Ancient Buddhist Principles for Modern Life’s Dilemmas
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Summary
When you're feeling stressed, burnt out, and anxious, when you're striving and achieving, but still finding yourself persistently dissatisfied with life, you might start looking for answers beyond what s offered by contemporary self-help. One ancient philosophy that can cast light on the sources of and solutions to our seemingly modern dilemmas is buddhism.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
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when you're feeling stressed burnt out and anxious when you're striving and achieving
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but still finding yourself persistently dissatisfied with life you might start
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looking for answers beyond what's offered by contemporary self-help one ancient philosophy
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that can cast light on the sources of and solutions to our seemingly modern dilemmas
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is buddhism if you've ever been intrigued by buddhism but admittedly only have a vague sense
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of what it's all about brendan barka co-author of the daily buddhist 366 days of mindful living
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will walk you through its foundational principles we begin our conversation with how buddhism is
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similar to and different from other ancient philosophies like stoicism and brendan offers
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an accessible introduction to the four noble truths and the eightfold path in the second half of our
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conversation we explore our buddhist principles and practices can be applied to our everyday modern
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lives and help you deal with the anxiety created by living in an impermanent world
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shift your perspective on daily challenges and cultivate greater compassion and patience
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we discuss different meditation methods the real purpose of meditation and how to get started with
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it as a beginner we enter conversation with the buddha's final words and what it means to strive
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with vigilance after the show is over check out our show notes at aom.is buddhism all right brendan
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barka welcome to the show thanks so much for having me brett it's great to be here so you and your wife
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have a new book out called the daily buddhist where you provide 366 daily devotionals based on buddhist
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principles and philosophy let's start with your story how did you find your way into buddhism
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yeah so my journey into buddhism really began in my mid-20s i was a sales professional in finance
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up in boston and really grew up without like a concrete religion or philosophy to help guide me
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and i was experiencing a lot of burnout you know i was like your typical i don't typical for at least
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for me in my environment but type a person who's striving and trying to do and accomplish and try to
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achieve and found that even after a few years of trying to just go too hard i was stressed i was
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burnt out and i was anxious and so it led me to look for for answers and look for ways to help cope
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with that and i remember actually to this day i was having brunch with a friend who was my age so
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about 25 and she actually said that her psychic i didn't know she had a psychic had told her to try
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meditation and that was actually the first person i knew personally who was going to try meditation on
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their own and and to me it kind of jumped out as a as a cool idea and something that could help me
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what i was going through in terms of that stress and so i went home that night and started meditating
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for the first time and now 10 years later i've never stopped i don't know if she continued but i kept
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going and that eventually led me to discovering different spiritual books uh read some books by
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eckhart tolle and then started to read some books that were more traditional buddhists like pema
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trojan's work or sharon salzberg and and then eventually i moved to brooklyn from boston i met my
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wife randomly at a bar and one of the things we had in common was our meditation practice and she was
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originally from nepal and she grew up traditionally tibetan buddhist and so that really carved the path for me to
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really take my mindfulness and meditation into buddhist philosophy and practice and learn with her and now
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seven and a half years later we have made this really our life's work and that's where the book
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comes from so it started yeah about a decade ago as you learn more and more about actual buddhist
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philosophy and principles did you have any misconceptions about buddhism that you later
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learned were wrong or misguided yeah absolutely i mean i grew up in in massachusetts in the suburbs and
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was raised loosely catholic there wasn't too much in terms of you know having to go to church on
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sundays and all that but i i kind of when i heard about buddhism or anything of these eastern
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philosophies i think one of the things that i had as a misconception was that to practice that you had
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to like abandon your everyday life like let's say you have to leave your career move to the mountains
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maybe in the extreme sense you know become a monk or something like that but one of the things i've
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learned over time now as i've really started to ingrate it into my life is you know you don't have
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to follow that path there's a way to still practice mindfulness practice meditation buddhist philosophy
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while living and i do live right now in new york city so really you know in the heart of it and i
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can use everyday's experiences to practices so i didn't know that back then and meditation can help
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to kind of create insight into my life but it doesn't mean i have to abandon everything and then
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move to like the mountains and practice there so that's definitely one thing i didn't get back then
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one misconception that i had about buddhism i think a lot of westerners have about buddhism
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is that we kind of think of buddhism as you know we think of someone sitting on a pillow and it's
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just all about being relaxed and going with the flow and being calm but if you really look at the
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philosophy and the different teachers of buddhism one of the things you take away is that buddhism and
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we're going to talk about this in our conversation there's a discipline to it there's kind of a
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hardness that's soft at the same time it can be very bracing which i think is interesting
