Speaker 1: For Buddhism, the fundamental issue is not good versus evil.
Speaker 1: It's delusion versus wisdom, or its ignorance versus awakening. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is David Lloyd, a professor, writer,
Speaker 1: and Zen teacher in the Sandbo Zen tradition of Japanese
Speaker 1: and Buddhism. David lectures nationally and internationally on various topics,
Speaker 1: focusing primarily on the encounter between Buddhism and modernity and
Speaker 1: what each can learn from the other. He is also
Speaker 1: one of the founding members of the new Rocky Mountain
Speaker 1: Echo Dharma Retreat Center near Boulder, Colorado. David is a
Speaker 1: prolific author of both books and magazine contributions, including the
Speaker 1: book we focus on in much of this interview, A
Speaker 1: New Buddhist Path, Enlightenment, Evolution and Ethics in the Modern World.
Speaker 1: My friends, it feels good to support the things you
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Speaker 1: And also i'd encourage you to get on our email list.
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Speaker 1: We have a wonderful newsletter each month where we talk
Speaker 1: about guests. I profile a book that I love. We've
Speaker 1: got meditation tips, lots of different things, and you can
Speaker 1: get a paper right now called for transformational hacks that
Speaker 1: make habits stick even if you've tried before and failed.
Speaker 1: So again, when you feed dot net slash support, and
Speaker 1: when you feed dot net to get on our email
Speaker 1: list and get the newsletter and that special paper. And
Speaker 1: here's the interview with David Lloyd Hi David, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Thanks very much. Eric, good to be here.
Speaker 1: You've written a great number of books that are all fascinating,
Speaker 1: But the one that we're going to focus on tonight
Speaker 1: is called A New Buddhist Path, Enlightened Evolution and Ethics
Speaker 1: in the Modern World. So we'll get into that book
Speaker 1: in just a minute. And there's so many things in
Speaker 1: that book that are right on point with things that
Speaker 1: I'm really fascinated and interested in. So I think it's
Speaker 1: gonna be a great discussion. But let's start, like we
Speaker 1: always do, with the parable of the two wolves. There's
Speaker 1: a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second, and he looks over at his
Speaker 1: grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And
Speaker 1: the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you In your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do. It's the lifeful to come across that story again,
Speaker 1: because right after nine eleven I wrote a Buddhist response
Speaker 1: to that event, which ended with that particular story, the
Speaker 1: point being that we as a nation had a choice
Speaker 1: between whether we were gonna learn something from that event
Speaker 1: or whether we were going to respond in a kind
Speaker 1: of vindictive way. And as I mean, as we all know,
Speaker 1: we we responded with war, both in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Speaker 1: But anyway, that's another issue we can get in into
Speaker 1: or not later on. On the personal level, um, as
Speaker 1: a Zen practitioner, I think that that the kind of
Speaker 1: practice that I'm engaged in and I teach really addresses that.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I talk about it in terms of deconstruction and reconstruction,
Speaker 1: the deconstruction being what happened meditating. We're basically letting go,
Speaker 1: letting go, letting go of a lot of things, but
Speaker 1: especially uh what we might call greed, ill will, delusion,
Speaker 1: and the reconstruction, which actually isn't something that do later on,
Speaker 1: but it's something that you're really sort of integrating into
Speaker 1: your life at the same time as is transforming your
Speaker 1: actual motivations as are living in the world. The basic
Speaker 1: point about Buddhist teaching regarding karma is that when what
Speaker 1: we do is motivated by what's sometimes called the three
Speaker 1: poisons greedi, will, delusion, then the consequences tend to be bad,
Speaker 1: bad in the sense of causing suffering. But if we
Speaker 1: can transform our motivations from greed into generosity, from ill
Speaker 1: will into loving kindness, from delusion into the wisdom that
Speaker 1: sort of recognizes our interdependence, then the consequences are much
Speaker 1: more likely to be positive. And not only that, but
Speaker 1: but we really learn to experience the world in a
Speaker 1: different way. You know, when when my motivations change, the
Speaker 1: world changes because I see it in a different way,
Speaker 1: and people tend to respond to me in a different
Speaker 1: way as well. That was very well said. I love
Speaker 1: the part about karma. That was one of the things
Speaker 1: that was late in my notes where you talked about
Speaker 1: karma really being about our ability to change our motivation
Speaker 1: and that when we change our mode ovation, we change
Speaker 1: so many important things. And we may get back to
Speaker 1: that in a little bit, but I want to circle
Speaker 1: back to early in the book, because you start the
Speaker 1: book off by talking about Buddhism in the West today,
Speaker 1: and how we've sort of got this question going on.
