay, there's fear. That's fine. Thank you
Speaker 1: fear for telling me your story. I appreciate you trying
Speaker 1: to take care of me, but actually, let's grow. Let's
Speaker 1: see what happens. Yep. I love that. I'm going to
Speaker 1: stay on the topic of trust for a couple of
Speaker 1: minutes because you wrote a lot of wonderful things in
Speaker 1: that chapter, and you know, one of them you wrote
Speaker 1: was that the best forms of healing, therapy and meditation
Speaker 1: are all about learning to trust when we're meditating, for example,
Speaker 1: you know, from your perspective, what might we be trusting
Speaker 1: in if someone will be sitting down to meditate and
Speaker 1: get very into a commonplace of I'm not doing this right.
Speaker 1: I can't do this. My mind's too busy, all the
Speaker 1: stories about our individual effort we have to make. What
Speaker 1: would you say would be a place to turn for
Speaker 1: trust in that specific situation. That's a beautiful question, and
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's right in my industry. So it's
Speaker 1: something that I see all the time. It's called the
Speaker 1: doubting mind, and we all have it. But it can
Speaker 1: be a meditation, or it can be you know, am
Speaker 1: I doing this job all right? Or am I screwing
Speaker 1: it up? You know? In this relationship? Whatever, We have
Speaker 1: it in all kinds of ways. The beautiful thing is
Speaker 1: that we also have the capacity to step back with mindful,
Speaker 1: loving awareness and say, oh, this is the doubting mind.
Speaker 1: Thank you for your opinion, thank you for trying to
Speaker 1: keep me safe, you know, and the moment that you acknowledge,
Speaker 1: oh am I doing it right? Am I not doing
Speaker 1: it right? Where this is the judging mind? Stop judging.
Speaker 1: I hate that judgment. I don't want to be judging myself.
Speaker 1: I don't want to judging anyone else. I judge so
Speaker 1: much terrible stop it. But what's that it's more judgment,
Speaker 1: so instead what you learn in meditation, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of a combination, which is why I love this phrase,
Speaker 1: mindful loving awareness. It's also around us. This phrase is
Speaker 1: it's as if you can bow to the experience and say,
Speaker 1: oh you fear, oh you judging mind, oh you doubt?
Speaker 1: Am I doing this right? The doubting mind, thank you
Speaker 1: for trying to keep me safe. I'm okay now. And
Speaker 1: then you can go feel yourself seated on the earth
Speaker 1: and breathing, and watch with loving awareness the moods that
Speaker 1: come and the thoughts that arise. So these things don't
Speaker 1: mean you're doing it wrong or that there's something wrong
Speaker 1: with you. They're part of a kind of programming, if
Speaker 1: you will, of self judgment. We won't talk about who
Speaker 1: programmed that in there, but you know them in the
Speaker 1: society whatever. But they arise and you say, yeah, thank
Speaker 1: you for your opinion. I'm actually fine, or I'm resting
Speaker 1: an awareness and I can observe this with a kind heart,
Speaker 1: and you don't have to believe it, and One of
Speaker 1: the beautiful gifts of meditation and mindful meditation compassion practice
Speaker 1: is that you learn how to rest. You become more
Speaker 1: the loving witness of experience without reacting, not taking it.
Speaker 1: So personally you're good, you're bad. All those different things
Speaker 1: saying get those are thoughts, thank you. And here I
Speaker 1: am resting on earth, breathing in my heart open, bringing
Speaker 1: inequality of presence and love. I love that you're in,
Speaker 1: you know, probably the last, let's say, third of your life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm lucky. I hope I'm not surprising you with that news.
Speaker 1: And I'm seventy six. That would give me, you know,
Speaker 1: at least another thirty years. I'd be a hundred and six. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: but roughly, let's you know, roughly ever, take one to
Speaker 1: thirty years. Yeah, alright. Is you look at your own
Speaker 1: spiritual practice, your own spiritual path. Is there anything that
Speaker 1: feels different or important to you as you go into
Speaker 1: this last third versus the other periods? Does it feel
Speaker 1: different or do you have a different focus. I've been
Speaker 1: a kind of type a person in a personality way.
