Making Sense - Sam Harris - #15 — Questions Along the Path

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris just a note to say that if you're hearing

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00:00:39.040 today i'll be speaking with joseph goldstein who is an old friend and quite a distinguished

00:00:52.560 and wonderful teacher of meditation in particular vipassana meditation mindfulness meditation

00:00:58.240 joseph and i spoke before on my podcast about a year ago and that episode was entitled the path

00:01:04.560 and the goal and if you haven't listened to that i recommend you do before listening to this one

00:01:09.600 because this one is in fact a response to listener questions that arose from that first podcast the

00:01:16.260 conversation this time around because it's in q a format really does not take any kind of linear path

00:01:22.660 from beginner to expert in terms of its content areas and one thing i'd also point out is that i make no

00:01:30.160 effort to discuss the liabilities of buddhism as a religion as most of you know i don't consider

00:01:36.320 myself a buddhist i just find the practice of meditation incredibly useful joseph certainly considers

00:01:41.820 himself a buddhist and he is a quite well-known buddhist teacher and largely responsible for

00:01:47.260 bringing the techniques of buddhist meditation into more prominence in the west over the last 40 years

00:01:53.980 or so but we use buddhist terminology and while we define these terms from time to time i'm not making

00:02:00.440 any effort in these conversations to divorce this topic from its traditional buddhist context i do that

00:02:09.020 more in my book waking up this is just to say that those of you who may be uncomfortable with

00:02:15.140 seeing meditation and the nature of mind discussed in an explicitly buddhist framework will continue to

00:02:23.320 be uncomfortable throughout this conversation but given joseph's background and his expertise it would

00:02:29.700 have simply been a waste of time to try to translate our terminology for export out of buddhism into

00:02:35.780 some other non-sectarian context in any case joseph is a gem he's as i said the first time around one of the

00:02:43.980 wisest people i've ever met and as you'll hear at the end of our conversation he and our friend dan harris

00:02:49.300 the abc news anchor and author of the new york times bestseller 10 percent happier have designed a short

00:02:55.800 meditation course in the form of an app and where this podcast is embedded on my blog i have a link to the relevant

00:03:03.040 page in the itunes store and while you can start that course for free i think you get the first three

00:03:07.780 days free if you choose to buy the whole course you get a 20 discount using the product code waking up

00:03:14.780 all in caps so if you want more information about that please check my blog and without further preamble

00:03:21.180 i give you joseph goldstein

00:03:23.040 i'm now with joseph goldstein i have him back for round two of more meditation punishment

00:03:33.760 thanks for coming back joseph thanks for doing this it's great

00:03:37.100 the i think something like a hundred and eighty thousand is that right people have listened to the first one

00:03:42.960 of that it could be the same four people who are just diehards hitting refresh over and over again

00:03:48.540 but uh we certainly were more esoteric than many conversations on this topic become but i think

00:03:55.800 that that was probably a strength i think a lot of people appreciated us getting into the

00:03:59.640 the weeds about mindfulness and the difference between different types of mindfulness and

00:04:04.560 zogchen versus vipassana but or zogchen and vipassana yeah yeah as the case may be

00:04:10.200 so um let's get into it again and we have a bunch of questions that have come in but first is

00:04:17.700 is there anything that you recall from our last conversation that you wanted to revisit and

00:04:22.200 explore or you want to retract something that i said

00:04:26.060 anything come to mind nothing really is coming to mind the older i get the less i recall the less

00:04:35.700 that comes to mind okay well we have many questions and that maybe that'll just start us off

00:04:41.600 so uh jamie lunsford asks what amount of practice is required before the average practitioner can

00:04:47.660 expect to obtain quote sufficient concentration as joseph puts it to change the quality of her

00:04:53.440 experience i'm sure it varies but more generally what what if i never go on a 10-day retreat

00:04:58.160 or meet a zogchen master can everyday practice still serve me i think it's correct to say that

00:05:05.700 there is no average meditator you know that people bring a wide variety of backgrounds

00:05:12.320 to the meditation and so for some people concentration comes quite easily and for others it takes quite a

00:05:21.080 systematic training what i would say is it's really important to watch the commitment to being mindful

00:05:29.980 throughout the day because concentration actually comes about through the continuity of mindfulness

00:05:36.600 so it's not so much you know an effortful focusing but rather more quality of being relaxed

