[Music] it's the 10% happier podcast I'm Dan [Music] Harris hello everybody how we doing one of the most common questions I get especially from subscribers over on my substack is how do I go deeper into meditation specifically how do I learn more about Buddhism what is Buddhism exactly what are the fundamental concepts and how do I fit it into my everyday life up until now I've not had a great answer there are some books I like of course but especially in audio there really hasn't been an easy solution for an on-ramp to Buddhism now though I have an excellent answer at the ready over on the waking up app they just posted a four-part conversation roughly eight hours in audio featuring Joseph Goldstein the eminent Buddhist teacher Sam Harris the neuroscientist author and podcaster who is the proprietor of the waking up app and me in this audio Extravaganza Sam and I pepper Joseph with questions about all aspects of the Buddha's eight-fold path as you're about to hear Joseph explain in today's episode the eight-fold path is one of the foundational Buddhist lists it's a kind of GPS for enlightenment eight crucial ways to train and Orient your mind in meditation in your worldview and how you act in the world today here on this podcast we're going to play you the first part of this four-part conversation if you want to hear the rest of the sessions as well as the guided meditations from Joseph that go along with those sessions you need to download The Waking Up app you can do so at waking up.com 110% that's waking up.com TN p r c n I'll put a link in the show notes just so you know if you buy a subscription via that URL you will get a 30-day free trial and you will be supporting me and my team as well because we will get a portion of the proceeds from any of the subscriptions generated through that link and just to say if money is an issue Sam offers scholarships that's the same policy that I have over on danh harris.com if you can't afford it we'll give it to you I want to give you a little context on this episode uh before we dive in as many of you know I recently went through a rather wrenching separation from what used to be known as the 10% happier meditation app in the process of this yearslong divorce I had many many conversations with my great friend Sam Harris who was eager to have me make some content with him so this is really the first content partnership experiment that we engaged in and uh you'll be hearing a lot more about my relationship with waking up in the future I think of waking up as as a great compliment to what I'm doing on substack if you're looking for a community Vibe a direct access to me and the AdFree version of this podcast go to my substack if you're looking for a traditional meditation app experience I really think you can do no better than waking up it's an amazing resource Sam has recruited some of the best meditation teachers alive including the aforementioned Joseph Goldstein by the way if you go to the app you can also listen to an outstanding 30-part lecture series from Joseph that takes you even deeper into Buddhism so again check it out waking up.com 110% I think you're going to really enjoy today's conversation the three of us are old friends so you're going to hear a lot of practical actionable wisdom in here but also a lot of laughs we'll get started with Joseph Goldstein and Sam Harris right after this just want to say at the outset how happy I am to be doing this with both of you I mean this is just like had I dreamt it this would be a dream come true I mean we this came together very quickly as you both know but it's just crazy Good Fortune to be able to do this with both of you so I'm in very good company with you guys so but so I think the idea here Joseph was because you are 80 years old which sounds impossible and uh I've known you as well I've known you since you were 46 and I know that because you're exactly 23 years older than me and I was 23 so I knew you were double my age at the time we just want to get the most out of you and um we thought we would structure it based on the eight-fold path but you know obviously we can find follow any other line that is of interest but we just want to get Joseph goldstein's wisdom mind right here in the present just to say that I'm also really excited to be here and I was thinking about my slh hour good fortune on the walk over to this nice little cottage we're in and I was remembering the conversation that uh started this you and I were out to breakfast I was in your state and we were talking about what kind of work I could do with and for you and you said you know you and Joseph should go on a retreat and then every afternoon just record some audio and see what you get and then there was a pause he looked down and said I have to be there yeah no just the words came out of my mouth and the sentence wasn't finished I realized wait a minute what am I saying here I'm giving away all the good stuff so yeah well I do like the phrase see what you get so we'll see what we get yeah meaning uh we could wind you up and you we could end up who who knows who knows maybe start by telling us a little bit about what the eight-fold path is okay so basically the eight-fold path is really clear instructions of or about the path leading to Awakening and at one point the somebody asked the Buddha you know are there still enlightened beings in the world and his response was as long as people are still practicing the eight-fold path there will be enlightened beings in the world and so pretty direct statement that yeah it's a path and it's a path that leads to someplace and where it leads to is whatever we'd like to call it Enlightenment Awakening Freedom Liberation but that's that's the power of this particular framework and it's pretty interesting because the framework is not only about meditative Insight you know the eight-fold path includes so much about just living wisely in the world it's a beautiful framework to unpack can I ask you a foundational question because yeah I think I've asked you this before but I can't remember the answer and I definitely haven't asked you recently when Joseph says words like Enlightenment and Liberation where do you Mr skeptical atheist stand Visa all of that I mean there's probably some translation required based on some of the doctrines in in Buddhism but uh I mean I'm not I have a very grandiose picture of what is possible as far as the far reaches of human well-being so Enlightenment there's an Enlightenment shaped you know Terminus to all these efforts that um I'm totally happy to believe in because it's it's something that I think we can experience we can sort of sample along the way too so I we'll get into this topic at some point but there differences of opinion about what the final realization is but if it were only a matter of stabilizing the thing that you know many of us have experienced along the way in my view that you know we could call that Enlightenment or you know realization or what whatever you want to talk about it it's so so freeing psychologically with respect to what is normal you our our default sense that it's um many of the spooky sounding ideas in Buddhism I think are just true like the self being an illusion say that can be become obvious and you can actually no longer Overlook that that obvious fact of the mind and that there's a psychological Freedom that comes with that but Enlightenment as we know also there's there are doctrines that are attached to it like the enlightenment of the Buddha entails things like omniscience and magic powers and and that that's where I begin to a bit worst agnostic there but um you know perhaps we'll talk about that spooky stuff as well I love the spooky stuff but just to I think there are two points worth making one is the Buddha was very clear don't take anything I say at face value check it out in the laboratory of your own mind I don't think those were his exact words but it was roughly yeah roughly speaking so this is a tradition that Skeptics and I would count myself one of those can I think safely explore and then the the second thing back on enlightenment is I believe the classical understanding of what enlightenment is is the uprooting of greed hatred and delusion if I have that right and you'll correct me if I'm wrong and that's a pretty big claim yeah and I think that that particular way of framing what enlightenment means I think it's really useful because it's very it's not abstract you know it says very specifically what qualities in the mind which create suffering are uprooted when one is awakened or enlightened because often the Buddha would refer to what he teaches as being teaching suff uing and the end of suffering so that's really the bottom line you know and he said that he knew much more about the nature of the world the universe perhaps the mysterious things you know his so's knowledge was vast but what he taught was just that which led to the end of suffering and so that becomes a I think a really a pragmatic measure for us to assess our own practice you know even all along the way are we suffering less or more and it becomes pretty obvious through some degree of awareness and mindfulness and you know meditative Insight that greed hatred delusion are causes of suffering and generosity love wisdom the causes of Greater happiness so this is not mystical you know and I think it's it's it's easily verifiable in one's own experience all along the way so that's why I like that particular frame there are other more ways of understanding Enlightenment that are not so easily verifiable for most people so that's why this one I think really serves that purpose it might be worth saying a little bit about what suffering is because I think to a lay ear that sounds like oh I'm chained to a rock and crows are pecking up my innards but there's a pretty spe that that's that's a flavor that is on offer if you find the right person to tie you up but but the you talk about the constituent Parts being great hatred and delusion maybe just unpack that a little bit well in a way those are two different questions or they're related but somewhat different I came across online someplace and I don't remember where for me the perfect definition of suffering and suffering is the translation of the poly word Dua and it's not a very good trans translation because generally we think of suffering when we're in pain you know and so there very tangible aspect to suffering but duka means something much greater and the the definition which I have come to love because it feels so comprehensive is the inevitability of unwanted experiences the inevitability of unwant wanted experiences and these unwanted experiences can take you know many forms and this particular phrase highlights some of the other insights of practice why is there the inevitability of unwanted experiences because everything is unstable everything is continually changing and there's another phrase in the text which again I've really come to love because it's a little unusual in English but it it just makes the truth of impermanence very Vivid you know it says things always becoming otherwise in every moment things are becoming otherwise and because that's not a usual expression for us when I first came across that yes and it really helps to remember that just couple of examples I could be going for a walk and then I don't know my knee starts to hurt so now my first thought oh becoming otherwise you know so it's just a