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yeah and that's definitely something i know as i reflect back i probably had too you kind of see
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maybe people in the lotus position or sitting serenely on the mountaintop just in this tranquil
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state and for anyone that's first ever meditated knows that that's not the case right when we sit
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down with our own thoughts for as little as five or ten minutes it can be a whole whirlwind of things
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happening within us that are probably pretty uncomfortable so there's that and then also when the
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philosophy itself and maybe some of this we'll get into later you know a lot of buddhist principles
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are are really trying to ground you in reality and reality is not necessarily all rainbows and
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butterflies you know what they're trying to say you know life is suffering and then what do you do from
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there well that's where the buddhist path comes in so there's so many elements that i think i didn't
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understand back then that have now made the practice or the philosophy feel much more grounded in
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in everyday life versus kind of this uh this element where it's like really fantasy world which
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it's not so you just referred to buddhism as a philosophy sometimes it's also considered a religion
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depending on how it's approached and practiced either way i think a lot of people particularly in the
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west just have kind of like a vague idea of what it's all about so let's start off by making
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things a bit more concrete here what's the origin story of buddhism so buddhism really began with one
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person's journey and that is the person we now call today as the buddha his name was actually
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siddhartha gutama and the story goes that he was a prince in what we now call india and he had all
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the things that we would want as people right he had wealth he was young he was handsome and he was
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very privileged and yet as he reflected on this and he was that curious individual he felt and
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realized that even though he had everything one could wish for he still suffered he had negative
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emotions he had discontentment persistent dissatisfaction with life and he also saw other
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people in his community suffering whether it was becoming old or getting sick or people dying and so he set
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off and left his life as a prince and at first became an ascetic so he wandered and he fasted and meditated
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like that but he found that even as he deprived himself of those things food clothing and money
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he continued to suffer and i think you know i can understand that that sounds pretty difficult
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and so he decided to try something different which we now call the middle way so it's a path that steers
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clear of extremes and from this new perspective he began experimenting with his mind and examining it
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peeling back its layers investigating both his inner reality and also his outer reality and then the story
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goes that one day while meditating under what we today call the bodhi tree he unearthed the cause
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of his suffering so his attachments his ignorance and then discovered a path out and achieved enlightenment
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and this enlightenment or this moment led to his four noble truths which is his foundational teaching
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and that's now today really the core of buddhism and buddhist philosophy what are those four noble truths
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of buddhism so the four noble truths are first we all experience suffering and that suffering is woven
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into our existence and there's all different types of suffering like we can think of it as the suffering
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of change so whether that's having a breakup in our relationships or the suffering of a layoff if we
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lose our job or as we get older and our skin starts to age suffering of conditionality is another one
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where let's say you go on a fun vacation with your family maybe you're in costa rica which we were there
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a couple years ago then after it's over you're back in the u.s back your job doing emails and
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you're dissatisfied with daily life because your condition shifted and there's also just simple
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suffering like your ankle hurts or you have a backache or you have a heartache because someone
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offended you these are all things that we all experience so that's the first noble truth and the
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second noble truth is about the cause of our suffering and so it's caused by our attachment to the
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different things in our lives and even our attachment to ourselves and this attachment stems
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to our ignorance of reality and our ignorance in reality and misunderstanding is we think that
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things are going to be permanent things are going to be satisfying yet things are impermanent right
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they're always changing they're not always satisfying us and so we struggle from that breakup not only
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because the person leaves us but because of the suffering and the pain we add on top of that we even suffer in
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our healthy relationships because the person who we thought would make us happy forever maybe
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disappoints us here or there so that's the second noble truth is about the cause which is really our
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attachment which is rooted in our misunderstanding of reality then the third is really where it starts
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to get positive and this is where we can end our suffering so since there's a cause there's also a
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possible solution which brings us to the fourth which is the path to end our suffering otherwise known in
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buddhism as the eightfold path all right that leads to my next question i think people might have heard
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of the eightfold path what is the eightfold path so the eightfold path is a practical set of guidelines
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to achieve inner freedom or happiness right so if we are suffering maybe a grasp on our own careers
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our relationships our own emotions is out of control and we're failing to find happiness in that
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the path is going to help us to be able to achieve that so yes there's eight different elements of it
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so just to kind of list them out there's one right view two right intention three right speech four right
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action five right livelihood six right effort seven right mindfulness and eight right concentration