00:05:46.000 back into the moment to get right back into the zogchen vipassana framework

00:05:54.360 a zogchen phrase that is used very often in which we might have mentioned in our last talk the phrase

00:06:02.360 that's used is undistracted non-meditation so the non-meditation part is you know suggests that

00:06:11.720 effortless quality of settling back into a natural awareness but often people forget the undistracted part

00:06:20.440 yeah yeah that that's where it's about this continuity of relaxed awareness and so really

00:06:30.780 the the question is whether we're really considering our our meditation to be the time that we're sitting

00:06:35.500 on a cushion you know for however long each day or we're seeing it as practicing that quality

00:06:43.580 of undistracted non-meditation throughout the whole day and it's that continuity which will lead to

00:06:51.360 some stability what what does the phrase not the word non-meditation mean to you because undoubtedly

00:06:58.640 that's going to be confusing to some people i think it has many levels of meaning but just in the simplest

00:07:05.340 way of understanding it it can refer to a relaxed awareness settling back into the simplicity of

00:07:14.800 things being known moment after moment without without an efforting without a striving i think

00:07:20.380 that's just the simplest way you know of understanding it i think it in a zogchen context it means

00:07:27.040 abandoning subject object focus too that has the implication that you're not you're not trying to fix

00:07:33.960 attention on anything strategically it's just wide open to whatever in fact you you notice yeah i think

00:07:40.980 that could be a further way of of understanding it but the as you point out the crucial distinction is

00:07:47.560 between being distracted and undistracted if you're distracted then you're just correct and thought like

00:07:52.640 anyone else and one of the things almost everybody notices is that it's not very easy to remain

00:08:01.640 undistracted i mean the idea is very nice you know the idea of non-meditation that open effortless

00:08:11.820 awareness but there's something else which is needed in order to sustain the undistracted quality

00:08:19.660 and you could call it recognition you could call it remembering you call it settling back i make the

00:08:27.460 difference you could call it mindfulness wouldn't you call mindfulness the the gatekeeper of that

00:08:32.080 definitely the quality of mindfulness is to know when we're distracted and when we're not

00:08:37.160 you know that's toko orgin the great zotan master called mindfulness the watchman of the mind

00:08:44.160 another phrase that i like to use especially when i'm i'm teaching retreats but it's could be useful

00:08:50.200 for anyone practicing in the course of you know their daily lives is understanding the difference

00:08:55.900 between being casual and being relaxed you know in our attention because often those two are confused

00:09:02.300 you know we hear the suggestion to be relaxed and then before we know it our attention has simply

00:09:09.500 become casual and in that quality we find our minds getting distracted again and again

00:09:14.640 so there's an there's certain impeccability that's needed this brings up a few questions

00:09:20.300 actually one one question of mine or one thing to explore further i have recently said in another

00:09:26.420 podcast and it's directly to to jamie's question that i felt like i didn't learn how to meditate

00:09:33.860 until i sat my first 10-day retreat and i think this comment has given some people cause for despair

00:09:40.940 because my experience was i got very into meditation i was sitting really reliably an hour a day for a

00:09:48.140 full year before i went off on on the first i think it was yucca valley retreat with you and it wasn't

00:09:56.360 until maybe the fifth day of that retreat somewhere around the midpoint where i really connected to the

00:10:05.240 practice in a way that i hadn't before and i remember the epiphany presumably reasonably accurate

00:10:10.920 that i had just been thinking with my legs crossed in my daily practice for the previous year an hour a

00:10:18.960 day was insufficient for me to really drop down a level you know within a mindfulness context with

00:10:24.960 continuity and sustained attention to see what i wasn't seeing and to really clearly see the difference

00:10:30.900 between being lost in thought and and not and uh now i'm sure i was a hard case but can you comment

00:10:38.800 on that is that a common experience to feel like it's not until you sit in intensive retreat that

00:10:43.280 you really know what it is you're supposed to be doing well i think you probably did have a strong

00:10:48.360 propensity for thinking so it depends you know on what people i lob that one to you joseph what people

00:10:56.040 bring to the practice uh i guess a question i would ask you and i don't know whether you remember

00:11:01.800 back to then but in that time before your first 10 day retreat you mentioned that you were sitting

00:11:10.560 pretty reliable an hour a day the question would be what were you doing the other 23 hours you know