Speaker 1: If you if you're in Buddhist circles at all, you
Speaker 1: hear it, which is the mindfulness movement. We're sort of
Speaker 1: pulling mindfulness and meditation out of this deeper tradition. Is
Speaker 1: that bad? Is that good? And then further you talk
Speaker 1: about sort of the play between Buddhism and psychotherapy or
Speaker 1: you know, psychological approaches, and you frame those up in
Speaker 1: this way. I'm just gonna read what you said, because
Speaker 1: I think this really summarizes it. You say traditional psychotherapeutic
Speaker 1: approaches are concerned to help heal the self, whereas the
Speaker 1: Buddhist model of well being emphasizes liberating insight into the
Speaker 1: delusion of self. And I just think that's a fascinating
Speaker 1: point because it Buddhism and psychology seem to play so
Speaker 1: well together, but there are some fundamental differences there. I
Speaker 1: think you're exactly right that there are important tensions between
Speaker 1: what psychotherapy has to offer and what Buddhism has to offer,
Speaker 1: which is not to deny the fact though, that they
Speaker 1: also complement each other quite nicely in certain ways. To uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, I would think that the main impact of
Speaker 1: Buddhism on the West so far has been in the
Speaker 1: psychotherapeutic dimension. It's interesting that back in the days when
Speaker 1: I started, then we tended to think that, oh, this
Speaker 1: is wonderful. If everyone would just meditate really hard, then
Speaker 1: all of our problems would go away. And I think
Speaker 1: we've learned since then that it's not so simple that
Speaker 1: you can have a kind of spiritual practice which involves
Speaker 1: a kind of bypassing where you're not really resolving your
Speaker 1: emotional or psychological issues, but in fact sort of pushing
Speaker 1: them to the side or or repressing them so so
Speaker 1: in certain ways they can complement each other. But it's
Speaker 1: nonetheless true exactly what you say that fundamentally psychotherapy is
Speaker 1: about healing the self and also helping us sort of
Speaker 1: tend to fit into the world better, to harmonize, to
Speaker 1: be a better spouse, better friend, better worker, parent. Whereas
Speaker 1: I think the the Buddhist tradition, although the practice can
Speaker 1: include those kinds of transformations, I think it goes much
Speaker 1: deeper as far as really giving us, or at least
Speaker 1: opening us up to the possibility of of an insight,
Speaker 1: a deeper insight into the nature of the self and
Speaker 1: the delusion of separation that we're usually motivated by because
Speaker 1: we feel separate from the people and feel separate from
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. Yeah, let's get to that
Speaker 1: in a second, because it's my current favorite topic of conversation.
Speaker 1: But the other way, I think that Buddhism and and
Speaker 1: therapy have a little bit of it's challenge with each other,
Speaker 1: or where I run into as I'm looking at them
Speaker 1: both and I understand them both fairly well, and I
Speaker 1: look at it and I go, Okay, there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of a conflict here, and it's you know, Buddhism
Speaker 1: is really about abandoning anger and being patient and don't
Speaker 1: you know, avoid hatred. And therapists, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of encouraging to feel our emotions and
Speaker 1: to make sure we we express those, And so I'm
Speaker 1: often torn between those two things. Also, you know, how
Speaker 1: do you how do you reconcile when is the case
Speaker 1: where I should look at that emotion and try and
Speaker 1: transcend it, versus where should I look at that emotion
Speaker 1: and experience it deeper and find out what there is
Speaker 1: to learn from it. I think we have the same
Speaker 1: tension within Buddhism it's very commonly taught that anger is
Speaker 1: very bad, you know, one of the fundamental problems. But nonetheless,
Speaker 1: there's also the sense that anger is fundamentally a kind
Speaker 1: of an energy that gets distorted, often in terms of
Speaker 1: delusion of self and we lash out, but in fact
Speaker 1: it can be very beneficial. You know, I'm just thinking
Speaker 1: of a few incidents with my son when he did
Speaker 1: something really dangerous and I got quite angry, and um,
Speaker 1: the anger can be expressed really badly with a slap,
Speaker 1: but it can also be expressed in a way that
Speaker 1: will it would really grab his attention, you know, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to be violent. If the anger is fundamentally
Speaker 1: a kind of energy, it's an energy that can be
Speaker 1: channeled in a more non dual and a more beneficial way.