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and within the eight parts of the path there are three sort of core components so a couple of them
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pertain to developing wisdom which would be otherwise known in sanskrit as prajna and so that would be
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the right view and right intention where we're trying to understand reality with right view but also with
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right intention try to let go of our attachments and cultivate compassion and then there's also
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ethical livelihood which is the second of the third key elements and that's in sanskrit known as shila
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and that has to do with right speech right action right livelihood so how we talk to people how we act in the
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community even what our work is as we try to make a living and then finally the third element is mental
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discipline otherwise known as samadhi and that has to do with right effort right mindfulness and right
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concentration so how we're disciplined and taming our mind awareness of our body and mind and feelings
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and then concentration has to do with meditation so that that's the high level version of the eightfold path
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that's really good i think in our conversation we'll hit on some of these principles
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but as you were kind of listing the the different parts of the eightfold path off and discussing the
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four noble truths i mean it is surprising or maybe i shouldn't be surprised you can find commonalities
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in buddhism and other western philosophies you know for example i'm a big fan of aristotle people
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listen to the podcast know that i love aristotle but aristotle has something kind of similar to the
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eightfold path i mean his goal in life is not enlightenment but it's human flourishing eudaimonia
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and he says you can achieve that by first getting your metaphysics right like understanding what
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the world is like so that's very similar to the idea of wisdom and then once you understand the
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metaphysics like what the social world looks like what reality is like then from that you can derive
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ethical principles and that's where his virtue ethics come from and then he also provides practices
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on how to become more virtuous i think another thing people see similarities to in western philosophy
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and buddhism a stoicism i think has a lot of similarities have you noticed the similarities
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between stoicism and buddhism yeah and i've actually i haven't studied stoicism like i have buddhism but
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i've read marcus aurelius's meditations for example and i'm familiar with a lot of ryan holiday's work
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and a couple of things that i've learned over time as i've gone deeper into my buddhist practice is there
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are some similarities but also some key differences for people to be aware of so some of the things that are
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are similar and you touched on some of these is definitely ethics you know we mentioned ethical
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livelihood and buddhism and there's definitely some things that are similar there they're also
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both very practical designed to help us with our daily lives not just some abstract philosophy the
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other two main things that i've noticed that are similar is they both have a lot of focus on
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impermanence so really trying to internalize the fact not only that we're going to die but also the
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fact that everything changes and i'm sure you're know the stoic term memento mori which is basically
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remember death the buddhists would definitely think that's a good exercise so those are some
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of the similarities that i've witnessed and some of the differences that i've seen one thing is about
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self so in in buddhist philosophy there's a big emphasis on what we can call no self which is the
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idea that there's no permanent self for us to cling on to whereas in stoicism at least the way i
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understand it they do affirm a rational self or a soul so for example in a buddhist context or from
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buddhist philosophy understanding we can maybe think of an example with our physical bodies and in
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fact there's been studies done that cells in our bodies are actually regenerating every seven years
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so actually the person who you were 10 years ago even from a cellular level from a physical level
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is completely different than the person you are today and so a buddhist philosopher would argue
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it's the same thing with our mind with our feelings with our bodies is that we're changing all the time
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there's no one part of us that we could label as the self whereas i think maybe the stoics would
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disagree with that the other main thing that i've seen is the goal so in buddhism the goal would be
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enlightenment or to be able to see through the illusion of the self and end our suffering whereas in
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stoicism my understanding and maybe you can help me clarify is just is to live a life well lived
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throughout logic and virtue so those are some of the things i've noticed i don't know what else
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you've seen no i think those i think it's those are the two big differences i think you hit the nail
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on the head with that well let's dig into some of these principles that you discuss in the daily
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buddhist and what's great about this book it's like a devotional book you each day you just highlight
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a short little devotional that hits on a principle so you don't have to read this all in one setting
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i did read the entire thing but you have a schedule like february 13th has something you're going to read
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may 8th you're going to have something to read uh it's a really great way to get introduced to
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buddhist principles let's discuss some of them let's talk about wisdom we're going to get a right
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we're going to work on that first path of the eightfold path which is getting a right view of
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the world and so in the first part of the book you talk a lot about the impermanence of the world
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why start there yes we modeled the book uh first of all over how traditional buddhist masters would
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almost train their students and so from a specifically a tibetan buddhist perspective
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where you would begin if you were a monk or even a lay person who is just trying to learn about