reminder yeah this is the nature things are unstable they're changing they're becoming otherwise and so to have the idea that they should be stable or they should stay the same way is a cause of duka so there's a lot there's a lot in there yeah that that cuts through a common misconception about what the Buddha taught because many people think that the the punchline of Buddhism is life is suffering right and as though there everything sucks you know and there's there's no acknowledgement of yeah of real happiness or pleasure but Le at least in one suo I think it's the mongala suo where he talks about kind of a hierarchy of of Happiness acknowledging that you know having a healthy body is a form of Happiness having a healthy family is a form of happiness but yeah it's the the instability of all that if you're clinging I this connects to Greed hatred and delusion if you're trying to hold on to something that's intrinsically unstable it just you just have to wait around long enough and you you will begin to to feel the dissatisfaction of duka and likewise if you're pushing away what's unpleasant you have a version to it that very resistance to it yeah yeah yeah yeah well so maybe we can drill down on this point here a little more how do you think of clinging in this spot clinging as the the root of the problem this was an image that somebody on retreat they came in for a meditation interview you know and they were describing their experience and they said you know suffering is like rope burn you know if you're holding on tightly to a rope and it's being pulled through your hand the tighter you hold on the more rope burn is there going to be MH well the Rope being pulled through one's hand is the truth of things always becoming otherwise then the more we hold on tightly the tighter we hold on of course it's suffering it's it's painful and so the release is really in letting go there are a million images for this another another one of my favorite images is describes a uh monkey trap that they use in Sri Lanka you know where they tie a CO a hollowed out coconut to a tree and there's a whole they put some sweet food in the Coconut with a hole big enough for the monkey to slide its hand in when it's open but not big enough for it to with throw its hand when it's in a fist okay monkey comes along smells the food puts his hand puts his hand in it grabs the food he's cold the Hunter's coming you know he's getting frantic perhaps all he have to do or she is open hand SL out and be free but it's a very rare monkey that can do that because of the force The Habit the deeply conditioned habit of grasping to what's Pleasant you know holding on so yeah so there are a lot of aspects so to link up to Dan's question earlier about the goal of all this and just how far it reaches how far do you think the ordinary forms of suffering can be mitigated through this thing we're calling Enlightenment or Awakening I mean just what what is you know if if you imagine I guess we could throw out some terminology here because I'm sure it'll come up you know a Buddha is the the ultimate example of enlightenment historically in within the teachings of Buddhism but there are more minor examples which in in your tradition are called Arun or arhats which have uprooted all the greed hatred and delusion but then don't have all the the magic qualities associated with a Buddha I think we can you know the agnostic and me wants to table all all of that come back around but when you imagine fully untying the knot of clinging in yourself what is that synonymous with in terms of suffering and the the absence of suffering can you get surgery without anesthesia and that's just as good as as an experience as any other or is there some I me how do you think about it so there are a lot of different ways to think about it so one image I like to use if I'm thinking about the Awakening of the Buddha and I'm just projecting that or The Awakening of you know not the fully enlightened being but who's not the Buddha one of the things that becomes obvious in our meditation practice and I think this is true of everyone is that we all find ourselves in a comfort zone of what's okay what we can easily be with and it could be feelings in the body different emotions thought patterns whatever we have our comfort zone then in the course of practice and P we come to the edges of our comfort zone and we're just sitting and undistracted and not moving away from things you know and not trying to avoid the edges when we're just sitting and practicing being mindful we get to the edges maybe it's a certain level of discomfort in the body maybe it's a really painful emotion okay so we're at the edge which is where we want to be in the practice and this might be an interesting point to emphasize that the point of the practice is not to avoid that the practice is actually it's of benefit when it leads us to that place because then we can play at the edge and learn how to relax into whatever that experience might be be without holding on to it and without pushing it away and so we get to the edge maybe discomfort or emotion okay it's okay it's okay let me feel it and so we relax into it we relax into that experience and in that relaxation we are seeing the impermanent impersonal nature of it and so our comfort zone gets a little bigger but that's now that's now we within our comfort zone go on go on go on come to a few more Retreats do our practice we come to another Edge go through the same process and so I see the practice of Freedom the gradual process of it unfolding is that we are enlarging our comfort zone and my projection of the fully enlightened mind is a mind without edges there's no Edge and so whatever it is that arises the mind is relating to it from a place of Greater Freedom so this is one way of okay can I ask you a question about that without derailing you or as long as it's an easy one yeah you seem to have linked seen the impersonal impermanent nature of phenomenon there with the expansion of the comfort zone I'm not sure that intuitive for everybody I mean how to see in the impersonal nature of it I I guess people could understand how impermanence may give one a sense of more Comfort because you see that you know the moment something's there let's say pain it's it's disappearing you know before you can even really make contact with it but how is an insight into selflessness or the the impersonal nature phenomenon at all helpful here when you've got a pain in the knee well it is very diff different not taking it personally and so I'll just give you an example kind of in meditative meditative progression okay was sitting or walking and all of a sudden on knee hurts you know and the very often the first reaction is I don't like it you know it's painful my knee is killing me right then in the course of meditation it's like we drop underneath the level of the concept to knee because we actually don't feel a knee there's no sensation called knee so we don't feel knee knee is a concept which we're overlaying on a certain experience of certain Sensations the problem is that the concept reifies it as if the knee is something stable there more or less permanent so on that level of con we are not seeing the changing nature of what's really going on so through the practice even though our first reaction is oh my knee my knee really hurts but then with some understanding we drop that and drop into the level of the element Sensations you know the tightness the burning the stabbing the this and that right as we drop into that level not only are we seeing the impermanence of what's going on it gives pretty direct access to at least the beginning understanding of selflessness because while we might very easily go from knee to my knee it's not very likely that we would go from vibration to my vibration right or heat my heat yeah and so just and in in the more classical Buddhist teachings those Sensations are described in terms of you know four basic elements you know earth air fire water which is you know a classical framework from those years but actually I've been I've been told that there is a modern equivalent of those four elements solidity what are the four states of matter uh plasma gas gas liquid solid yeah yeah even though earth air fire water is kind of a you know the ancient the ancient terminology I think there is you know that more modern vocabulary you find any Plasma in there I'll I want to hear about it well I'm not even sure what plasma is but but anyway this it's unlikely to be in your knee it's just that this when we're on that level it's not so likely to claim it as being I in mind and that's why one of the key key turning points in the meditation practice is when people gradually go from the level of their Concepts about what's happening to the direct experience whether it's of the physical elements or the Mind elements because it's on that level that we begin to see the impermanent imperson nature but do you think that all of the suffering of let's say physical pain here because it's the most concrete is a matter of the psychological resistance to it born of aversion and clinging a mind without any clinging in the presence of still objectively excruciatingly unpleasant sensation in the body do you actually imagine that to be mind that is is indifferent to those Sensations compared to any other thing that's on the menu or is it just most of the suffering is reduced yeah so this may stretch most people's view of what's possible but there is a story from from the Buddhist time which I'm a little hesitant to share because it seems so far out out of the range of possibility for most people but if we're willing to consider the possibility that a truly free mind may be experiencing things very differently than we do it might give some indication so the after the Buddha was enlightened he was walking around with his the monks and the nuns and he told them uh he recounted a story from one of his previous lives when he was known as abodh SATA practicing and he was a Hermit living in the forest and the queen of the country uh and some of her following you know were walking through the forest They Came Upon him and they were really interested in the teachings and so he would be giving them teachings anyway the King was very upset that his Queen had gone off and become you know a devote of this hermit and so the king who was not a very nice fellow ordered his guards or whatever to go to go the hermit here's where it gets a little gruesome right we like to start all these sessions with stories of torture dismemberment so feel free Joseph so but this is a story I'm not making you know so the king you know ordered his guards basically to kill a Hermit by sowing off his arms and legs pretty gruesome horrible Story the Buddha in his lifetime as a Buddha now he's fully awakened he's recounting this story and he said something which can make one sit up straight he said even then and he was not even yet fully awakened he was a bodh SFA you know working towards Awakening he said e even then my mind harbored no ill will or aversion and if you are truly following my teachings you should emulate that so that's a rather High bar yeah and but what's interesting so even if we don't go to that extreme which hopefully none of us will have to but we can see it at work even in more modest you know when we're feeling pain and even quite intense pain and this happens I think all of us you know have experienced that