Speaker 1: Or maybe a better example of that is something like grief.
Speaker 1: You know, if someone close to us dies, how do
Speaker 1: we respond? And again there's a tension in the tradition.
Speaker 1: Some some people would say, you know, within Buddhism, the
Speaker 1: kind of non attachment, we should be cool, we should
Speaker 1: be aloof, we shouldn't be affected by that. And yet
Speaker 1: another stream would emphasize, rather than repressing or denying it
Speaker 1: actually become one with that, become one with that grief,
Speaker 1: acknowledging understanding that that's something that we need to feel.
Speaker 1: It's important not to get stuck there indefinitely, but it's
Speaker 1: something that we need to feel and to work through.
Speaker 1: So it's quite interesting that what you were expressing, I
Speaker 1: think is also somewhat of attention within the Buddhist tradition.
Speaker 1: I think it definitely is. You can find it in
Speaker 1: both places. And then the other tension that comes up
Speaker 1: between these two and within Buddhism is is the goal
Speaker 1: to transcend the world is the goal to um fit
Speaker 1: in well with the world. And this is really where
Speaker 1: you kind of go to the third direction, right. You see,
Speaker 1: the goal isn't transcend it necessarily or to adapt to it,
Speaker 1: but the third way is to see it differently, to
Speaker 1: recognize that we are not this isolated self that we
Speaker 1: think we are that causes our feeling of separation. So
Speaker 1: let's talk through that a little bit. What do you
Speaker 1: mean by that when you say that the sense of
Speaker 1: self that we have is not as solid or real
Speaker 1: as we think it is. Well, that brings us back
Speaker 1: to what I was saying at the beginning, talking about
Speaker 1: deconstruction and reconstruct of the self and of the relationship
Speaker 1: between the self and the world. But I think it
Speaker 1: needs to be understood in context because a lot of
Speaker 1: the Buddhist tradition, like most other religions, it's talking about
Speaker 1: transcendence and the goal, for example, and the poly canon,
Speaker 1: and the earliest teaching does seem to be a nirvana
Speaker 1: that involves not being reborn in some way we do
Speaker 1: transcend this world. Of course, many of us in the
Speaker 1: modern world were sort of suspicious of those kinds of
Speaker 1: transcendence and even the concept of rebirth. So a lot
Speaker 1: of the secular appropriation of Buddhism has been, as we
Speaker 1: were saying, sort of psychotherapeutic, helping us to fit into
Speaker 1: the world better. And I think both of those really
Speaker 1: missed the point that what's going on in practice is
Speaker 1: in a way we are learning to undo the ways
Speaker 1: that we have been experiencing the world, including ourselves. Normally,
Speaker 1: we don't realize that our usual way of experiencing the
Speaker 1: world is a kind of psychological and social construct that
Speaker 1: can be deconstructed and reconstructed. So in in meditation, we're
Speaker 1: letting go of the habitual ways of thinking and feeling
Speaker 1: and acting and so forth that sort of maintain the
Speaker 1: delusive sense of separation between ourselves and other people, and
Speaker 1: then bringing us back to the karma. Like you said,
Speaker 1: the idea of transforming or reconstructing our motivations is applying
Speaker 1: that in terms of how we actually live in the world.