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buddhism it's really important to start by trying to ground ourselves in the nature of reality and
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that has to do with right view as you mentioned the eightfold path so a big element of that is
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reflecting on and really trying to internalize not just intellectually but emotionally that life
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and we are impermanent so the problem is and why we start there and why buddhism starts there is that
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we know you know intellectually that things change right that we will lose our job or that you know
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our family will eventually pass away or that even our skin will age but the thing is we don't really
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live our lives with that understanding so we might you know work in a career for 50 years and spend our
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time there even though it doesn't fulfill us we might you know believe that our relationship is going
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to last forever when in reality it doesn't and this denial of impermanence leads to a lot of our suffering
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and that's part of the reason why it's so important to begin there is by accepting and internalizing
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impermanence when things do inevitably change let's say our kids go off to college or you know we're
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retiring and our life is moving on well we're going to be able to meet that with more acceptance
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and more grace and let go of our attachment to those things rather than cling too tightly and let
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ourselves suffer so that's why we begin the book with impermanence yeah that's it's a foundational
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principle and i love that section you have about you have to understand things not just intellectually
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but emotionally and i actually made a note as i was reading it reminded me of kierkegaard
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the existential philosopher he had this famous phrase truth is subjective and people are like what does
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that mean does that mean that truth is just whatever you want it to mean it's relative and he was like
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no what i mean by that is he's coming out from a christian perspective and he's saying okay you can
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intellectually know that god is love so it's like an objective fact for you it's like yeah god is love
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but if you don't emotionally like if you don't subjectively know it then it's not going to
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transform you and i think the same thing you quote a buddhist philosopher there you have to like
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internalize that truth in order for it to have an effect on how you behave and interact with the world
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yeah and that's one of the things with with impermanence like we we might know this right but if we
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don't think about it every day or maybe integrate it into our meditation or even the way we live then
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we're not going to live our life in a way that reflects and i think that if we do keep impermanence
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top of mind then it'll help us in those moments to be more present with our loved ones like maybe we
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won't be on our phones so much or it's going to help us to be able to be kinder to maybe a relative
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who's not so kind to us because we can realize that these relationships will change our life is not
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forever and then hopefully act accordingly which i think is one of the best things about buddhism and
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also stoicism about why we reflect on impermanence so often are there any practices you recommend
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to help people truly understand and keep that idea of impermanence of life top of mind well one thing
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to do and it's part of the reason why we structured the book like that with 31 straight days on reflecting
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on impermanence is start to just notice the changes that are happening all around you you know you could
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use the seasons or you can see this with you know looking in the mirror and seeing how your face has changed
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from an old photograph and and then even just in a subtle day-to-day changes like some clients come
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some clients go you know there's there's all these subtle things happening that we can start to notice
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and if we can notice this both on like a mini level but also you know understand like the big picture
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that this means that our life isn't forever then we can start to hopefully change our our thought
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and our action around how we behave given these truths and in fact there's like a tibetan tradition
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where people try to treat each day as an entire life of its own so they visualize when they wake up
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you know here i am waking up to my new life and then they go through their day which you can think
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of as a microcosm of your life and then at night as they're lying down they're they're visualizing
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themselves dying to that day so that's another helpful practical reflection that i try to do quite
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often yeah i love that i mean something that i do is i just think about something that i was upset
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about that maybe happened you know a few weeks ago and then thinking about it now and thinking
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well am i still upset about that thing and the answer is probably not i'm usually not upset about
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it i mean i was upset about it then but now it's not a big deal and that just kind of puts things
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in perspective for me yeah i like to think you know will this affect me a week from now will it affect
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me a month from now will it affect me a year from now what affect me five years from now and then
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the answer keeps getting more and more like absolutely not so then the challenge of course
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or the practice is okay how can i not let affect me so much now related to the idea that all life
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is impermanent it's constantly changing is that all life is interrelated why is that an important
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concept in buddhism so one of the things that we learn in buddhism as we reflect on the nature of
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reality and try to continue to cultivate as the eightfold path would say that right view
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is since all things are impermanent and so they're always changing all things are also what we would
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say is interdependent or as you mentioned interrelated which is that everything is constantly
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in flux but also arises from various causes and conditions so we are now you know you're a
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podcaster and you have your own business and i'm i'm this author because of who we were before so