00:11:17.500 whether you had enough understanding of what was needed to actually be committed to the practice of

00:11:26.940 mindfulness you know just in the course of your daily activities and many people don't appreciate

00:11:34.160 the importance or the power of that i think the jury is still out because i think there are not that

00:11:39.920 many people who give that level of attention you know and of mindfulness to walking down the street

00:11:47.000 right or to eating or to really making the daily activities part of the practice so whether the level

00:11:55.560 of concentration you know and settledness you experience on the retreat would come in the course

00:12:01.200 of daily practice if you did that would be an interesting experiment now clearly if people come

00:12:07.440 to a retreat they're practicing intensively all day long in silence just sitting and walking so there is a

00:12:13.200 momentum that more easily builds up right you know so it's understandable that you had that experience

00:12:19.380 actually a related experience was to discover sometime later that the walking meditation practice is every

00:12:26.740 bit as deep as the sitting practice i would imagine people also make that discovery rather often later

00:12:32.600 for whatever reason and i don't know if that was in the same retreat or my next one but at a certain

00:12:38.120 point i just it just became very clear that the walking that i had been treating as kind of a break

00:12:44.520 from the sitting as a way of just rejuvenating the body was uh truly profound and so that that's

00:12:50.940 something there are kind of layers of discovery very simple ones at the beginning where you you notice

00:12:56.240 that mindfulness is as available in every context as every other context that in principle it's just

00:13:04.120 not it doesn't actually have to be framed by a sitting practice though again the crucial difference

00:13:11.540 between distraction and not distraction is the thing that always one has to note it yeah i think i think

00:13:16.740 that that is a very important insight and many people it does take time for them to realize how profound

00:13:23.300 the walking practice can be but anybody who's listening to this podcast might take this understanding

00:13:29.840 and in the course of their daily practice actually give more attention to the walking and so one one

00:13:38.880 very helpful thing that i often suggest to people is if you're doing a daily practice of an hour or

00:13:49.140 however long it may be to perhaps do the first 10 minutes of walking meditation and then sit and that does

00:13:57.420 two things one it settles the mind so that we drop into the sitting in a deeper place from having done the

00:14:05.520 walking and it begins to reveal the fact that the awareness can be as refined in the walking as in

00:14:15.120 the sitting once we have that understanding then in walking any place we're walking down the street we're

00:14:22.240 walking from one room to another once we really have the sense of what it means to feel the sensations

00:14:29.820 of the movement and walking we realize it takes very little effort because we're walking anyway

00:14:36.200 there's not right there's nothing special to do except to be feeling it then every step we take through the

00:14:43.960 day can be a walking meditation and that gives

00:14:46.620 that gives a chance for us to build the momentum that person who sent in the question was asking about

00:14:54.480 there's more chance you know of building up that level of stability even outside of a retreat right

00:15:01.540 although you know always a retreat is helpful there's no there's no doubt about that but at a certain

00:15:08.320 point don't you feel that it's divorced from the principle of momentum you seem to be suggesting that

00:15:13.880 it's by dint of momentum that the experienced meditator has better daily meditation practice than

00:15:22.320 the unexperienced one okay so i i think here here this may hark harking back to our previous

00:15:28.220 conversation i don't it's not that i have a bone to pick with you i just no no i'm back into these

00:15:33.340 same ruts i think given your predilection for the zhou chen perspective which you know as you know i

00:15:44.300 have tremendous appreciation for also i think would be more useful in this conversation if you simply

00:15:51.000 replace the word momentum with stability because for me they're the same thing right but i so i guess

00:15:59.760 i'm trying to dig under that it's not so much because i see momentum stability they both get

00:16:06.380 decisively interrupted and they can be interrupted for so long that any notion of a carryover from some

00:16:14.440 previous period in the day seems a little far-fetched right so you could have an hour that's just a wall

00:16:21.380 to wall distraction right you're watching a movie or you're arguing with someone on the telephone or

00:16:26.540 you're shopping i mean something where you've linked up as many moments of dualistic confusion and

00:16:33.000 distraction as you're capable of i would imagine that hour has cleared out the bank of potential energy

00:16:39.760 you have stored up from all your previous moments of continuity or momentum or stability so that you're

00:16:46.180 really starting fresh get me to a moment where you're starting you've you've had a period of total

00:16:51.680 distraction and now you just have to start fresh and you're starting fresh with a period of of sitting