at times in our meditation where it can get pretty painful and seeing the difference in our own minds when we are contracted in the face of it and when we can relax in the face of it and so again there's you know the famous example of the two arrows you know somebody shoots you with an arrow first arrow is the pain painful sensation the second arrow is all the mental suffering we might add to the physical pain from the first Arrow so that's all the second arrow and the Buddhist is pointing out that it's the second arrow that we can really work with the first Arrow hits it's painful but that's life yeah but how we're relating to it is really up to us might be worth saying a oh sorry no I was just going to I need a two is not enough Joseph just to get back to this term of Letting Go I can imagine to if somebody's listening to this and hearing the Dharma or Buddhism for the first or among the first times the question could come up like where's this heading like does this mean I don't give a [ __ ] about anything I don't try at work I don't try in my relationships what does letting go look like in practicality I think letting go I don't think that's the best phrase even though we use it a lot but some time ago not I don't even know who's first suggested it but using the phrase letting be works for many people much better than letting go because when you hear letting go oh what am I supposed to do and how do I let go and it can feel complicated also when something's unpleasant it doesn't seem like you're holding on to it it's not not intuitive to say that letting go of this pain is how how do I do that but if you let it be that's and the letting be works because in the letting be we seeing the changing nature we're seeing the flow and so the Letting Go happens organically rather than by anything we're doing so what was the question Joseph let go of even of your question yeah well which happens quite a lot this is the mind without edges yes there are a lot of people myself I would put myself in this category who care about Peak Performance and achievement in various spheres of our lives and so the idea of not clinging letting it might maybe some further explation could help one of the problems in the transmission of Buddhism but really anything else from one culture to another a lot of the problems come out of translation linguistic translation so the teachings that we've inherited in this tradition are basically in Nepali Language an ancient language of India very related to Sanskrit but the more ver vernacular version and in P it's a language that is very specifically geared in the way it was used by the Buddha and the teachers of that time it has very specific vocabulary for the nuances of different mind qualities and factors and Sensations in the body so for example and when they translated into English very often it's not the same Precision so a very common example is the word desire because often in the teachings they will be interpreted as the Buddha says to let go of desire and so this speaks to your question you know what about desire for accomplishing things in the world or doing things in the world the problem is that desire means a lot of different things whereas in poly there are different words for each of those meanings of Desire so for example you know if there's desire to get ahead in the world you know be number one whatever what's important or the the way of assessing the particular meaning of desire as we're using that word in English would be to really have a very good and clear sense of the motivation associated with it right and so yeah I have a desire to be number one okay what's that motivation is it greed is it ambition is it selfing in some big way or desire to get ahead desire to good do good in the world there's another word in poly to describe the desire of wholesome motivations right and so it really depends on what's going on in the mind what's the motivation in some of the situations you described people could be motivated a lot by greed and by self-aggrandisement and by you know wanting to wanting to be number one but there are a lot of people doing fantastic things in the world you know motivated by compassion motivated by love but and doing hugely effective work which is very different than the together even though in English we use the same word so that's why it can get confusing for people because genuinely in the Buddhist teachings with a superficial reading we might read oh the point is get rid of Desire but without drilling down into what that really means how does that relate to the concept of craving though so so the desire for sense pleasure or just having preferences between like you you know you don't like broccoli you like chocolate you want more chocolate is there a an enlightened version of that or does the the non- clinging non- craving goal that you're envisioning nullify those kinds of distinctions I mean if this is I think we've spoken about this before but you know if if you bring the the Buddha to the you know the breakfast buffet on Maui does he not want anything does does he not know what he wants more than any other thing is he like a a catatonic that you have to move out of the line there or is he does he have all of the preferences that he had before his Enlightenment but did they just held in a very different psychological space first I have to say that although I can understand your inclination to have me speak for the Buddha this is your job I do I do want to say that that's a little uh overage and so all I can do is express my limited understanding of what the Buddha mind would be like right so just this is just to clean up my karmic my potential karmic that having said you you win you win uh Buddhist plot as for being humble in that way but based on your experience no I get the question you you have an expectation of what Freedom will seem like so what will what will it seem like and I bring you back to the breakfast buffet at the appropriate it's pretty simple hotel from my current level of understanding so I'm leaving the door open for future revision it's not not having preferences it's not being attached to the preferences so in this hypothetical Buddha going up to the to the buffet table oh sweet buns I've been wanting I've been thinking about sweet buns all morning and then there are no sweet buns they serving broccoli fritters yeah my imagination of the Budd his mind is that it would not cause a ripple because there would be no attachment to the preference even if there had been a preference right and yes I just want to reiterate that I really don't know whether the Buddha would have even had a preference or not but I could imagine the scenario I just Des right oh so to to come back to our starting point when you envision the path of practice as being more and more the ability to open to expand the edges of our tolerance for Dua on some level why not play the game very differently why not just if in the final result is just not being attached to the falsification of one's preferences why couldn't one practice keeping you know the sweet buns within Arms Reach as much as possible but noticing those times where they're not available and then that's the edge but so for instance to bring this back to a pain in the knee why not move mindfully every time there is a pain in the knee being just as aware of that and the impermanence of all that and all of one's efforts to be comfortable can be prosecuted with the full glare of mindfulness presumably so what what what failure mode do you imagine one's practice gets into there if one's constantly just the beginning of this conversation I have to listen ground rules don't string too many questions together okay because the second one will push out the first okay so I'll I'll address the last one you mentioned because I already forgot the first it was it was part the last the last contained the first yeah okay so this discomfort in the body why not just move every time there are different ways we could address that question but kind of the one that comes to mind most readily is because given the truth of Dua the inevitability of unwanted experiences so that's inevitable that is going to come in our lives and the fact that yes sometimes there may be a pain and we move and it goes away but there will be inevitably be times when we experiencing pain in the body and moving is not going to make it go away that that is just the reality of whatever that situation is at the moment so have we trained ourselves to be more accepting of that without resistance without fear or when the pain is there and we it's not going away and we don't have the option just to change position to have it go away are we going to be with that pain could be with a wide range of second Arrow of things that create even more suffering of fear of resistance of depression of Rage it could be a lot of different things so it's really it's an important training and this is part of the training in practice is to increase our capacity to hold what's Pleasant and unpleasant equally with equinity because that's going to serve us in our lives of creating in a life of Greater ease because things are always becoming otherwise and often out of our control so I see it as just a a really important training and the Buddha talked about this an example of this and something that's found a lot in the sutas where the Buddha would visit people who were sick and dying and he would ask them you know would say oh I hope you're the pain is diminishing and in that vein and the person would say no it's not diminishing it's getting stronger and stronger and more intense and they use some r images for that and the Buddhist remark in almost all of these situations is though your body is Afflicted may your mind remain unafflicted so to me that's one expression of the free mind the body is going to be Afflicted it's the nature of the body there there's no getting around that one way or another but then this this is the power I think of the teachings and the practice is that we can actually train our minds over time and increasingly so not all at once but even as the body is Afflicted in one way or another the Mind remains unafflicted and so this this is the fact and that's the purpose of working with pain when it's manageable and even if we could move to alleviate it we don't at least for some time to just practice okay can I be with this can I relax into it well that actually builds a bridge to my next question which is we've we've been talking a lot about physical pain and the perhaps um mitigation or total total mitigation of attendant psychological suffering but obviously meditation is mostly thought of not so much as an antidote for physical pain but for mental suffering in all its forms most of which have nothing to do with your body being uncomfortable right so there's you know the pain of sadness or disappointment or shame or you know Terror I mean there all these psychological states which are kind of ethereal pain I mean they do they do sort of map to the body and we we feel them in the body as as unpleasant as well but their status as forms of unpleasantness is is somewhat hard to get a hold of and yet they really are the basis of most of human suffering the states we get into based on our thoughts about past present and future and what I'm hearing is that basically all of that is optional the real promise of meditation is though the first Arrow of you know physical pain is is inevitable