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each step that preceded us has made us who we are now so you can think of it as links on the same
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chain and like where we'll go next has to do with who we are now what we're doing now so buddhism
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really develops that you can think of that as like cause and effect in a way which is a term we're used
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to talking about in the west but this not only has to do with like our lives in our careers is what
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i was just saying as an analogy but also has to do with our mental state or our emotions or our
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relationships or even our body right our backache might be there because we've been hunched over our
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computer for 10 years or our relationship with our spouse might be falling apart because we
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haven't been listening to them for five years so it helps us to keep ourselves accountable because if
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we realize that everything's interdependent we can try to live in that ethical way which is one of
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those elements of the eightfold path that's one part of it and why it's helpful for us to reflect on
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interrelatedness or interdependence we're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors
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and now back to the show let's talk about the buddhist understanding of how the mind works we're
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still trying to get an understanding of reality a right view of reality so what is the buddhist
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understanding of the mind so in buddhism they talk about mind nature of mind is how they talk about it
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and really you can think about although it's not this simple you can think about your mind with two
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we'll call them parts even though it gets a little bit dicey when you start to even label these things
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but in a tibetan terms there's two terms that maybe might be helpful to familiarize yourself with which
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is rigpa and sem and rigpa is what the buddhist philosophers would call the true nature of your
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mind you can think of this as your true essence it's clear it's spacious it's free it's light it's free
00:22:58.760
from labeling dualistic thinking free from negative emotions it's you know maybe you can think of it
00:23:04.320
like the feeling you might have after a really long run and you just finished and you're just feeling
00:23:08.520
so clear and all your problems have kind of fallen to the wayside like so that's what the nature of
00:23:14.680
mind is what we are kind of aiming for and someone who's living in that all the time would be considered
00:23:19.780
enlightened which for most of us we can say okay i probably either haven't seen that lately or maybe
00:23:24.620
just once in a while whereas sem is what you can also translate as the ordinary mind and so the
00:23:31.780
ordinary mind is the one that we know very well it's like kind of our own internal enemy it is the
00:23:37.820
one that will plot and scheme and worry and overthink and overanalyze and it's the part of us that gets us
00:23:44.240
into fights with our partner or our friends because it's oftentimes confused and you can think of it
00:23:50.400
almost like our lesser selves so from a buddhist perspective we're constantly dealing with kind of
00:23:55.780
those two major elements and working towards uncovering more and more of our nature nature of
00:24:01.300
mind and the buddha would say that we all have that pure essence in us just waiting to be uncovered
00:24:07.360
and so our goal working towards enlightenment and working down the path is to get more and more of
00:24:12.720
that so that we can live in that state of rigpa i mean it's definitely aspirational for most of us but
00:24:18.120
it's a good way to strive to get towards and meditation is part of the way you get there correct
00:24:24.700
yeah so in in buddhist context one of the most important things that we can do is to study our
00:24:31.780
mind and a lot of this when we're talking about nature of mind or interdependence impermanence not
00:24:36.700
only should we be thinking about these you know with our own minds like journaling or just thinking
00:24:41.920
about these when we're on a walk but we also would want to practice that in a more formal meditation
00:24:48.620
and you know meditation there's a lot of different meanings and definitions out there depending on
00:24:54.360
how you practice or which tradition you follow from buddhist perspective there's a couple different
00:25:01.080
styles so like one thing that is a good starting place for many people is what's called shamatha
00:25:06.280
meditation and that really translates as calm abiding and the point of that is to focus on a
00:25:12.740
single point like the breath for example and to start to calm the mind and what happens when we
00:25:17.780
start to calm the mind is we start to remove those different parts of the ordinary mind or the sem or
00:25:24.080
not remove them but see them for what they are and they start to kind of dissolve a little bit like
00:25:27.700
more than usual and then that's where we can maybe start to peek into the nature of our mind and start
00:25:32.960
to live both insider meditation and the ideas for it to spill over into real life too with that more
00:25:38.360
calmness with that more ease in lightness and so meditation is definitely a big key to working towards
00:25:45.240
the path there's also vipassana what is that what kind of meditation is that so that would be called
00:25:52.660
insight meditation and you can practice these separately but i would say is that for a beginner
00:25:59.100
we'd want to start with shamatha and then you could always transition into vipassana so let me explain
00:26:03.780
the two so if shamatha is the calm abiding meditation which is you know focusing on the breath and
00:26:09.420
basically working to calm the mind the idea is that if you do that for a couple minutes like let's say
00:26:14.840
five minutes and you notice that your mind starts to settle it stops jumping around from thought to
00:26:20.040
feeling to um to prediction right it stops doing that at least quiets down then there may be
00:26:26.760
opportunity to transition to what they would call uh in sanskrit vipassana which is insight and the
00:26:33.940
idea with insight meditation is to start to perceive things more clearly so it's not to say you'll have
00:26:41.200
an insight in terms of a big idea that you're gonna i don't know use for your career endeavors but
00:26:46.740
more of like insight into the true nature of reality so the fact that um our mind is always having
00:26:53.000
fleeting thoughts the fact that things are always changing the facts that things are interrelated
00:26:58.020
these are all things not necessarily you'll have these in the meditation itself but we've kind of
00:27:01.740
work towards by giving ourselves the space in a vipassana meditation so instead of focusing on
00:27:08.020
the breath we would try to not focus on anything which is quite challenging but that's how we would
00:27:13.960
transition from one to the other for someone who's never meditated before can you kind of give
00:27:20.000
us a sample practice that they could start doing today to get a taste of what buddhist meditation is
00:27:25.680
like yeah and i think it's important also to provide another definition in terms of how we can think
00:27:31.920
about meditation the tibetan word for meditation is gom so gom actually translates to being familiar with
00:27:39.940
so when we are sitting down to meditate our goal although it's kind of a slippery slope to say goal when it
00:27:46.980
comes to meditation would be to be more familiar with ourselves and that starts by studying and
00:27:52.580
watching and sitting with our own mind and so for a beginner and you know i i was a beginner only
00:27:59.940
nine or ten years ago i think the most helpful thing we can do is first carve out the space for us to be
00:28:07.300
able to meditate on our own so if you have kids like i do and like uh you do brett you know what that might
00:28:14.900
mean is before they anyone wakes up in the morning or before they come home from school or at night when
00:28:19.800
everyone's in bed and then when you have that space on your own then to simply set like a you can use an