00:16:57.720 for the first time in 24 hours or even longer than that i think that someone who knows what they're

00:17:04.240 doing knows what to look for knows how to pay attention has has become sensitized to the difference

00:17:11.340 between being lost in thought and being clearly aware that person can very quickly move through to

00:17:18.660 an experience of clarity and sustained mindfulness that it's like it's like a it is like a skill that

00:17:25.220 you've learned which you you know once you know how to play the piano once you know how to ride a bike

00:17:29.460 you can actually start doing it it's not like every time you get on the bike you fall off

00:17:33.260 because you don't have enough momentum from your previous writings no i i think that's right yeah

00:17:38.820 so i guess it's a skill-based conception of what it means to be mindful rather than a storehouse of

00:17:46.500 energy notion where they because i'm not i'm not denying that the momentum phenomenon is there i mean

00:17:52.460 the stability phenomenon yeah or the stability but there is a sense of storing up energy when you link

00:17:58.580 enough moments together and that's something you get i think especially on retreat where you know

00:18:03.740 the day at a certain point is really humming along and it's not something one tends to feel

00:18:10.100 unless one is practicing and is sustained but i i agree i mean with with what you just said

00:18:16.140 uh i think there is another dimension in addition to having learned the skill and you know being able

00:18:26.720 to access what that skill can bring more easily you know the the more practiced one is in the skill

00:18:34.620 as you say you don't have to struggle to know how to balance on a bike each time right like the mind

00:18:40.640 drops drops right into it something i've noticed you know for many years of practice now over 50 years

00:18:49.020 that there is a gradual build up of what i would call the base of concentration or the base of

00:18:58.980 stability and i kind of liken it to the the ski reports where they give the the snow right report and

00:19:05.220 how deep the base is and what i've noticed is that of course it will go up and down it'll be deeper or

00:19:11.960 shallower at different times but the slope of that curve you know over time

00:19:18.960 i have noticed has really gone up and so the mind drops more easily into a deeper base of stability of

00:19:31.400 concentration and i think that's that's not a question of you know we're more or less concentrated

00:19:37.260 for any particular sitting i don't know you you could probably address this more uh accurately but

00:19:43.220 you know the neural pathways in the mind get get i don't know the the right terminology get uh

00:19:52.300 more deeply patterned yeah you know over time and it's just easy even if one has been distracted

00:19:57.900 for example you go to the movies and you're totally lost in the movie you come out and

00:20:03.780 you decide to sit for an hour if one is well practiced the mind will drop into you know that

00:20:12.460 deeper place of stability and that has grown over the years you know the more we practice the more

00:20:18.080 stable that becomes well i think that fits with the skill-based model it is a skill of attentional

00:20:26.340 regulation which you get better and better at and so you just have a facility for coming back to the

00:20:33.440 present moment yes more decisively and more and you're you notice when you're gone earlier i also

00:20:40.180 find that intense experience is a kind of mindfulness alarm now and increasingly in a way that isn't in the

00:20:48.940 beginning of one's practice so that when you're suffering you can't suffer for very long without

00:20:54.580 realizing yes there's a this is a problem for which you have a solution yes you know and at that point

00:20:59.980 you're either kind of willfully not using the solution you know and and indulging in some negative

00:21:05.880 mind state or you're you're cutting through the suffering and undermining it just just as a matter of

00:21:11.720 habit yeah and every moment going forward yeah and i think one element of that habit which for me has

00:21:18.380 been a huge source of energy in the practice to cut through you know in those moments of being caught up

00:21:25.580 or you know lost in some kind of suffering is the quality of interest for me interest has played such a

00:21:34.160 key role in my meditation practice because when my mind is suffering in whatever way you know just

00:21:42.120 caught up caught up caught up in some reactivity for the most part i get really interested in

00:21:49.920 what's going on in my mind now how is my mind getting caught how am i how am i feeding this and that

00:21:57.800 interest then provokes the attention right provokes the investigation and interest is i love that word and i

00:22:06.860 love the quality because interest is very non-judgmental there's a there's a tendency in

00:22:11.760 the mind i would say especially for people in the beginning of their practice although this could go on

00:22:16.580 for many years is when we're involved in some kind of negativity or some kind of suffering there can be

00:22:23.640 a tendency to be self-judgmental or judgmental about what's arising and that of course just ties the not