Speaker 1: I'm a do or. I like to get stuff done,
Speaker 1: whether it's creating a meditation, center or training teachers. This
Speaker 1: has been kind of my life or writing a book
Speaker 1: or you know, mentoring people who the kind of work
Speaker 1: that I've done, and I find myself really shifting. I'm
Speaker 1: still involved in the number of wonderful project x and
Speaker 1: things that I feel are an expression of these teachings
Speaker 1: of loving awareness that really healed the heart, that invite
Speaker 1: people to be wise. And I'm on up seven different boards,
Speaker 1: one on climate change that's remarkable regeneration about how we
Speaker 1: can really change the climate in a generation. In these ways,
Speaker 1: What's happened is that in this phase, I've relaxed more
Speaker 1: less doing and more allowing things to unfold and putting
Speaker 1: myself into things and being engaged in ways, in creative
Speaker 1: ways and so forth, but also feeling like it will
Speaker 1: turn out the way it turns out. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: working with some very high level people in the film
Speaker 1: world and the television world to create a ten part
Speaker 1: series on the history of mindfulness and these kind of
Speaker 1: trainings for Amazon Netflix. You know that it might turn
Speaker 1: out it might not working on the climate change things,
Speaker 1: Let's do what we can. This goes back to your
Speaker 1: original story, what are we feeding or Takna Han. I
Speaker 1: like his image. Which seeds? You know, there are all
Speaker 1: seeds in consciousness and which ones do we water? And
Speaker 1: it's not given to me often to control the result.
Speaker 1: But what we can do is nurture, intend and feel
Speaker 1: ourself part of something bigger that even if I, you know,
Speaker 1: walk out and get hit by a car and die today,
Speaker 1: later that I'll planted some beautiful seeds and nurse some
Speaker 1: beautiful things and they will carry on in their own way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little by little, I'm getting a little easier and
Speaker 1: possibly even a little bit wiser on a good day. Well,
Speaker 1: I could certainly say I think you have planted so
Speaker 1: many wonderful seeds. This podcast would not exist certainly without you.
Speaker 1: I'm curious is that my inset has shifted a little bit?
Speaker 1: Do you feel like that would have been a helpful
Speaker 1: mindset for you to have had earlier? Or it just
Speaker 1: kind of was everything in its own sweet time. That's
Speaker 1: part of the paradox of being human, you know. I
Speaker 1: had my own ambitions, and in some ways that they
Speaker 1: were helpful. On the other hand, if I had held
Speaker 1: them more lightly, that might have been better. Who the
Speaker 1: hell knows. I think I think all of the above.
Speaker 1: You know, I feel tremendously blessed. I've had a really great,
Speaker 1: wonderful life so far, and it hasn't all been easy
Speaker 1: to Like, family of origin was really pained one. My
Speaker 1: father was kind of mentally ill in part and very
Speaker 1: violent and abusive and so forth, and a wife beater,
Speaker 1: and a family circumstance was really wanted, a lot of
Speaker 1: fear often and pain. And we all have stuff in
Speaker 1: our background, not all, but almost everyone. And if you
Speaker 1: don't have it yet, it will come in its way.
Speaker 1: But because there's praise and blame and gain and loss
Speaker 1: and fame and misfortunate just part of the game, joy
Speaker 1: and sorrow. That being said, I feel so grateful to
Speaker 1: have found practices and teachings of a gracious heart instead
Speaker 1: of being reactive to everything that happens. But to have
Speaker 1: this place to step back a bit with compassion and
Speaker 1: some tenders that say, yeah, this is what it means
Speaker 1: to be human. Can I navigate this with kindness for
Speaker 1: myself and others? Can I plant good seeds, you know,
Speaker 1: or water the good ones? And that's been the blessing.
Speaker 1: I think that is a beautiful place for us to
Speaker 1: wrap up. Jack, Thank you so much has been a
Speaker 1: special one for me given as I said, I think
Speaker 1: I've listened to more dharma talks from you than than
Speaker 1: probably anyone else. Your voice has filled my head in
Speaker 1: lots of times of difficulty and struggle and joy and
Speaker 1: all of that, and so it's a real honor for
Speaker 1: us to have you on here. Well, thank you. And
Speaker 1: there's a story. I think it was Hope John. He
Speaker 1: said sometimes at night he thinks about the problems of
Speaker 1: the world and the struggles in the church and so forth,
Speaker 1: and thinks, well, you know, I have to talk to
Speaker 1: the pope about it, and then he wakes up any reverers, Oh,
Speaker 1: I am the pope, you know. And I think that
Speaker 1: there's something we talked about listening to all these things
Speaker 1: that it actually the point is to remind people that
Speaker 1: you are the one that carries the wisdom. That if
Speaker 1: you listen and you enjoy, you know, the words or
Speaker 1: these podcasts or whatever, it's not that somebody out there
Speaker 1: is something to admire. But the gift really is to
Speaker 1: shine it back and say you are this, that you
Speaker 1: carry this, that this is your nature. You have the
Speaker 1: seeds of awakening in you, and you have an inviolable
Speaker 1: child of the spirit that was born, even if it's
Speaker 1: buried from your trauma. There isn't you something so beautiful
Speaker 1: that can't be taken. Thank you, Thank you. If what
Speaker 1: you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making
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