00:28:27.340
app the calm app or insight timer those are great free apps out there and simply set like a bell uh that
00:28:34.020
would go off for and i would think five minutes is a great starting point for most people and then within
00:28:38.660
that time work on focusing on your breath you don't have to try to make the breath do any you know
00:28:46.040
tricks you don't have to try to slow it down or speed it up but just notice its natural rhythm and
00:28:51.300
watch how your mind responds to this and at first when you're new to this if you've never meditated
00:28:56.520
before it's gonna feel maybe a little bit overwhelming like all these ping pong balls are bouncing around in
00:29:01.980
your mind you might want to even get up but i would encourage you to to sit with it and just see that
00:29:07.900
and notice things as they are and even that awareness is going to be a really beneficial
00:29:11.920
practice and then you know after a few minutes you will notice a little bit of a shift and that's the
00:29:17.360
practice so you might want to start there and then think of it just like something that has to be
00:29:22.320
practiced repetitively just like we might exercise we want to meditate consistently otherwise if we do it
00:29:28.520
once and wait a year then the benefits aren't going to be there so it's going to be consistent
00:29:33.180
practice how long does a session need to be so it varies but i would think for most people the most
00:29:39.740
practical thing we can do is is make it short three to five minutes would probably be where i would
00:29:45.640
suggest people to start uh it's long enough for the mind to start to settle for us to also watch it
00:29:51.020
but if we aim for 10 or 20 minutes like there's some practices that require like a 20 minute session in
00:29:56.700
the morning in the afternoon well then the risk is that we don't actually follow through and we drop
00:30:02.220
the ball so if we can integrate this into our busy lives with a short five minute session then it
00:30:07.420
becomes not only attainable but it's also beneficial there's been studies out there that just five
00:30:12.800
minutes a day of meditation can reduce stress significantly so i think that's a good amount of
00:30:17.580
time for people to aim for all right so the trick is just be consistent with this figure out a way to be
00:30:21.440
consistent with it um how do you know if you've had a good meditation session or is that a bad
00:30:26.200
question to ask so it is a bit of a yeah a bit of a tricky question because one of the things that
00:30:31.940
we learn in meditation over time is that it's not always going to be fun and actually oftentimes it
00:30:37.940
isn't even after meditating now for 10 years almost every single day oftentimes i sit down and my mind
00:30:43.560
continues to race and it doesn't slow down it doesn't feel calm like i i wish it would be but i think
00:30:50.240
one of the things that we can do to make it quote unquote successful is use it as an opportunity to
00:30:57.200
one familiarize ourself with our mind as we go back to that tibetan word gom but also to be able to
00:31:03.160
create more awareness around our thoughts create awareness around our emotions because if we're
00:31:07.480
aware of these things in our meditation then we're outside of it you know the next day or that afternoon
00:31:13.380
well then we'll have a little bit more insight into our mind and a little bit more control over our
00:31:18.140
emotions so if we start seeing for example that our calmness or our patience or our compassion in
00:31:26.620
meditation starts to bleed into other parts of our lives and that's a sign that we're progressing
00:31:31.380
so that would be i guess a long-term success but we can't expect results right away something i've
00:31:37.340
noticed when i've done meditative practices i'll do really well for like a month because when i start
00:31:43.780
meditating i'm like oh wow i'm feeling calmer this is great i'm noticing these benefits and then after
00:31:49.200
a month of meditating you don't get the same sort of you don't notice it as much um and then you're
00:31:54.480
like wow man i'm not noticing any change and i don't feel any calmer this is dumb i'm just gonna
00:31:58.360
stop doing this but i'm wondering if i should just stick with it and like you said you had to be
00:32:02.240
disciplined uh with your meditative practice even if you don't feel as calm as you did when you first
00:32:08.900
started yeah meditation is one of those things that even if you're not feeling like in the session
00:32:14.280
itself that calmness or that benefit whatever it is that you're looking for we don't want to let
00:32:19.840
ourselves give up and think that it isn't working one of the studies we point to in the introduction
00:32:24.220
of our book is they were putting an fmri machine around some of these uh prolific buddhist monks who
00:32:30.540
have meditated for you know tens of thousands of hours and one of the things that they found from
00:32:35.240
that level of practice and that commitment was that they were from a scientific perspective and
00:32:41.220
psychological perspective they were less stressed more happy than the average human they had ways of
00:32:45.900
measuring that so if we want to experience these things and we want to use meditation as one of the
00:32:50.940
vehicles to get us there then we can't necessarily rely on our experience in meditation because as you
00:32:55.660
mentioned that's when we give up but rather think of it as like just something that we need to do to be
00:33:02.020
able to keep our mind stable be able to progress on the path as they would say in buddhism and treat
00:33:07.200
it like a ritual that's needed not always fun but something that's necessary for our well-being
00:33:12.000
it's like brushing your teeth yeah yeah and not even as fun as that yeah brushing your mind that's
00:33:17.820
what you're doing yeah you're meditating and so that leads me to my next question i want to discuss
00:33:22.080
because you have this section there's just filled with reflections on patience and diligence
00:33:25.800
what insights from buddhism can help us cultivate more patience with others with ourselves with our
00:33:33.320
goals to to be better so let's stick on the topic of meditation as being one of the important tools
00:33:40.280
in buddhism and one of the benefits of meditation although it might not be calming and peaceful all
00:33:45.560
the time is that by understanding our own mind and we we can inevitably do that if we sit with it for
00:33:52.900
long enough then it's going to help us to better understand both ourselves and others so when we
00:33:58.120
sit with ourselves and we start seeing oh wow i just had this distracted thought oh wow i just thought
00:34:03.080
about some random high school memory oh i just thought about something that's going to happen or not
00:34:07.180
happen in 10 years or i just noticed the thought of agitation or anger or or envy whatever it is then
00:34:13.340
we not only understand that we experience these things but we look out the window and we know oh wow
00:34:19.000
there's eight billion or so other people out there that are going through these things too so when we
00:34:24.960
start to have that right view then we can start to the ideas and the practices start to develop patience
00:34:31.920
for both ourselves and others because if we see that our mind is really this crazy and it doesn't mean
00:34:38.480
all these thoughts are necessarily ours in fact buddhists would argue that they're not oftentimes thoughts
00:34:44.180
are just kind of coming into our minds versus actually being things that we're originating that's
00:34:49.040
another important point we can be more patient with ourselves but also other people who are going to
00:34:53.180
have their own afflictive emotions or as they say in buddhism defilements that are hurting them so
00:34:59.280
them aware for example in line at the coffee shop and someone's taking forever to pay we can be a little
00:35:04.840
bit more patient with them because we can understand okay maybe they're having a rough day or they can't find
00:35:09.400
their wallet or whatever it is so that's one of the ideas of where we can develop patience for others and i think
00:35:13.980
for ourselves being in meditation helps us to hopefully develop more self-compassion and that's
00:35:19.620
going to help us to be more patient when we make mistakes when we fall on our face and help us to be
00:35:24.860
able to pick ourselves up again so i think those are some things that can help with patience specifically
00:35:29.480
one of the things i love about buddhism and you do a good job in the book with this is highlighting
00:35:35.780
all the different ways buddhism talks about dealing with negative emotions so anger frustration sadness
00:35:43.800