00:22:33.300 even tighter if there's a quality of interest it's like we're removing that judgmental aspect

00:22:41.000 and it almost becomes you know the mind becomes like it's this puzzle that we're trying to understand

00:22:48.240 that we're trying to untie the knots and it gets very interesting there are two expectations that cover

00:22:54.620 what we've just been talking about that i think can be unhelpful one would be the expectation that

00:22:59.460 you need to be on retreat having linked many many moments of mindfulness together to get down to

00:23:06.580 bedrock in this moment right so if you've been if you've been lost for long enough there's really

00:23:11.440 nothing good that's going to come of the next moment of mindfulness kind of a radical gradualism

00:23:17.020 expectation which i think is false but also to some degree self-perpetuating so to drop that is

00:23:24.660 helpful because you really can have as deep and as meaningful an experience of mindfulness in this

00:23:29.920 moment as at any point in a retreat if you really pay attention the other is relevant to what you just

00:23:36.220 brought up the expectation that certain negative mind states shouldn't or won't come up any longer

00:23:43.060 for you if you have any kind of mature meditation practice so to feel as you said to feel that you really

00:23:49.900 shouldn't be experiencing something and have a self-judgment added to the negative experience

00:23:55.360 blocks the door to just becoming interested and cutting through it on the basis of just

00:24:01.140 merely paying attention to the arising of this anger or fear or greed or whatever it is once you know

00:24:08.520 to expect that you're going to that many negative things will keep coming up victory is in at least in

00:24:14.820 my view or you know my stage of practice victory is in the half-life of these things like how long do

00:24:21.420 you so how long are you an asshole for right the difference between being angry for an hour and for

00:24:29.400 five seconds i mean that is it's a huge difference it's just you know one an hour of sustained anger

00:24:36.800 given all that you're liable to say and do in that space is a life truly life disorienting state of

00:24:44.200 mind whereas five seconds is just again you could just be the one who's interested to see this anger

00:24:50.220 arise and pass away well there are there are a couple of things one is uh just like to emphasize

00:24:57.460 the fact that it's not necessarily that will go from an hour of anger to five seconds we could get

00:25:04.260 five more seconds five seconds after that yes it's the punctuation of it that is to become sensitive

00:25:10.300 yeah yeah but there's there's one attitude of mind an attitude shift which was tremendously important

00:25:20.080 for me uh in seeing the negative you know feelings or emotions or things that cause suffering arising in

00:25:29.400 my mind when i went from either feeling bad about myself for having them or judging them you know being in a

00:25:40.620 adverse relationship to them when things shifted and i became delighted to see them because i would

00:25:51.460 rather see them than not see them and there was so there's a certain moment of delight that can happen

00:25:58.120 you know when we have that frame so anger arises or judgment arises or fear arises or conceit or pride or

00:26:08.520 envy or jealousy you know any any one of the afflictive emotions when these arise now and in the moment of

00:26:16.300 seeing them it's almost like a smile comes to my mind because you know in the in the language of the

00:26:24.780 buddhist discourses where the buddha would often say oh mara i see you that's the quality in the mind in

00:26:31.420 that moment oh mara i see you and there's there's a certain joy in the fact of the seeing when that

00:26:38.900 shift happens it changes everything in terms of our relationship to it then that becomes the foundation

00:26:46.520 for an investigation for saying okay you know what gave rise to it how am i getting caught how can i be free

00:26:53.080 in this moment well i must say i love to see you get angry too joseph that's always fun well keep

00:27:00.660 trying so there's a few questions related here i think we've covered some of this but julio gutierrez

00:27:08.820 asks could you speak more about the path outside of the meditation cushion how to be mindful in daily

00:27:13.740 interaction with people how to be mindful while having an intellectual discussion we've covered some

00:27:18.740 of that but what is your thought on how to be mindful if at all while engaged in intellectual

00:27:27.940 work there's the difference between thinking and not thinking or being lost in thought seeing thought

00:27:32.740 as thought or just being busy thinking this is a question i get from people a fair amount the the idea

00:27:39.820 that you can't really be mindful while doing most of what creative intelligent productive people need to

00:27:47.180 do what how do you view that i think there are two two domains to understand this in one it's something

00:27:55.920 my first teacher manindraji would say often in addressing that question because when we are engaged

00:28:02.880 intellectually even even something as simple as reading a book you know or doing any kind of