the arrow of mental suffering in all its forms certainly suffering based on your thoughts about past present and future that is a Dream from which it is possible to awaken and that is on some level I think to the average person no less grandios a promise than the promise that you could have your legs cut off and be aanus with that right so how do you think about mental suffering in this context yeah I mean first to to reiterate your point the Buddha commented that actually mental suffering I don't know if he use the word worse but is much worse than physical suffering and I I think we know this because at least in my experience with physical suffering even when it's intense and maybe the mind is not perfectly equanimous but in my experience there's still a possibility of creating some sense of distance from it you know which mitigates the suffering a bit of it but when there's mental suffering that often feels old all pervasive you know it often feels very hard to find some distance from it for for an untrained mind so it's in that sense I think that the Buddha said mental suffering is really more challenging than physical suffering but the whole teaching is about how to free ourselves from that mental suffering and there there are just so many different specific ways depending on what the particular mental suffering is but one of the most transforming insights which goes completely against our general conditioning okay I just want to back up a minute we started this conversation saying we're going to talk about the eight-fold path yeah we haven't gotten to the first fold of the bth so I just want to reference it and then we can get back to it and then go deeper into it M but the first step of the eight-fold path is Right View and we can go into a longer discussion that's that itself is a huge discussion there are a lot of elements to it yeah but I came across this one teaching which described one very common expression of wrong View and it's the feeling or it's the experience of I'm happy I'm sad I'm excited I'm afraid I'm depressed I'm bored I'm loving goes through long list of all the different mindsets and of course this is how we speak and this very often how we experience these things oh I'm feeling happy I'm feeling grief so why is it wrong view because this is the common way we interpret our experience the wrong view aspect is the claiming of that mind state to be self to be I which is so deeply embedded in our conditioning you know so the relief from that suffering is as we begin to be mindful enough and aware enough of the emotions themselves as being impersonal not I not self I can share a few stories but first an image first an image there's one Tibetan teaching which says thoughts and emotions wander through the mind like clouds in the sky no roots no home right and I love that image and then it's kind of amusing just to imagine the clouds going by with roots coming down from them attaching them to the Earth it's a ridiculous image right and so clearly not the state of things and yet that's what we're doing with these emotions so an emotion or a thought we're rooting them to the view of self right and that's what is problematic and when we see them for what they are they're more like clouds in the sky the emotions arise when the conditions are there for it to arise just like a cloud arises when the conditions are there for the conditions change the cloud disperses or becomes otherwise exactly the same way with our emotions you know but what keeps us from seeing that ephemeral you could say empty nature of the emotion is because of our identification with them we're we're rooting them in this view of self and our practice is to I don't know if we want to say cut the root or you know not be identified with them can you say more about what identification is yeah so I'll I'll I'll just from my own experience so this goes back quite a few years early on in my practice the emotion that was most difficult for me the afflictive emotion that I was working with a lot over years and years and years was fear so of all unpleasant emotions that can come for me that was the one that was most deeply conditioned and I'm working with it in in a lot of different ways over years of my practice and and there were times when it was just so intense particularly in the experience of intensive meditation I would be sitting and afraid to stand up I mean it was ridic it was completely irrational you know there there was nothing fearful about standing up but that's what was going on in my mind so two things there two two aspects of what helped me free myself from rooting that fear you know in myself one was and this is one of the most important I don't know if teachings or or changes in perspective that can really help to free the mind so at one point I was doing walking meditation and the fear was there and it was strong and I'm noting noticing fear fear fear fear but it still felt really locked in and then something happened in my mind something shifted in my mind and that shift was expressed in the thought if this fear is here for the rest of my life it's okay so it's okay became my magic Mantra about everything it's okay to feel it and what was so instructive about that was that I thought I had been mindful all along because I had recog Iz the fear yeah fear fear I was feeling it and noting it and recognizing it but always through the filter of aversion I wanted to get rid of it right which technically is not mindfulness exactly you're aware of it but it's colored by your contraction around it or exactly and so just highlighting the difference between recognition and mindfulness or recognition and awareness these are two different things so is it true to say that mindfulness contains equinity I mean or presupposes equinity or Co arises with equinity yeah and it was amazing when my mind had that shift it's okay here for the rest of my life it's okay what was amazing is that whole mass of fear that had been lodged and locked in in that moment just washed through it's like it was released from the grip of attachment mm and it's not to say that fear never arises again it can still come up but my relationship to it is completely different because from that experience it's okay it's okay so that's Story number one story number two I'm teaching in Texas with my colleague Sharon salsburg we're going for a walk after lunch and I'm going on and on and I think this was before the experience I just described I'm going on and on oh I have all this fear and it's so deeply conditioned I'm going to need 30 years of therapy to unwind this and I was going on I was building a whole superstructure of self on top of this emotion you know I'm such a fearful person and Sharon just turned to me and said Joseph it's just a mind State and you know some when when the condition right somebody can just say a few words yeah it's just the mind what are you what are you creating this whole big self story about it and so that's another by the acceptance and then seeing the impersonal selfless nature it's just like a it's just like a summer Thundercloud you know it's there and it's intense and then it passes away so our relationship to kind of the emotional suffering that you described there is every potential to free ourselves from the contraction of them however some is very deeply deeply conditioned from a lot of different causes for those emotions that are not just kind of more typical ones passing through but the deeply conditioned patterns first it may take some time as it did with me for fear I was working with this for years until that kind of change of understanding but I think also PE particularly people who had traumatic background you know so there's there's some deep emotional conditioning and it may take different modalities to help loosen it up right you know very often just the therapeutic approach is really valuable and sometimes the medit approach and sometimes a combination so it's not to think that there's one way that is going to serve in all situations so it's good to just have an open mind to see okay what will be most helpful but is is that actually the claim or is would it be true to say that real mindfulness is always the right answer psychologically or do are you saying that there are people for whom given their conditioning given the the sources of their suffering even real mindfulness is not an appropriate remedy you see you see what I'm getting very some people you you might be saying that some people try as they might won't be able to use the tool of mindfulness because of the nature of their suffering they have to do something else but are you saying that actually in many cases mindfulness is just not good enough no I'm saying that depending on the intensity and the level of the conditioning people's capacity to even get mindful yeah to be really mindful in the way that we've been describing right without attachment without aversion without identification right it's asking too much yeah it may not just at that time me the capacity might not be there and very often it's necessary to go into the content to try to un okay well what are the causes you know what's the history and and that begins to loosen things up enough so that maybe one could then apply mindfulness directly to the emotion the phrase to not be identified with thought you know I think for many people is very hard to parse and many people also assume that the goal is to be without thought right so like I just it'd be worth getting to that territory somehow well that naturally get there through Right View yeah MH yeah I think it's actually been really helpful to kind of set the table in this way and I know we'll we want to work through the the list the eight-fold path but at least one last question for me if I may you talked a lot about the potential for Freedom the mind with no edges and maybe I'm alone in this but I I think some non-trivial percentage of listeners are going to ask the question well how far can I get you know how many lifetimes does this take uh how much meditation do I need to do in order like to get like a a taste of you know the anesthesia free surgery etc etc so what say you well so I do have a new favorite definition of enlightenment which is lightening up that the whole process is about lightening up which I think in a colloquial sense we all have a sense of you know it's not taking ourselves so seriously and we just are with things in a simpler and easier way that our minds start to decondition some of the complicated and suffering causes responses to things so I I'll give you another very mundane example the fruit of the practice of integrating the wisdom of impermanence really into how we're living Our Lives it's a just a totally normal ordinary situation with a bunch of friend and it goes back to actually what you was asking Sam about uh preferences and do you have preferences you don't have preferences and this happens to me a lot you know can be with a group of friends planning to go out to dinner where do you want to go I want Tai I want Chinese I want this I want that and for the most part and even though you know I like everyone else has preferences but for the most part in that kind of discussion it really doesn't matter to me at all because I know from experience that 10 minutes five minutes after the meal is done it will not have made the slightest bit of difference right and so having just experienced that over and over again why get into a