Speaker 1: This reminds me of my all time favorite quotation, which
Speaker 1: I think was in the book somewhere quoting these are
Speaker 1: Goadatta actually not not a Buddhist but a neil vedantin right,
Speaker 1: and and he said several times, when I look inside
Speaker 1: and see that I am nothing, that's wisdom, when I
Speaker 1: look outside and see that I am everything that's love.
Speaker 1: Between these two, my life flows. And I think that's
Speaker 1: that's so so much right. And it shows the relationship
Speaker 1: between wisdom and love, or wisdom and compassion, which you're
Speaker 1: like the two fundamental pillars of the Buddhist tradition. Seeing
Speaker 1: through the delusion of a separate self is the wisdom,
Speaker 1: But learning how to live in the way that that
Speaker 1: implies is the love. Right, Because if I'm not separate
Speaker 1: from the rest of the world, well, I'm obviously going
Speaker 1: to be relating to it in a somewhat different way,
Speaker 1: without the delusion of a separate self whose well being
Speaker 1: is separate from what's going on in the world. If
Speaker 1: we can see through that, then we're going to become
Speaker 1: more compassionate and and more concerned about the welfare of everyone.
Speaker 1: Let's circle back to the sense of self again, because
Speaker 1: if we aren't the self that we think we are,
Speaker 1: then what are we? Um? Well, you know, curiously, there
Speaker 1: are there are different answers within the Buddhist tradition about
Speaker 1: that um but most of them have something to do
Speaker 1: with what's called emptiness, right, you know, really realizing that
Speaker 1: the constructed sense of self, if we're able to sort
Speaker 1: of let go of that and and have a non
Speaker 1: dual experience, then then it does in fact reveal something
Speaker 1: about our true nature as well as the true nature
Speaker 1: of the world. You know, again, we seem to be
Speaker 1: focusing on these sort of tensions within the Buddhist tradition. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sometimes emptiness and Buddhism is simply understood as sort of
Speaker 1: denying the reality of everything, in the sense that nothing
Speaker 1: has any self existence of its own, everything is dependent
Speaker 1: upon everything else, which is something I think we can
Speaker 1: sort of see pretty readily but it can also be
Speaker 1: understood in a more profound way that the sense of
Speaker 1: self as normally experienced is actually obscuring something about the
Speaker 1: nature of our own minds, which in and of themselves
Speaker 1: have no form, no color, no no particular attributes or
Speaker 1: or characteristics. So this is well, we talk about it
Speaker 1: in terms of mind, but we could just talk about
Speaker 1: it in terms of basic awareness too. That the point
Speaker 1: is to liberate our awareness, which is normally stuck grasping
Speaker 1: at one thing or another because we're always trying to
Speaker 1: secure ourselves. But if we can really liberate our awareness,
Speaker 1: it's something that in and of itself doesn't need to
Speaker 1: get stuck anywhere, and therefore can can really take any form.
Speaker 1: So there's a kind of a freedom here. When the
Speaker 1: self is no longer needing to objectify or secure itself,
Speaker 1: then this is I think the kind of liberation that
Speaker 1: Buddhism and other wisdom traditions point to. I don't think
Speaker 1: I said that very well doesn't make any sense there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it does, And I think in the book you you
Speaker 1: laid it out very well. I love the way you
Speaker 1: discussed that what we are in a certain respect is
Speaker 1: a collection of psychological processes that are happening. You know
Speaker 1: that there's there's all these things that are happening in
Speaker 1: the mind. And you talk about how before we go
Speaker 1: into meditation, we think that we're having the thoughts and
Speaker 1: the emotions, and when we meditate for a little bit,
Speaker 1: we start to realize like we're not having anything to
Speaker 1: do with them, like they are they are happening, right,
Speaker 1: And I think that's a useful metaphor, at least for me,
Speaker 1: in that sense of self not being what we think
Speaker 1: it is, in that there is no one thing, there's
Speaker 1: no entity that I can point to in the middle
Speaker 1: of all those processes. They're they're all happening and occurring.