00:28:08.900 creative work that involves the intellect and involves thinking you know or concepts we can't really apply

00:28:16.880 the same kind of mindfulness as we would for example in you know meditation because otherwise the words

00:28:25.700 would become disconnected you know we wouldn't we wouldn't be tuning into the level of meaning

00:28:30.040 particularly and so manindraji used to talk about what he called a general mindfulness where we're totally

00:28:39.140 engaged in what we're doing you know we're engaged in the concepts and we're using that level of the mind

00:28:44.840 but there's enough mindfulness present to pick up if some unwholesome states arise in the process of

00:28:55.700 being engaged in that work you know we're talking or we're reading or we're doing we're doing some

00:29:01.060 kind of conceptual work and if the mind is in an even place in doing it or a wholesome place you know

00:29:09.620 there's interest in creativity and energy but then if something unwholesome should arise there's enough

00:29:16.020 mindfulness to pick that will pick that up and in that moment we could kind of settle back and say

00:29:21.740 okay what just happened so that's a kind of mindfulness is a protection for the mind there is one exception which

00:29:29.140 i found to mindfulness within kind of that conceptual intellectual realm and the buddha had an interesting

00:29:40.120 comment about this and that is in giving or in speaking the in giving dharma talks or even in speaking

00:29:47.560 the dharma in a dharma conversation that actually falls more into the meditative level than the level of

00:29:58.000 just conceptual conceptual conceptual work so even though we're using concepts to express uh the

00:30:05.660 content there's a certain power in terms of speaking the dharma so that it's actually possible

00:30:14.400 the buddha mentioned this to get enlightened both in speaking or in listening right because in that

00:30:21.240 kind of conversation if if we're doing it with wisdom we're not so much lost in our usual evaluation

00:30:31.160 of what's being said oh i like this i don't like it i agree with it i don't agree with it but rather

00:30:36.460 in a dharma conversation or either speaking or listening it's more that we're actually doing

00:30:44.140 the words rather than analyzing them and so this is that's that's why it's such a powerful it can be such a

00:30:52.120 powerful experience to hear a dharma talk or to to be in a really engaged dharma conversation

00:30:57.680 as i say where we're actually experiencing what the words are saying seems to me that the difference may

00:31:05.940 be even more categorical than that because i i just think listening to someone speak or having a conversation

00:31:11.740 is potentially more amenable to that kind of expansive clarity than doing other things like reading

00:31:19.240 for instance like i'm talking to you i can very clearly be mindful both while talking and while

00:31:25.760 listening and i can cut through what i'm calling or have called the illusion of the self in the midst of

00:31:31.880 that and in some ways it's even more clear because social circumstances are usually so self

00:31:38.600 reifying and ramifying that to lose a sense of self while looking at your face it's got a clear

00:31:45.020 mirror to that experience than just looking at a wall or or some other or having your eyes closed

00:31:51.940 but if i go to read these questions from listeners here there's a kind of trimming down of my awareness

00:32:01.360 to just decode the sentence i'm reading that seems to some degree synonymous with delusion for me it's

00:32:09.640 like it's it's not that you can't read and certainly if i was reading about meditation or emptiness or any

00:32:15.700 of these topics i could bring a special kind of attention to the task of reading but generally

00:32:21.080 speaking looking at words on a page and trying to figure out what they mean at least for me is a much

00:32:26.860 duller frame of mind and it's analogous to like walking into a supermarket just doing shopping

00:32:33.380 and looking for different brands and trying to figure out which one you want i mean there's something

00:32:37.120 so dull about that use of attention uh dull not as in boring but dull as in just there's a kind of a

00:32:45.380 bovine lack of clarity by comparison with other moments um the ultimate example that no longer

00:32:53.220 pertains uh happily the world is is free of this experience now but i i recall what it was like

00:32:59.000 to come off retreat decades ago and we'll go into a like a blockbuster video store looking for what

00:33:06.680 videos to rent yes and there was something excruciating about that experience to just travel

00:33:13.680 the shelves reading with your head cocked to the side to read the the vertical spine of these cassette

00:33:20.500 boxes trying to figure out what you wanted and just going through hundreds of crappy movies many of

00:33:27.900 what you've seen and at that point i was just very sensitive to the difference between you know paying

00:33:33.520 attention one way or the other and that has always figured in my mind uh even more than experiences of