anxiety even envy what does buddhism say about how we can better manage these what you said buddhism
00:35:50.680
calls defilements so one of the things that we can first start to understand that these are emotions
00:35:57.500
and feelings that are are happening across all of humanity so everyone out there ourselves included
00:36:06.240
are dealing with negative emotions like anger anxiety and envy and so this is part of the human
00:36:12.240
condition and part of the condition of suffering which goes back to the first noble truth but what
00:36:17.620
the buddhist perspective that would help us to kind of start to deal with these is if we can not only
00:36:22.660
through meditation but also through what you would think of as mindfulness which is watching our mind
00:36:27.920
let's say when our partner says something that triggers us and we get angry and we start to react in a
00:36:34.660
negative way if we have started to cultivate some mindfulness which means being alert which means
00:36:40.440
being aware then we can begin to instead of just react haphazardly or react too quickly we can start to
00:36:47.720
respond in a more intentional manner so think of meditation mindfulness as a way to almost create a gap
00:36:55.180
a gap or a space between our emotion and our reaction to it and that could be outwardly towards
00:37:02.320
someone else or even internal self-loathing so when we get angry or we get anxious or we get sad you know
00:37:08.340
we can start to almost create a space between us and those feelings and one of the things that i like to
00:37:13.940
think about and i use this all the time is you know we tend to label ourselves as our feelings right how
00:37:19.240
often do you hear someone say i am anxious or i am sad or i am angry so we're literally saying i am this
00:37:26.060
but the truth is we aren't those emotions those emotions are things that are passing through us
00:37:30.780
those are things we are dealing with at a practical level but they aren't us so one thing we could do to
00:37:36.700
reframe that is think i am feeling anxious i am feeling sad i am feeling angry and it already creates a
00:37:43.740
little bit of space between us and the emotions themselves i love that and also think too just
00:37:48.580
thinking about those noble truths about the cause of suffering that where life is impermanent and we
00:37:55.260
get attached to things really coming to understand that emotionally not just intellectually can go a
00:38:00.680
long way to staving off those negative emotions because you're like wow why am i getting angry about
00:38:06.360
this there's no reason to get angry about this like of course the vacation got canceled that's just part
00:38:11.960
of life and then you just learn how to roll with the punches yeah the buddhist monk and and great
00:38:17.360
teacher tic not han once said when someone makes you angry picture them in 300 years and then picture
00:38:24.880
yourself what will become of them what will become of you ash the idea is that that's gonna help to
00:38:30.880
dissolve your anger because you know we all have the same end so it's it's a little bit humorous but
00:38:35.100
also true and every time i think about that it it kind of zooms out because we're always too zoomed in
00:38:39.920
to like our own lives our own problems thinking that all these things are gonna get fixed one day and all of a
00:38:44.180
sudden we'll wake up happy but in reality if we don't work on our own minds first of all if we
00:38:48.460
don't try to have more patience to ourselves and others then we're to continue to be upset or be
00:38:53.500
suffering no matter what we're going through you mentioned that compassion developing compassion
00:38:58.720
for others and for ourselves can be an antidote to a lot of these negative emotions how is compassion
00:39:04.660
defined in buddhist philosophy so the word for compassion in sanskrit is karuna and the definition
00:39:13.120
for that is having a genuine wish to alleviate the suffering of others so we can think of that and i
00:39:20.980
would also expand the definition you know when we say others it can also and it should also include
00:39:26.200
ourselves but we're pretty good most of us are pretty good at giving ourselves a break being compassionate
00:39:30.780
hurts towards ourselves being generous towards ourselves i think there's some exceptions to that
00:39:34.060
but one of the things that we're not so good at doing is extending that not only to our loved ones
00:39:38.420
who we do have some attachment towards who we do want to help we do want them to succeed but then
00:39:43.140
layers or steps beyond that so to our friends to our neighbors to our colleagues to strangers and
00:39:50.160
the idea with compassion with karuna is to be able to have a genuine heartfelt compassion
00:39:56.380
for other people and that is one of the pathways or one of the the things we can use the more we
00:40:03.360
cultivate compassion the more we mature our mind and and start to see that first of all we are all
00:40:09.080
struggling so all of us deserve that compassion but then also help to change our action so that we
00:40:14.180
actually do want to help other people not just necessarily being altruistic although that's one
00:40:19.420
forms of compassion but even by let's say our partner or our friend gets angry with us and gets us
00:40:26.340
upset well how can we we could be compassionate in that moment um and be there for the other person
00:40:31.660
because we can see or we should start to see that they're suffering and they actually need us now in
00:40:36.080
that moment more than ever so they need compassion they don't need us to get angry too and there's
00:40:40.960
actually you highlight this in the book there's like a meditation you can do to help develop compassion
00:40:46.560
yeah so one of the meditations you can practice is called tonglen meditation and that's a
00:40:53.040
tibetan buddhist idea and exercise and and how to tonglen meditation would work or when you could use
00:41:00.060
it is first you could use it when someone you know is suffering so actually the first time i was
00:41:05.760
introduced to this i didn't know buddhism well at all at the time i had kind of stumbled across this
00:41:10.460
it was one of my friends was dealing with a gambling problem and was an addicted gambler and
00:41:17.720
and i remember when i heard about tonglen which is trying to wish for the other person's suffering
00:41:23.980
to end was a helpful meditation to try and so you can use it when a friend is is suffering or
00:41:29.360
when you're when you're suffering let's say you get sick or you know you're dealing with something
00:41:33.500
difficult you can use it for yourself and how it would work is basically you would do like a seated
00:41:38.540
meditation and you would still want to be doing your breathing which obviously we're doing all the
00:41:44.800
time but more intentional breathing and what you want to practice is when you're breathing in
00:41:50.300
visualize taking in the other person's suffering the other person's pain and then as you breathe out
00:41:56.340
visualize breathing out that purified air so to send them relief to send them comfort and so what
00:42:02.960
we're doing is we're not taking in their pain and feeling it ourselves we're almost purifying it and
00:42:06.880
sending it back to them and what you find through this this meditation practice is that yes it can
00:42:11.860
actually help the other person but the other thing too and you'll notice this if you try it
00:42:15.880
is it also boosts you up because in that moment you're acting out of pure compassion and you're at
00:42:22.080
kind of a new heightened level in your mind so that's called tonglen and you know encourage people
00:42:27.280
to try it if either they're in pain or someone they know is one compassion meditation that i've done
00:42:32.540
and maybe it's related to this but i got this from rick hansen we've had him on the podcast before
00:42:37.780
he's a psychologist written a couple books about meditation particularly buddhist meditation and he
00:42:42.920
suggests a meditation where you wish someone well with a mantra like you know may you be safe may you
00:42:49.920
be happy may you feel strong and he says when you're starting off with this meditation to kind of
00:42:54.020
get a toehold into it is you want to start off with someone who you naturally feel warm towards
00:43:00.580
so like your wife your kids of course you're just going to naturally have compassion for them so it's
00:43:05.900
kind of easy to do that and then he says once you've done that for a bit then you move on to a
00:43:10.080
more neutral person someone you neither really like or dislike and then to really challenge yourself
00:43:16.120
you pick someone you don't like and then try that same compassion meditation where you wish them well
00:43:21.200
so you repeat the mantra may you be safe may you be happy and that's hard to do so you do that for a