Speaker 1: But if I look closely for the eye in that
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to find. It can never be found. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's even a better way to say it. But I
Speaker 1: think that trying to find it is an important part
Speaker 1: of the process, at least it seems to me, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly right, trying to find it and
Speaker 1: eventually deeply realizing the sense in which you can't be
Speaker 1: found because that which is looking is that which we
Speaker 1: are looking for, you know. Yeah, there's another way to
Speaker 1: say it's um that consciousness isn't something that the self
Speaker 1: has or maybe doesn't have, like when we're asleep, um,
Speaker 1: but rather the self is as we normally experience it,
Speaker 1: this this collection of interacting momentary processes of thinking and
Speaker 1: feeling and acting and reacting and remembering and planning, intending
Speaker 1: that these are forms something we can't name, something that
Speaker 1: we can never fixate, that we can never grasp. These
Speaker 1: are forms that that takes. And and the point of
Speaker 1: the practice is a kind of opening up and and
Speaker 1: liberating there so that the awareness can manifest itself more
Speaker 1: non dually, more compassionately, because it doesn't need to secure itself.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the other really important point our
Speaker 1: our usual sense of self. I talk about it in
Speaker 1: the book, that that it's it's haunted by this sense
Speaker 1: of lack, that it feels always insecure, and it's always
Speaker 1: trying to cling to something to give itself some security,
Speaker 1: whether it's money or fame or even some self image
Speaker 1: or some ideology. That our minds naturally tend to do that. Uh,
Speaker 1: and yet they can never find an object, whether it's
Speaker 1: psychological or physical, that's stable enough to give them that security.
Speaker 1: And the practice, and the true food of the practice
Speaker 1: is being able to let go of that and realize
Speaker 1: the true nature of our aware us when it doesn't
Speaker 1: need to do that. Yeah, I love the way you
Speaker 1: refer to that in the book. You call it the
Speaker 1: sense of lack, which is the shadow that usually dogs
Speaker 1: our self consciousness, and I just think that's such a
Speaker 1: great way of saying it. And you go on to
Speaker 1: say that there's almost a perfect fit between this fundamental
Speaker 1: sense of lack that we have and our current economic system,
Speaker 1: which uses advertising and other devices to persuade us the
Speaker 1: next thing we buy will make us happy, which of
Speaker 1: course we almost all know it won't. And yet that
Speaker 1: illusion is so strong in most of us that it
Speaker 1: rises back up again, at least for me, again and again.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've seen through in a thousand times,
Speaker 1: like that won't make me happy, that stuff is not
Speaker 1: gonna do it. Then the next thing shows up, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, that might be. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: funny how how um persuasive and how um persistent that
Speaker 1: illusion is. Well, for a lot of us, it's because
Speaker 1: we don't know what the alternative is really um. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think traditionally and in most pre modern societies, I
Speaker 1: think the sense of lack is what generated religion, the
Speaker 1: idea of religion. You had rituals. Think of the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1: You know, you have confession, penance, communion, etcetera, etcetera. You
Speaker 1: had rituals to help you deal with the sense of lack,
Speaker 1: which they called sin, you know, whether it's your sins
Speaker 1: or original sin. But in the modern world and the
Speaker 1: secular world, Uh, most of us don't believe in that
Speaker 1: kind of sin anymore, and yet we still have this
Speaker 1: sense of lack. So how do we deal with it? Yeah? Uh,
Speaker 1: And I think consumerism is perhaps the number one way
Speaker 1: that it comes out, And it's of course increasingly unfortunate because,
Speaker 1: as we know, consumerism just really isn't consistent or an
Speaker 1: ever growing economy that is built on consumerism isn't consistent
Speaker 1: with the kind of bias fhere we live in, which
Speaker 1: is already much damaged and in danger given how we're
Speaker 1: treating the earth. One of the things that you talk
Speaker 1: about is how we tend to look for an economic
Speaker 1: system or a governmental system or something out there that
Speaker 1: can fix all this. And while that's important, you argue,
Speaker 1: it's equally important that we transform the greed, hatred, and
Speaker 1: delusion that's at the heart of humans, because it's impossible
Speaker 1: to design a system that humans won't outsmart when they're
Speaker 1: you know, greedy, hateful, and deluded. Right, So talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about that. Well, the interesting thing about lack
Speaker 1: is it does seem to provide a kind of transition
Speaker 1: between the kind of individual psychology that Buddhism is usually
Speaker 1: talking about, right are, you know, individual suffering and so forth,
Speaker 1: with our collective situation. And one of the things I've
Speaker 1: explored at some length in a number of places, including
Speaker 1: this book, is what I might call a kind of
Speaker 1: Buddhist social analysis, where I think we can see pretty
Speaker 1: clearly that unlike in the time of the Buddha, today
Speaker 1: we have much more powerful institutions as well as technologies,
Speaker 1: and these institutions tend to take on a life of
Speaker 1: their own, which is to say that they tend to
Speaker 1: have their own motivations. And if we look at it
Speaker 1: from that perspective, I think what we can see is
Speaker 1: that is institutionalized greed. And I mean, if greed is
Speaker 1: you never have an off, well, it's not just consumers
Speaker 1: that never have enough, but corporations are never profitable enough.