00:33:39.860 interpersonal conflict as a kind of awareness that is just the antithesis of wisdom and clarity and

00:33:46.640 and mindfulness i think that points to how to say this it it points to both the deluded and

00:33:55.720 unsatisfying quality of wanting just that that mind state of wanting itself right is a kind of

00:34:11.340 the buddhist the buddhist the buddhist terminology dukkha it's just unsatisfying the the amazing thing

00:34:20.240 is that we are seduced generally into thinking that wanting is enjoyable and we live you know very often

00:34:30.300 wanting to want like like your experience in the store you were just waiting to want something exactly

00:34:38.540 you're wanting to want not seeing that the very quality of the wanting mind is inherently unsatisfying

00:34:47.460 yeah and it gets amplified in that case because it's you're you're kind of wanting on a deadline

00:34:55.480 because you can't get out of the store until you figure out what you want right so you're just it's

00:34:59.720 just a an exercise of focused wanting and dissatisfaction and the the the kind of hopelessness of the

00:35:07.700 whole exercise becomes uh obvious yeah but this here this becomes a very interesting exercise i think

00:35:14.380 for people to explore in the course of their daily lives because you know one thing comes up a lot in

00:35:21.780 in a lot of different situations it would be very interesting uh for people to

00:35:29.940 begin to really pick up or become aware of when there is wanting in the mind for whatever it may be

00:35:39.200 and to get a to get a visceral sense of what it's like to want what does it feel like

00:35:45.620 you know to want to have that to have that quality in the mind and then if possible

00:35:51.940 either to contrast that with other times of not wanting you know and just to begin to see the

00:36:01.500 difference in one's experience between wanting and not wanting and one could do that if if we're

00:36:07.760 aware of the wanting and then are mindful enough to just wait until it's gone because wanting like

00:36:15.240 everything else is impermanent and in that moment of transition of going from wanting to not wanting

00:36:22.360 that's a really powerful moment you know because we get a very clear understanding of the difference

00:36:31.220 in our experience of those two mind states and for myself it always feels like i've been let out of the

00:36:40.420 grip of something as soon as the mind is released from wanting there's a kind of relaxation into

00:36:48.540 openness into ease but this is this is not something that most people are paying attention to

00:36:55.100 you know the the kind of wanting mode is just so it's so much part of our everyday lives we hardly pay

00:37:03.060 attention to it right and yet it has it offers if we are mindful of it it can offer a very profound

00:37:10.620 understanding of the nature of mind of the cause of a lot of suffering at this point because i've played

00:37:17.760 with this a lot you know and i i watch for this on my mind very often they'll not always there's still

00:37:25.700 quite a bit more to do in this regard but quite often often enough to be noticeable i'll know

00:37:33.040 what is the wanting for something and then i'll i'll consciously say or consciously remind myself

00:37:40.220 i don't need to want this you know the one thing is a choice the one thing is a choice i'm making

00:37:47.040 and if in those moments i really see that clearly and say no i don't i don't need to want this and the

00:37:53.980 mind actually lets go it's an amazing moment of ease you know and it's it's always available to us

00:38:01.860 it's it's just being mindful enough of what our minds are doing and the potential for making wiser

00:38:08.920 choices yeah yeah it actually connects to this the next question i have here from matthew laurel

00:38:16.460 trinidad i would appreciate some comment on what joseph and you think of the role of sila i.e. moral

00:38:22.460 conduct in the development of mindfulness and how to define or arrive upon the essential principles of

00:38:27.720 sila or to avoid religious dogma and defining or arriving at the same it's hugely important right

00:38:34.640 so say more about that but i guess one question to get you started that just occurred to me is

00:38:39.800 it seems to me certainly reading the the literature on meditation and understanding some of the mishaps

00:38:46.440 in the careers of various gurus and yogis it's possible to be in a quite an accomplished meditator

00:38:55.120 and still be a total schmuck right so still someone who be someone who is not only

00:39:01.000 not impeccable but reliably unethical by our standards you have swami muktananda building a

00:39:10.040 tunnel between his living quarters and the girls dorm at his ashram where he's essentially raping

00:39:17.320 one presumes 14 year old girls and i mean they're just horrendous stories about specific people who

00:39:22.800 about whom there are also stories that really seem to attest to their spiritual athleticism in terms of