00:43:27.620
while and then once you've done that you direct the meditation toward yourself and i found that really
00:43:33.180
useful and i actually still do that occasionally okay yeah so actually now i know what you're
00:43:37.540
referring to that's like the loving kindness meditation yeah loving kindness okay yeah so maybe
00:43:42.660
that's what rick was referring to we do have that in the book too so another great practice and you
00:43:46.740
definitely walk people through the steps uh very clearly so that's another great one to cultivate
00:43:52.180
compassion for yourself and others so we started our conversation talking about how people in the west we
00:43:57.220
typically think of buddhism as a contemplative philosophy which it is there's the meditative
00:44:00.640
practices that you're doing to help you understand reality but it's also it's very action oriented and
00:44:07.760
you have a whole section of reflections about how to put into action these buddhist principles so what
00:44:14.300
role does action play in buddhism and like what does buddhist action look like so one of the key parts of
00:44:20.200
the eightfold path as we were mentioning earlier has to do with ethics and with ethics when we talk about
00:44:26.500
it from a buddhist perspective has to do with a couple key elements such as right speech right action
00:44:33.900
and right livelihood and all of those are examples of action with speech it's are we speaking truthfully
00:44:41.120
are we speaking kindly are we avoiding lies and gossip with right action are we making sure that we're
00:44:46.700
not harming others through our actions are we are we trying to help people or at least if we're not
00:44:50.680
helping them let's make sure we don't harm them and then for like livelihoods more about are we earning
00:44:55.040
our living in an ethical way so you know while everything we do starts in our mind right and how
00:45:01.560
we perceive the world also how we determine what our actions are we have to make sure that we then
00:45:06.840
follow through because if we just like have a thought that let's say we want to donate to a really
00:45:13.820
great charity but then if we don't follow through on that and all of a sudden our life gets in the way
00:45:19.560
things get busy and we don't do it then our generosity even though we had the feeling in it
00:45:24.900
isn't complete so what we want to do is not only be able to like think compassionately think generously
00:45:32.000
think and also in accordance with a way that's true to the nature of reality but we also want to
00:45:36.640
make sure that we're following through and living in the way that aligns with our virtues and so in the
00:45:43.620
three doors that we can use for that is going to be our thoughts so what we think our speech and then
00:45:49.220
also what we do so those are some of the things that we can start to strive for in terms of buddhist
00:45:54.080
action and i mean you talk about this throughout the book any point in your life from the day where
00:45:58.880
you experience frustration anger things are just off kilter instead of seeing it as this uh just an
00:46:05.360
annoyance like see it as a chance i get to actually practice this buddhist stuff that i've been reading
00:46:10.380
about and put it into action yeah see life as practice basically yeah we can think of it like
00:46:16.900
everyday scenarios if uh you know one of your colleagues gets you angry you can think oh this
00:46:22.800
person i wish they weren't in my life or you can start to see them as your teacher see them as someone
00:46:28.980
that can help you to practice self-control and patience because if we didn't have difficult people
00:46:32.480
in our lives or difficult situations how would we ever practice these virtues our life would just be
00:46:37.100
so smooth we would never have self-control or patience so i think that's another way we can
00:46:41.280
think about it in our day-to-day lives as we come up across new obstacles another practice to help
00:46:47.240
people think about whether they're putting to action these things they're meditating on and reading about
00:46:51.780
you offer this nighttime reflection from a buddhist philosopher so i'll just kind of read it here
00:46:57.600
how do you say his name patrul rinpoche yeah patrul rinpoche this is what he said i like this
00:47:03.380
at night when you go to sleep do not just drop off into unconsciousness take the time to relax
00:47:09.200
in bed and examine yourself in this way so what use have i made of this day what have i done that
00:47:15.140
is positive yeah so it's a time to reflect like hey did i actually do the things i i i'm trying to
00:47:20.880
to live out um these principles and reminded me of benjamin franklin had a similar thing he had this
00:47:26.820
journal that he would keep and he'd ask himself what good have i done this day i mean it's just a time
00:47:31.640
to self-reflect and then if you didn't do as great well there's always tomorrow yeah i think
00:47:37.360
that there's two huge benefits of that practice one is that it's important to redefine our measurements
00:47:42.720
of success in that day like if i may speak for myself as someone who's like the kind of that type
00:47:47.500
a sort of career driven individual one of the things i'm trying to rewire in my own brain is that
00:47:52.280
like making that sale or you know finishing the book whatever it is aren't necessarily like yes
00:47:58.320
they're markers of some success but what's more success is if i can create harmony in my household
00:48:03.000
if i can be kind to my neighbor who's difficult with me if i can maybe text my parents uh not every
00:48:08.700
day but you know more often like these are markers of like true success and making sure i'm living
00:48:13.220
virtuously then the other major benefit of that reflection is that the idea is as you drop off to
00:48:17.780
sleep is that it's going to encourage more of that behavior the next day as it kind of bleeds into
00:48:22.140
i don't think your dreams but into the next day and then you can think okay how can i
00:48:26.100
continue to be that person or change into the person i want to be so listen with this the final
00:48:32.100
words of the buddha were supposedly strive with vigilance i really like that so what did he mean
00:48:37.760
by that so with strive with vigilance the word that we're translating from for vigilance is aprimata
00:48:45.080
that's the sanskrit or pali word and there's a couple of different variances to that word in english
00:48:52.220
so we can think of it yes as vigilance also you can think of it as carefulness alertness
00:48:58.280
mindfulness even diligence and what the buddha was saying or at least or we believe he meant by this
00:49:05.640
based on all of our research is that first of all our mind is the root of our suffering but it's also
00:49:12.800
the root of our freedom so what we need to do and he was saying this to his disciples at the time
00:49:18.440
our students is that we need to have absolute vigilance at every moment because if we don't
00:49:22.920
have vigilance over our minds then it's going to go back into poor behavior it's going to go
00:49:27.140
into reactive emotions it's going to lead us into a life of non-virtue so if we can remain vigilant
00:49:33.520
of our own minds then we can start to alleviate our suffering and work towards the inner freedom that
00:49:39.660
we want so if we want to practice compassion if we want to practice loving kindness whatever these
00:49:44.200
things aren't be there for ourselves and our family it all is held together by vigilance if we
00:49:49.900
don't have that then everything else falls apart well bernan this has been a great conversation where
00:49:54.880
can people go to learn more about the book and your work yeah thanks so much for having me so people can
00:49:59.960
catch us and it's me and my wife who wrote the book pema sherpa at the daily buddhist.net to learn
00:50:05.500
about the book and where to get it and then we're also on instagram these days at daily.buddhist and we post
00:50:12.120
every single day on there too fantastic well bernan barker thanks for your time it's been a pleasure
00:50:16.180
thanks so much brett thanks so much for having me my guest today was bernan barker he's the co-author
00:50:21.720
of the book the daily buddhist it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find
00:50:25.860
more information about the book at the website thedailybuddhist.net also check out our show notes
00:50:30.300
at aom.is buddhism where you find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic
00:50:34.480
well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at
00:50:45.800
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00:50:49.400
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00:51:07.540
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