Speaker 1: Their market shares never big enough, stock prices never big enough,
Speaker 1: and if you think in larger terms, g MP, G,
Speaker 1: d P is never big enough. Right. But also, frankly,
Speaker 1: are I think are our sort of military industrial system
Speaker 1: is also institutionalized deal will. I mean, if you evaluate
Speaker 1: how militaristic society is by the amount of resources that
Speaker 1: it puts into its military, I mean, it's truly horrifying.
Speaker 1: I mean, we are by far the most militarized society
Speaker 1: in human history. And and the other danger with that,
Speaker 1: of course, is when you spend so much money on
Speaker 1: the military, well, you have to keep finding enemies, you
Speaker 1: have to keep finding ways to rationalize that that expense.
Speaker 1: And then finally, I think we've institutionalized delusion, especially in
Speaker 1: terms of the media, which aren't really that concerned about
Speaker 1: educating or informing us about what's going on. But for
Speaker 1: the most part, their corporations that make their money from advertising,
Speaker 1: and so their primary concern is finding ways to grab
Speaker 1: our eyeballs and sell them to the highest bidder, which
Speaker 1: means that they're not really going to emphasize the problems
Speaker 1: with consumerism. They're part of the same package. They're always
Speaker 1: pushing consumerism. And when you put these three things together,
Speaker 1: the institutionalized greed of our economic system, the militarism that
Speaker 1: supposedly defends it, the role of the corporate media, it
Speaker 1: presents a pretty difficult situation that we're in. But I
Speaker 1: do think it it constitutes a kind of economic social
Speaker 1: analysis of where we're at, and it also suggests what
Speaker 1: needs to be changed. Yeah, and I love how you
Speaker 1: talk about that, because when it's easy to listen to
Speaker 1: that and here there's just these bad people out there
Speaker 1: that have got these but you talk about how these
Speaker 1: things kind of just have a life of their own
Speaker 1: and we're all a part of it. You know. It's
Speaker 1: not like there's these five evil people that have rempt
Speaker 1: all this up. And and you know that these are,
Speaker 1: like you said, institutionalized systems that are running of their
Speaker 1: own accord. At this point, they have so much momentum
Speaker 1: behind them, and that we can't as individuals pull ourselves
Speaker 1: out of it. We have to look at what our
Speaker 1: role is in it. Also, I think is the way
Speaker 1: I put it. I think there's an interesting contrast here
Speaker 1: between the kind of Judeo Christian background of Western civilization,
Speaker 1: including the US of course. Uh, where the emphasis the
Speaker 1: fundamental duality is between good and evil, right, And Uh,
Speaker 1: that's not the Buddhist approach at all. I mean, for Buddhism,
Speaker 1: the fundamental issue is not good versus evil. It's it's
Speaker 1: delusion versus wisdom or its ignorance versus awakening. And and
Speaker 1: that's a very different perspective on what's going on, especially
Speaker 1: when we realize that we're all sort of implicated, we
Speaker 1: all have roles within those systems of delusion. And it's
Speaker 1: not a matter of identifying and defeating the bad people,
Speaker 1: but but getting some insight into how those systems work.