00:39:30.420 their meditative attainments and the the kinds of positive effects they've managed to have on people

00:39:35.140 so talk about that well i think that i think this points to a critical distinction between

00:39:42.220 power and wisdom you know and and through meditative skill the mind can become very powerful in many

00:39:51.540 ways into all kinds of you know what might even seem miraculous things and certainly with strong

00:39:59.180 energetic impact on other people and so lots of lots of experiences can happen when somebody has

00:40:08.140 developed through whatever particular techniques the strength or power of mind that's very different

00:40:16.800 than wisdom you know and it is very possible for people to have developed these without wisdom

00:40:23.520 and isn't sustained mindfulness synonymous with a certain component of wisdom i mean are you talking

00:40:33.000 about somewhat you you imagine that some of these teachers have just become concentrated in ways that

00:40:39.840 may be pleasant and giving giving them certain powers of mind or amped up their charisma as teachers so

00:40:46.500 they have a certain influence over their students but they have just consistently missed the bullseye of

00:40:53.400 what you're calling you know right practice that's one possibility because that seems a little

00:41:00.020 far-fetched to me i would imagine that if you grabbed someone like muktananda in his best hour of meditation

00:41:06.500 and could run that on your brain you might find all of the components of what you're calling wisdom

00:41:14.740 and yet it still hasn't inoculated him against being a sociopath in other circumstances in his life

00:41:22.640 no i disagree i think that just classically speaking the power of concentration

00:41:30.980 is that it suppresses the defilements at a particular time you know and so while you're in

00:41:40.720 that concentrated state it may be that these unskillful mind states are not arising but as soon as

00:41:50.460 you're out of the concentration then these unwholesome states just reemerge because the concentration by

00:41:58.420 itself it's not a purifying force in and of itself right it's we're not necessarily seeing into the

00:42:07.720 impermanent empty nature of phenomena people could be very concentrated and while they're in that state

00:42:14.480 you hook them up to some brain monitoring and their brains might seem very peaceful or calm or stable

00:42:23.380 whatever it shows but that's not saying anything about what defilements have been uprooted from the

00:42:31.400 mind you know and that's really the function of wisdom which is a very different kind of practice

00:42:38.780 it's also the function though of an explicit conceptual understanding about the importance

00:42:45.160 of ethics in one's life so that if if you're teaching people to meditate without any kind of

00:42:53.960 deep or sophisticated ethical consideration of just what what life is for and what constitutes a good

00:42:59.220 life then kind of the the edges of the path are not discernible you can't there's no there's no

00:43:05.880 metric by which you are can then say oh my life has wandered off into some totally unskillful and

00:43:12.140 suffering producing direction this relates to another point i've made in other contexts that

00:43:18.060 it's often pointed out that buddhism can give rise to the same kinds of pathologies as you know islam

00:43:25.420 which i've frequently criticized and and what is often thrown at me is the phenomenon of the kamikaze

00:43:30.440 pilots in world war ii that you can have buddhist suicide bombers because they were clearly influenced

00:43:36.300 by zen now it wasn't just zen it was shinto and it was japanese martial nationalism and other

00:43:43.460 constellations of ideas but zen was definitely involved and you had zen masters who were advocating

00:43:50.200 for this behavior and if anyone wants to read about that there are two books zen at war and zen war

00:43:56.500 stories that detail that evidence and yet you have the now the modern spectacle of tibetan buddhists

00:44:03.360 rather than becoming suicide bombers they're practicing self-immolation in response to the actions of china

00:44:09.960 and it seems to me and you know this is not there's not really deep scholarship at the bottom of this

00:44:17.300 i have more experience of tibetan buddhism but insofar as i know zen as well you can read for a very long time

00:44:23.500 in the zen literature and not find any emphasis on compassion and sila ethics to the contrary you can

00:44:32.300 find many analogies that seem to give a kind of martial ethic the sword of wisdom kind of a samurai

00:44:39.600 ethic comes to the fore often in zen parables so it's actually not a surprise to me that zen

00:44:46.780 get under a certain construal could have helped animate the kamikaze phenomenon and it's also not

00:44:53.820 a surprise to me that vajrayana buddhists are self-immolating as opposed to becoming suicide

00:44:59.340 bombers given the emphasis on compassion in that context i think i have to disagree

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - August 11, 2015

#15 — Questions Along the Path

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