fight and I'm exaggerating a little bit but why get into a fight over which restaurant we go to so again that's you know that's a very trivial example but one could extrapolate that and so the lightening up aspect of becoming enlightened is a process that I think starts wherever we are and we everybody you know who really undertakes the practice in a somewhat consistent way I think will experience this sense of lightning lightening up which is very it's wonderful you know when we don't take ourselves so seriously and so there's a lot there's a lot Freer energy kind of we're dancing with things more than fighting with things or struggling with things so this is a very kind of we could say secular or mundane understanding of the process you know and and then of course it goes into many more profound aspects of what Awakening means but I think it gives an indication of what's possible for everybody we're all moving along on this trajectory and we're all somewhere along the path and for if we're practicing yes and for almost all of us there's more to do yeah you've known this guy for decades is he he still cares what restaurant we go to I was just I was think that same thing I don't remember getting my free pick of Cuisine every time I'm with Joseph is he lighter though than than when when he was 46 that's hard to say I don't I don't know did I I mean he was pretty light at 46 otherwise I wouldn't have been hanging out with him I can definitely answer the question yeah much more so so so just just as an example which probably saw as as you mentioned one of you mentioned recently turned 80 you know and so IMS on meditations send to put on a kind of an online 80th celebration and somebody produced it and it was really a lovely event the woman who produced it Lily kushman she dug up an old video of me teaching at neuropa in 1974 yeah so I had just come back to minat so I was new teacher and I was leading very big difference in in new and old Joseph teaching yeah yes I mean in that video I mean the teaching was the same but I was so serious and so you like there was not much Burmese yeah not much likeness there but that there was a trajectory from that to how I feel now yeah you know and to me it's really noticeable in how I feel I I feel a lot lighter and more relaxed in teaching and in most things so I think I think it really is possible even just on that level but is that actually the right way to measure things I mean don't so again coming back to the goal and what you imagine to be you know the the final fruition of practice would you expect every arhun or every Buddha to show up with the same kind of light-hearted attitude or because again obvious examples I mean someone like mahasi sidow who who you know whether he was an R hunt or not was obviously an Exemplar of taking the practice you quite some ways and I mean some of this could have been cultural some of this could have been how you know he decided to behave in the role as a teacher but I never met him I obviously met his student upand but it was a very kind of formal serious I mean I don't even think they smiled very much but I saw upand smile but it's like even smiling was kind of Taboo in the role of a teacher I think they put their fans up to to hide their smiles but I don't know whether mahasi ever smiled but he was not the he was not the Jolly teacher that you know his Holiness of Dal Lama is right so how much are you expecting a person's personality to change based on stabilizing this yeah obviously people are going to manifest very differently because of just their innate personalities you know and just with reference for example to mahasi Sao what I heard is certainly in his public Persona he was pretty pretty serious which is very burmes culture yeah you know for for monastics to present in that way but what I heard was that when he was just in the equivalent of the back room he's a wild man well I wouldn't say Wildman but that another whole side of him came out right so it's hard to judge you know in what you're asking about without being seeing somebody in the in the fullness of their their situations but I think the deeper part is not so much the personality expression but this is more subtle and sometimes hard to assess but really how empty of self someone is you know and and to some extent we really can feel it I mean we know when even if the the English expression very full of themselves you know when when somebody is very full of themselves it's apparent mahasi Sido was one of the emptiest of self beings that I've ever met so that that's really the deeper meaning of that of lightening up light lightening up in that way is the more profound aspect it's kind of the personality for me it was very noticeable that more superficial level you know it was very apparent to me that that's what happened along with you know the the deeper letting go of of selfing to whatever extent actually I think it's an important point of confusion because just as consumers of the teachings I think people can be misled by the personal characteristics of teach there are people who have lots of Charisma who are very comfortable yeah in front of audiences they're very energetic they're super positive they've got a very high B Baseline level of happiness and I won't name any names but I mean there are people who check all those boxes but there's a you know there's an 800 lb gorilla of an ego right at the center of it that is palpable but it's not palpable in the sense of that they seem to be suffering or they seem to be neurotic at least not when they're functioning well they can be very again charismatic and outward focused you know just per they can be performing impeccably and yet it's not the same thing as absence of self but that you wouldn't you could point to that person say that person's very light They're laughing they're they're smiling they're they're very entertaining they're very attractive of people's attention you know they're they could be great performers you know they could be great standup comedians or or just performers in in all kinds of modes and yet there's a kind of self-actualization that has nothing to do with what we're talking about right yeah but I think people might think that if I could only untie the knot of self through meditation I would be like you know Jamie Fox right like I like just free to to dance and sing and so I think one of one of the I don't think this is really a I think it's a common misunderstanding they you're somehow optimizing the personality through these this practice I don't think I don't think it's really a critical point but now I will make a critical point thank you for getting us back on track I think this is one of the really beautiful things about practicing with different teachers because when you practice with different who who you really respect and you know feel have a lot of wisdom and you see them manifesting through many different personalities that is a great teaching is that in that there is no one way to be it's not that there's one Persona that is going to manifest as we become more as we become Freer or more awaken what have you have made of the examples of teachers who can seem to be angry right so like one way of describing the path is to get rid of disturbing emotion like anger surely you've seen some great teachers seem to get annoyed or angry or frustrated or something and so do you just do you just view that as synonymous with them not being done or is there a way of actually displaying in the same way that you could reach for the the mango as opposed to the Papaya at a buffet and that's not tantamount to unenlightened craving that's just a conditioned preference that need not mean anything could you see someone I mean I remember so for for instance we were with Tuk Oregon in Nepal and um we had bought a bunch of Buddha statues and bells and other artifacts for him to bless and and so but he was keenly interested in where we bought this stuff and what how much we paid for it and when he heard like what one thing cost I think it was a bell or he just he looked horrified he like like we like we tourists had just been you know shamefully taken advantage of it like and paid 10 times too much for something and he was clearly I Me by outward appearances he seemed to be annoyed or you know something now if you sample his your impression of of what it's like to be him at that moment is it just okay he's lost in thought in exactly the same way that any ordinary person has lost in thought and he's contracted or can that variation show up in even a totally free mind I mean what what are you expecting again you think you think this is this is not you don't think a person's conception of the goal is important I think in the example you're giving M you would really have to know what was in his mind you know and you know there is this expression in tibetan wrathful compassion where people manifest in what could be called a wrathful way but actually the motivation and the energy is one of compassion and one could say compassion to help wake people up or where where they see that as the skillful means in that particular situation and it's very hard to to to judge like in the example you gave I don't know what was in his mind you know as you were telling the story I interpreted but of course this was just my projection of I could well imagine going there with all chachkas Buddha chachkas you know and his his his reacting with disbelief that anybody could be so stupid no that that was not the they're very indulgent of that kind of thing I me no I'm just I'm I'm just saying that it could be there could be just a whole range of what was in his mind and so okay but you do judge I mean this is first of all the wrathful wisdom you know and every variant of that while possibly psychologically true you know that's a get out of jail free card for every Guru who's ever exploited the role of Guru so like we know we know it's hard to actually know that you found that when you seem to have found that and when the effects are obviously not good you do judge you know when you hear that soil rache is just beating people up you basically wash your hands of him as an example of what the dharm is supposed to be right like there there's a line that somebody crosses and in the literature we accept these stories that we would never accept in real life right like they the disciple holds up his finger and and and who is it bodh Dharma who who who cut cut off the right so you know it's like yeah if if you're cutting off the fingers of your students you know you're not you're not going to survive long in the current Dharma circles and for good reason but it is thought that everything potentially could be skillful means in the yeah but I think that's a misunderstanding a misconception and it's one of the reasons why in most Buddhist Traditions although there's some variation of how it's held or how it's expressed but how the foundation the foundation of the whole journey is ethical Behavior the ethics of non-harming and to me that's why that Foundation is so important because people and people in teaching roles can so easily rationalize Behavior as if in they have in some belief well I've had this realization or I've had this level of Enlightenment or whatever so that everything I do therefore is expressive of that that's the get out of jail free court but that is dissoci and it's dangerous and we've seen lots of examples in spiritual scenes where people in