Speaker 1: Also not vilifying those people, but but finding ways to
Speaker 1: to work together to sort of change those systems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read a paragraph from the book that I
Speaker 1: think sums up what we are talking about very well.
Speaker 1: And you actually start the paragraph off by saying, to
Speaker 1: sum up Um, we cannot expect either the economic or
Speaker 1: ecological transformations we need to succeed without personal transformation as well.
Speaker 1: And the history of Buddhism shows that the opposite is
Speaker 1: also true. Teachings that promote individual awakening cannot avoid being
Speaker 1: affected by social structures that promote collective delusion and craving.
Speaker 1: As the sociological paradox puts it, people create society, yet
Speaker 1: society also creates people. And I just think that is
Speaker 1: so well said and really sums this up, that we
Speaker 1: have to come at these things from both sides. And
Speaker 1: it takes us kind of all the way back to
Speaker 1: the beginning of the conversation where we were talking about, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the Buddhist approach into the modern world, and
Speaker 1: what is Buddhism losing as it moves into the modern world,
Speaker 1: and what does it gain as it moves into the
Speaker 1: modern world. And I think those are fascinating questions. What
Speaker 1: I find fascinating is the fact that globalization means that
Speaker 1: these two quite different worldviews are coming into conversation with
Speaker 1: each other. Right, I mean, if we go back to
Speaker 1: the Judeo Christian emphasis on good versus evil, I mean,
Speaker 1: in certain ways, we can certainly see it's been problematical. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you look at the Middle Ages and the heresy
Speaker 1: trials and the inquisitions and the witchcraft and all of that,
Speaker 1: the tendency to vilify the other. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: there's been something very important the idea of the prophetic
Speaker 1: coming out of the Old Testament, and I think when
Speaker 1: you combine that with the ancient Greece, which is the
Speaker 1: other main source of Western ciev uh, the idea that
Speaker 1: we can transform our society, if you know, if you
Speaker 1: don't like the way our civilization and structure, we can
Speaker 1: change it. Bringing those two things together, especially at kind
Speaker 1: of the birth of the modern world. I just think
Speaker 1: that that's been so revolutionary, so powerful. It's led to
Speaker 1: so many transformations, overthrowing kings, enabling also religious freedom, overcoming slavery,
Speaker 1: more recently civil rights movements, union. I mean, in in
Speaker 1: many ways the concern for transforming how we live together
Speaker 1: has has been wonderful and very effective. But I think
Speaker 1: we can also see today the limitations that somehow the
Speaker 1: idea that it's enough just to transform the social structure
Speaker 1: without transforming us individually, that that just doesn't work. And
Speaker 1: this is where Buddhism has something so important to contribute.
Speaker 1: The way Buddhism developed, you know, the Asian Buddhist countries,
Speaker 1: they were they weren't democratic, and and those kind of
Speaker 1: social justice concerns that we tend to take for granted
Speaker 1: now in the West, or in the modern world. Those
Speaker 1: aren't traditional Buddhist concerns. But what Buddhism has been so
Speaker 1: really good at is these these ways, these contemplative and
Speaker 1: meditative practices that can help us transform ourselves, you know.
Speaker 1: And what I find exciting right now is that not
Speaker 1: only is the world in a very critical situation in
Speaker 1: a number of ways, but we can see the coming
Speaker 1: together of these two different perspectives social transformation such as
Speaker 1: the West has traditionally emphasized, but also individual transformation, such
Speaker 1: as the way that Buddhism has focused, and you know,
Speaker 1: bringing those two together, I think it's very, very exciting
Speaker 1: and certainly timely. Certainly it seems to me we need them. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of that other concept for Buddhism
Speaker 1: a lot, the Middle Way, right. We really need we
Speaker 1: need both those things coming together and meeting in the
Speaker 1: middle for us to to solve some of the challenges
Speaker 1: that we collectively face. Well, David, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for taking the time to come on. I loved the
Speaker 1: book and I love this conversation, so thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate your time. It's really been my pleasure. Eric,
Speaker 1: thank you for this invitation. Okay, take care. Thanks by
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