teaching roles end up sometimes doing really unskillful harmful things and frankly it feels like we've seen that more more in Traditions that have this teaching around Crazy Wisdom or wrathful compassion I mean like we see less of it I think in in the terraa I'm sure it exists yeah yeah well that's also because like in this tradition there is a lot of emphasis on the teaching of ethics of non-harming I mean and in different tradition I think it's there in all the Traditions but in some teach in some it's really emphasized more than in others you know and from my perspective I think that's why it's really important to emphasize it because it it's provides a place of safety you know in fact one of the one of the gifts of undertaking following the basic precepts of non-harming and I love this expression it talks about when we are committed to these precepts of ethical behavior of non-harming Behavior we are giving the gift of fearlessness to everyone we meet because we're saying with our Behavior you need not fear me I'm not going to harm you and this and the precepts are basic it's not like you know we have to go off and become Saints in order to follow the precepts they're pretty basic ways of Behaving but sometimes if those teachings are not emphasized teachers can go go astray even teachers who may have some level of realization but then misinterpret the extent of it and then think oh well I've had this realization and everything I do is enlightened Behavior that's a real danger and it has happened we we've seen it yeah it's a good segue to the eight-fold path yeah was going to say so should we uh start marching our way through this list yeah [Music] up Joseph and Sam talk about generosity the importance of faith and in this context faith has a little bit of a different meaning the wisdom of don't know mind and various kinds of Right [Music] View so the first entry on the list of Eight Is Right View we talked about it a little bit but let's uh let's go deeper what does it mean technically Right View so one kind of General way I think of understanding in the most General way right view sets the direction of our path right so it's like having a right view of the path and the goal that sets a Direction so if we're on a journey and we know the right direction to get where we want to go then if we keep walking on that path we will inevitably get there because we're going in the right direction if we're going in the wrong direction we can be making all kinds of efforts in our practice but it's not going to get us where we want to go and so that's why the Buddha said that and he started the Eightfold Path with Right View and he said sees nothing so conducive to the well-being of people people as Right View and nothing as detrimental to the well-being of beings with wrong view because right view keeps us going on the direction of Awakening of freedom of Liberation whatever word we want to use wrong view takes us away from that so the setting of the direction is one way of understanding it a way of taking a deeper dive into the meaning of Right View and what it means to be setting the direction and how that manifests in our lives there are two levels of it and this is pretty interesting I think because it shows the comprehensive nature of the Buddhist teachings and how it touches so many different aspects of our lives so the first level of Right View is called sometimes mundane Right View or world worldly Right View and it has to do with the right view for developing greater ease and happiness in our lives not necessarily have to do with Awakening or Liberation but just how do we live wisely in a way that reduces suffering creates more ease and basically aligns us or puts us in harmony with the way things are rather than being out of sync with the truth of things so there are a few elements of mundane Right View and they all circle around one crucial aspect of the Buddhist teaching and that is the understanding that our actions have consequences and in traditional Buddhist terms this is talked about as the law of karma you know that all of our vol actions will bear fruit at some point or another depending on the motivation associated with the action so this is this is just cenal to the Buddhist teaching so he said when we act motivated by greed or motivated by aversion hatred motivated by delusion that is like planting the karmic seed of some future unwanted experience and likewise when we act motivated by generosity or by Love by understanding or wisdom that is planting the seed of some future desirable experiences and this is such a powerful teaching in my mind because when we understand it and explore it on deeper and deeper levels it gives us a lot of agency in our lives because we're all conditioned in a lot of different ways we have naturally a lot of wholesome skillful motivations in our mind but not completely you know we have a lot of unskillful unh wholesome motivations I think mostly in the moment of taking an action or performing an action for many people we are not considering the karmic consequences of the ACT you know we're just carried carried along in the busyness of what we're doing and in the reactivity of what's going on and we just act without necessarily really taking the time the few moments to look into our motivation okay where is this act coming from where is it leading and do I want to go where it's leading so when we have this understanding of Right View mundane Right View that actions bring result that karma is unfolding lawfully that can align us on a path of Happiness we can start doing those things which will bring desirable karmic results in our lives so it's a powerful teaching now here's where we may be getting into a little of the more mysterious aspects of the teachings first we can get a very pretty clear sense of how Karma unfolds just based on our own experience and there are so many simple examples of this generally when we're loving and basically have Goodwill towards people how do we find people relating to us generally they like to be with us how do people respond if we're full of anger and you know hatred and judgment how do people relate probably not so friendly there there is a karmic result in this very simple you know mundane way there's an effect of our actions so we want we want to pay attention to that now in the full scope of the Buddhist teachings actually before you go to the full scope you could also just add that whether or not we're getting immediate feedback from the world the difference in intentions feels a certain way at the level of our own minds it just feels much better to be loving than to be angry and hateful andent absolutely yeah I wrote a chapter in a book once called the self-interested case for not being a dick right and I mean I just see I see that so often in my own life that whatever the external results are the internal results yeah are really powerful yeah yeah good point guys okay back to you now you're going to launch into uh the stuff that will make Sam's head explode that's all right I'll I'll be very mindful of my okay but but before I do it there were a couple of other points mentioned in mundan Right View yeah I just I just want to put in before one is and this is this is right out of the texts but it's all related to Karma emphasizing the value of generosity as a behavior to cultivate not only because it feels good in the moment but it it has very good karmic consequences and so there's one little exercise I do I I really took took that seriously you know when when I OD that yeah this this is part of Right View I really started making generosity a practice MH not just yeah that's a good thing to do and you know wait for it to happen so the practice I've done which I really has been transforming in a certain way and I like to recommend it to people because it's been so uplifting for me is that when I have a thought to give I just practice doing it I don't second guess myself I don't should I shouldn't I you know is that too much or whatever if the thought comes do it and it's been amazing and this so so I'm not in this particular practice and there are many ways to practice generosity in this particular practice I'm not looking for situations it's just I'm responding to my own impulse when the impulse arise in my mind okay do it and it's been amazing and the change of what the impulses are a huge sometimes it's it's a really small thing just some gesture of friendliness or you know really simple thing sometimes the thought maybe to give something really big way out of what even would be conventionally people are you crazy you know so there's the whole range of the kind of impulses and I just found I've never regretted it and always brings joy and so I just put this out as a one example of a practical way of cultivating that mindset that it can be a practice okay so generosity is included in the description of mundane Right View second aspect which this one can get complex the Buddha emphasized the karmic responsibility we have to to our parents right and so the classic image that's used the Buddhist said we could carry our parents around on our shoulders for our entire lifetime and not repay the debt of them having brought us into this world okay so that's a pretty powerful exhortation I don't know how it is in other cultures but certainly in the West sometimes relationships with one's parents can be very complex you know or fraught in one way or another so I realize there's a lot of complexity to this but I think it's good to keep in mind as something to strive for even even if the relationship is difficult or challenging just to hold it in some way of recognizing that there is a karmic connection and in whatever way we can to try to establish a wholesome skillful relationship to our parents and sometimes I would say mostly it's possible but there are some situations where for this life anyway it doesn't seem to be possible but I just want to tell one story from teacher teaching every year as you know you know we teach a three-month retreat at IMs and we've been doing it now for almost 50 years so there was one meditator who came to many many many three month courses I don't know how many but a lot 10 12 15 every every year they would be coming and the core psychological issue for this person was this incredible conflict with her mother and so a lot of the meditation you know year after year after year come in for the meditation interviews and it would be around that issue M and it seems so stuck it's just every year for for years and these are three-month Retreats and you know other things were happening but this remained a core knot and then it was amazing one year she came and somehow the whole kn had begun to release and she reestablished the connection with her mother and opened up a Channel of communication and to me it was really inspiring you know to see that even when something is so deeply conditioned or knotted just with patience and perseverance even these deep knots can begin to unwind and my first teacher manindra said something which can be a huge help for people on the path and it was a real help for me and this story illustrates it he said on the spiritual path time is not a factor you know but we especially in the west are so we're in such a hurry you know we want results now and but this this path is not like that you know it's it takes time and and time is not a factor if we if we doing the practice and this is where Right View setting the right direction if we're on the path going in the right direction in whatever whatever method we're us it but but if Right View has set the direction then time is not a factor we just keep walking and the path will unfold did M NRA also say um the thought of your mother is not your mother he did and sometimes that works it didn't work for this particular person until way down the road got because the reactivity was just so strong to begin with okay so there's the generosity there's relationship to one's parents the part of extending this scope of Right View mundane Right View the Buddha talked about karma not only playing out within this lifetime but playing out over many lifetimes so of course this has to do with the whole idea of rebirth and different PLS of existence which for most people is outside the realm of their personal experience and in the west it's not even part of our I'm not sure if I'm going to be using this word correctly it's not part of our sight gist that we you know we have a very the way we understand things generally in the society generally not completely but it's it's basically a scientific Paradigm you know of how we understand the world rebirth doesn't really fit into that and so quite naturally people either skeptical or just disbelieve it or oh this is just you know some Superstition from 2600 years ago so there's a lot of at best skepticism about this whole idea also a lot of people come from an alternate religious Paradigm which is just as spooky but it's different right you know there is right there's an afterdeath condition yeah but but there's but rebirth is not part of the story so it's uh yeah you know that serves as a Counterpoint the people who get who leave that behind them and move into a proper secular physicalist worldview then see this Eastern variant on offer and see like why would I adopt that one having left the god of Abraham yeah yeah no that that's all part of it and and why this particular aspect of the teachings is often not easily either understood or believed or and for myself I certainly didn't begin this with any belief I didn't know anything about Buddhism I didn't know anything about rebirth or comma or I studied Western philosophy you know in college and that was that was my background but over the many years of practice I can track I can track the trajectory of how I slowly became more open to considering it and there's an expression a phrase and I think it was by the poet kidge he used the expression the Willing suspension of disbelief because we can be attached to our disbeliefs as well as attached to our beliefs and so with something like rebirth I think for many people the most honest answer would be I don't know I don't know you know it's not in my experience but in the ID don't no that's very different than saying it's not true and this goes back to the connection to Right View to say it's not true is wrong view in the Buddhist context to say I don't know is not wrong View and I don't know is actually more accurate as a description of our current state unless one has had a definitive experience one way or the other and so I think that's a very good way to hold many aspects of the teachings which are beyond our current level of understanding it's to acknowledge that okay and for me part of what led me to be open to these there were many things but but one is well so much of what the Buddha said we can verify you know can see come and see you know and he says don't believe check it out and so much of what he said checked that oh that really seems truth that works I'm suffering less and so it for me it tended well he was right about so much there's just the possibility he might be right about this too so again it's not it's not even going to belief in it but to be open to the possibility I know a guy he wrote a book called the end of faith I'm very curious to hear what he has to say about all this again I I think I am genuinely agnostic about this which is the I don't know state but I think I detect in you more belief than mere this it's not not truly in the shape of a mere question mark for you I mean for me I honestly would not given certain experiences I've had in in meditation and on psychedelics and given the logic you just gave of you know these esoteric teachings have been right about so much as counterintuitive the fact that they are traditionally framed with this metaphysical worldview maybe that give some Credence to the the whole picture as opposed to the taking it all a heart but so for me it really is I just recognize I don't know like I actually you know it's the absence that's a good step yeah but I believe we go with all your life heartedness where you're you're busy not picking restaurants uh you have moved further in the direction of a positive commitment to it being true psychologically no the way I describe my own sense of it is that I'm inclined to believe but always with the addendum and I don't know so a I am inclined to believe for a whole variety of reasons some of which we talked about so that that gives some energy to the inclination but I can rest pretty easily I do rest easily in acknowledging that I don't know right you know and and I think that that for me is a really skillful way to hold it well two questions do you think anything important hinges upon having a positive belief in it or something more than I don't know and do the teachings say that something important hinges upon accepting this these statements about the bigger picture to be true I think that the inclination to Incline to it even if one doesn't know to act as if it's true and it's almost like Pascal's wager in some sense yeah it is like that in my experience it tremendously supercharges the practice you're more motivated to practice Yeah because the consequences are huge if it is true the consequences are huge because then it's realizing yeah that as karma unfolds and we'll be experiencing the fruit of our skillful and unskillful actions it's not that it just ends with this life that within this other framework it extends over countless lifetimes and so then the import of our actions takes on much greater significance even though it's significant even within this one lifetime but if you consider oh this action may have ramifications for many lifetimes maybe I should take care with my actions you know this is important this significant so yeah however you want toess like considering the possibility or inclining to believe or however one frames it with the recognition that one still doesn't know I think for me has really it's just made the practice so you're acting as if it's true you decided to act as if it's true yeah and to my mind with very good consequences right and I don't see any discernable downside to it you know because it's just it's like a a reinforcement for doing what's skillful and for doing what's hopeful wholesome and for what brings happiness so moiny he had this great line so he was talk talking more you know future lives and other planes of existence you know the lower Realms and the higher Realms and the heaven Realms and he loved talking about the heaven Realms he would just go on and on and I loved hearing about them a lot of people were very skeptical but I was in that space yeah that sounds nice but he would always end these little talks you don't have to believe this in order to awaken in order to become enlightened you don't have to believe it it's true but you don't have to believe it so that was always his his last his last comment so all of this is mundane Right View because it's the right view of how to live with greater ease and greater happiness in our lives coming up Joseph and Sam talk more about right View and some practical tips for cultivating Right View [Music] the second part of Right View is be called super mundane Right View or the right view of Liberation and this right view has to do with the essential aspects of the Buddhist teachings formulated in the four noble truths the eight-fold path So Right View is really learning about and experiencing to whatever level we can the truth of the inevitability of unwanted experiences right the underlying cause of this round of rebirths is craving you know and craving is the desire that keeps the whole machine going and then the end of craving is the release so I want to give an example of how we can how we can move this from some abstract Buddhist philosophy to how to some extent we can experience it right in our own lives for a long time in my practice you know being familiar with for noble truths and that Liberation is the end of craving you know clinging grasping in my mind it was always okay I'm practicing and someday some years somewhere down the road I'll come to the end of craving but it didn't seem very immediate to me you know there was still plenty of craving that I could see in my mind and then at a certain point it was so interesting I was just I was just sitting I was on Retreat and I realized I don't have to wait till the final end of all craving I can practice non- craving in the moment and really see the effect of it and so one way of doing that and you know I really suggest this to people in their practice so suppose you're sitting and then some craving some desire comes up in the mind and it could be anything you could be craving for food or a sexual fantasy or I don't know some ambition one has some craving you know that's going on so if it occurs to one to just be mindful of that mind state of wanting which we're in the middle of at that time you know we can feel ourselves wanting whatever it is and then because of the truth of things always becoming otherwise at some point the wanting is going to go away without we don't have to do anything to make it go away if we're just hanging out with it and watching it's they there wanting wanting wanting and at a certain point it's going to disappear right in that moment it can be so Illuminating of the difference in the quality of the mind of the wanting mind and the mind that's free of wanting in that transition right from moment to moment and my experience and almost everybody who I've talked to about this in the moment of the wanting disappearing it feels like it's being L out of the grip of something it feels that sense of release that sense of ease that sense of Peace So in a very it can be in a very ordinary kind of wanting you know so doesn't have to be some big mystical experience it's just watching our minds when it's filled with that kind of craving or wanting what it feels like the suffering of it and then the release from it and so we can really get a sense of this more Super mundane Right View the understanding of the Four Noble Truths that the end of craving leads to Freedom leads to to peace to Greater ease so I think that that understanding even if it's not completed craving will come back again but we have had a taste genuinely in our own experience you know so it's not just some abstract philosophic statement that we need to believe just to sum this up the mundane Right View is understanding that actions have results what leads to what super mundane review Right View is to understand that Awakening or Liberation is possible and the root of all of of the opposite the root of suffering is craving I am I in the zone of accuracy yeah no that's right there's one other aspect that's included in Right View which is related to this but it's just highlighting one particular aspect and that is and there's some kind of a little bit of technical language Buddhist language that does need a little unpacking what you asked about before Sam it's called freeing oneself from sometimes it's called identity view or personality View and it really has to do with the experience of selflessness or nonself and so you asked before about okay what well what does it mean not to be identified with a thought M so there are a lot there are different ways we can explore this and some of them are really to my mind really interesting so one of the simplest ways but doesn't necessarily get right to the heart of it but it's the beginning of getting to the heart of it is just seeing both that we don't invite our thoughts to come it's not like we're saying okay I'm going to think this now although you can invite no we can't we can in but most of the thoughts that are going through our mind are Uninvited and so just even seeing that begins oh where did these come from and and sometimes I'll suggest to people on Retreat why don't you just treat each thought as if it's coming from the person next to you just as a way of maybe getting a flavor of not being identified with them as one's own and so seeing the impermanence of them in that way but even more interesting to me and I often suggest people do this in their practice especially when there are a lot of thoughts arising in the mind as the thoughts are there to ask the question what is a thought not what is the thought saying which is what we usually do you know what's a thought oh and then people tell the content the story of it this is different this is I don't know if this the right word it's more phenomenological what is a thought as a phenomenon and what I find incredibly amazing is that when we look directly at it as we're having a thought but with that question there's almost nothing there it's little more than nothing it's so ephemeral so empty of any substance but what's so amazing is that when we don't see the thought in that way they have such tremendous power in our lives I call them the little dictators of the Mind thoughts go here go there do this do that get married get divorced whatever it's like a thoughts are driving us and yet when we look to see what a thought actually is it's little more than nothing so that to me is so extraordinary to see that and it seeing that empty nature of thought really begins to give us the experience of its selfless nature because there's hardly anything there so that's another way of beginning to understand what being identified with the thought is which means really being identified with the content and not being identified is when we're not concerned with the content but seeing the very nature of thought yeah I mean there's so much freedom on the other side of that you're cutting the strings of a malevolent Puppeteer yeah that being said just a categorization question is what you're talking about here this non-identification with thoughts is that part of mundane Right View or super mundane Right View no that would be more in the super mundane because another part of this more Super mundane or I know we might call it liberative right view one other aspect beside the four noble truths but contained within that are the three characteristics of impermanence Dua and selflessness you know and so to to the degree that we're seeing the non-self aspect of phenomena you know the impersonality of them so it becomes this on this level of Right View and it's tremendously freeing as as one teacher expressed it no self no problem you know big self big problem so right view is just it's foundational and just one little kind of footnote to all this in the eight-fold path you know as you know every one of the steps is the prefix is right right view right thought right speech right action and so forth so what the right refers to in each of the other steps like right mindfulness and and people might ask well what's wrong mindfulness you know if mindfulness means relating in a you know the skillful way well the right in terms of the steps of the eight-fold path always refers to is that particular step in alignment with Right View if it's in alignment with Right View then all the other steps are right but you could have concentration for example not in alignment with Right View or effort not in alignment so then it's not right effort or right concentration I didn't understand that for a long time that that's what the right actually referred to so so the Right View becomes the foundation for then really understanding more completely what each of the remaining steps on the path are about and I just want to go back to mundane and super mundane and I apologize for continuing to beat this dead horse but I want to make sure that I get it and by extension everybody listening mundane is really about I mean day today if I'm hearing correctly also conditional conventional so like what what are the actual ways of producing ordinary states of Happiness yes whereas what the causes and conditions for good experiences and super mundane is about transcending all of that and and waking up yeah but there's there's one of the way the Buddha described mundane Right View which and I wish I could remember it precisely but so this kind of a paraphrase as best I can remember but he describes Right View associated with taints associated with basically defilements of one kind or another because there could be mundane Right View still associated with greed with wanting you know in the Buddhist in the Buddhist world this quite a lot of emphasis on making Merit which is kind of a colloquial way of describing the law of karma you know it's recognizing yes certain things bring good results and that process is colloquially called making Merit and making Merit in English it has a lot of connotations that can be problematic but one of the one of the ways it was character IED is creating Provisions for the journey and I love that it's like yeah we're doing those actions we're all on this journey this long journey towards Enlightenment through samsara do we want to be well provisioned on the journey or not and that that was the description of Merit you know but you can see that yeah that that can come with taints with attachment and that's why it's a mundane Right View you know it is Right View because it will bring those good results right but there's still there can still be a wanting in that the super mundane Right View cuts through the wanting the craving but to me it was reassuring to read about right view with taints and Right View without taints because there was plenty of taints to be observed you know in even doing skillful acts knowing oh this is yeah this is going to have a good result an act of generosity can be polluted by some attachment or some ulterior motive but it's nevertheless better than no active generosity exactly exactly so that I think is good for people to know because sometimes they think oh unless their motivation is totally pure then something's not worth doing but this this allows for every level of it you know so the script of Right View really is provides a great foundation and for every other step in the path nice well we got to uh it feels like we got Right View and uh we've got seven other folds of the path so is just doing the math so it two two a day two two a day leaves leaves us with one more to do because we've only done one today some will be faster faster than right view is yeah very full and some of the others are really full but this one has a lot in it for an 80-year-old your energy levels in this conversation seem fantastic yeah where's the 8-year-old come from I said four and 8-year-olds your ener oh 80 I thought you said eight yeah or for an 8-year-old yeah for an 8-year-old you're terrible for an 8-year-old you are terrible hypoglycemic I was tring for an 8-year-old I didn't quite matter interpret that is the magic of the Dharma it really is I like in teaching I can be exhausted and then thoughts coming through and it's amazing and then the collapse with a genomic you you did hit hit upon the uh what I I still think is the most astounding quality of the mind which is unexamined thoughts are everything and examined they're basically nothing yeah exactly like that yeah and there's almost no tradition in the west philosophy or psychology or say nothing of actual hard science yeah that even acknowledges that fact right like there's just like that that that fact has gone unnoticed by the West I've spoken at some conferences of basically therapist types and psychologists and so and when I talk about this like you know to look at what is a thought not what is the thought saying which of course what the thought is saying is their whole yeah yeah for some few people it really is like who you know people have come reflected back to me boy that that's a whole different thing it's everything abely it is everything this is the profound asymmetry between West and East on this on this contemplative point it's like most people in the west have never even thought about an alternative to just thinking about exactly exactly we're in our stories yeah we are completely in our stories yeah you know as as you know that there's this wonderful uh phrase in the Tibetan teachings how with this kind of awareness thoughts self- liberate yeah you that's just what it's like you know the thought is there and self liberates this also my favorite image from the Tibetan teachings about this is that the three stages of self- Liberation the first is like riding on water you know it just it vanishes the moment do it the second is the snake untying a a knot you know the knotted snake untying itself but the third is the image I actually like which is thieves entering an empty house right that just shows you that recognize there just no implication to their [Music] appearance thanks again to Joseph and Sam if you want to hear the rest of this excellent series on the eight-fold path as well as the guided meditations that go along with it go to waking up.com 110% I put a link in the show notes and just a reminder if you buy a subscription via that URL uh you'll get 30 days free and you will be doing me and my team a solid because we will get a portion of of any proceeds from the subscriptions that are generated through that link and as I said earlier if money is an issue don't worry about it you can go to the wigging up website and ask for a scholarship that's the same policy I have over it danh harris.com if you can't afford it will hook you up and again to be a little repetitive here I I really do think about waking up as a great compliment to my substack if you're looking for a community Vibe the ability to chat directly with me the ability to listen to this podcast without ads substack is your spot if you're looking for more of a traditional meditation app experience waking up is awesome as I said at the top Sam has uh really brought together an amazing group of teachers over there and including Joseph and don't forget that 30-part lecture series that you can listen to through waking up.com sl10 just before I go here I want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show our producers are Tara Anderson Caroline Keenan and Elanor vasil our recording and Engineering is handled by the great folks over at pod people Lauren Smith is our production manager Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer DJ Kashmir is our executive producer and Nick thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme