The Exchanges

Q There's so much I want to dive into there. Uh, I think let's start with, I mean, were there moments you wanted to quit? We all have moments when we want to quit where it seems like it's just impossible to keep going. And I'm sure you had many of those moments. How did you keep going?

A Oh, I did. Um, I remember I got malaria, which was reasonably common in those forests, and I was lying on the floor of my hut, which is, you know, it was about six feet by seven feet or something, tiny little hut in the forest with a tin roof, and quite wretched, and one of the monks nearby had gone to tell the, the teacher, and he came to visit me, and he, He, he, he spoke in, mostly in the Lao language, which is very, kind of, laconic and straightforward, and he looked at me, and he said, um, kai ba, which means you sick? I said, yes. He said, tu ba, is it hard? Are you suffering? I said, yes. And he smiled, and he said, yeah. He said, this is suffering, all right. Um, we've all had it. It looks like it's probably malaria. I said, yeah. Then he looked at me, he said, makes you want to go home and see your mother, doesn't it? I said, yes. And then he looked at me, he said, you know, you know how to do this. We all have gone through this. I'll send the medicine, Monk, but this is a part of your training, and you can do it. And he smiled, and I just felt this transmission of somebody who'd lived in the jungle for years with malaria and tigers and things like that, saying, hey, Go for it.

AI assessment note: “Oh, I did. Um, I remember I got malaria”

Q What is the difference between compassion and empathy?

A Yeah, so let me give an image. Suppose you're on the edge of a schoolyard, and there's a kid who's being bullied by a bully and some other kids around him being taunted or, you know, hit or whatever it is. Empathy arises when you feel for that kid And maybe, maybe even when you feel for whatever the other kids, the bully had to go through to become that bully. So there's this kind of recognition, um, and you get it in yourself. Uh, it's like, you know, neuroscientists talk about mirror neurons. And if you put a violin on a table and then take another violin in your hand and bow it strongly, the strings on the violin and the table will resonate. With the strings of the violin in your hand, and that's how we're tuned to one another, so that part is empathy. Compassion is a verb. When you empathize, then, and you feel compassion, it also moves you to either walk over, if that's the right thing, or go talk to the teacher, or the principal, or something, and say, hey, you know, there's this suffering. Let's, let's do something to make this better. And so compassion is, combines empathy with the heart's response, To alleviate suffering.

AI assessment note: “compassion is, combines empathy with the heart's response, To alleviate suffering.”

Q in drama, and we're healthier. Calm in this sense isn't the absence of conflict or stress, but rather the ability To deal with it in healthy ways rather than destructive patterns. It's time to listen and learn. Let's jump right in. You trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India, Burma. What was the experience like and what memories stand out as transformational when you look back?

A I went there right after university. I'd graduated from Dartmouth College, and it was during the Vietnam War, and I didn't want to go in the military. It was still the draft. I didn't either want to kill people or get killed, so I asked to go in the Peace Corps to a Buddhist country, because I've been studying all of that. They sent me to Thailand. I learned to speak Thai and Lao, and I found this great teacher. And I said, can I come and be, learn from you? And he said, sure. You want to come as a monk? And I said, all right. It was a wild forest on the border of Thailand and Laos, pretty far out in the middle of what was still then quite unmodernized world. And I'd been there a few times as a lay person and got some teachings. And he said, okay, now you're coming as a monk. Um, I hope you're not afraid to suffer. And I thought, that's a pretty weird greeting. And he just laughed, and he said, there's two kinds of suffering. The kind you run away from that follows you everywhere, and the kind that you face, and that's the gateway to freedom. If you're interested, come in. It was an ascetic forest monastery. We lived it quite scheduled in a certain way, and very rigorous training of the kind you might read about as a monastery as well. The bell in the forest would ring at three or three 30 a.m., and we'd walk these narrow paths. In one of the forest monasteries, we would use th…

AI assessment note: “It was an ascetic forest monastery. We lived it quite scheduled in a certain way”

Q Is there a way to go about planting those seeds where we can acknowledge or recognize our story? We can sort of see the impact it's having on us. We can even witness it. But then how do we go about substituting one story for another? Maybe a destructive story for a more productive story.

A So the first step, of course, is just to recognize them, and then to tune in a little bit to the fear or the pain that's behind them. So you drop from the story down into the emotion that keeps it going, and to acknowledge that, oh, there's worry or fear or grasping or Confusion, or those kind of states, and you bring a kind attention to that, and you say, okay, almost as if to pay respects, thank you for trying to take care of me. I'm okay for now. Um, you can relax. Then the next step, um, is, uh, so that's sort of the mindfulness response, where you step out of it, or you become bigger than that. You become a field of awareness, of loving awareness. Then the next step comes from a complementary practice, which is loving compassion, and that's a training in which you practice regularly, envisioning one at a time, starting wherever it's the easiest, people that you care about, and wishing them well. And you picture, you know, when your children or your partner or wherever it's not so conflicted to start with, where, where their love is natural. And there's a series of kind of training phrases one would get in the monastery of may you be safe and well, may you be healthy and healed, may you be, uh, Happy and peaceful at ease. May you be held in love. And you do that for a while for one person. You pick another, another. And as you practice it, it becomes a kind of response that…

AI assessment note: “So the first step, of course, is just to recognize them”

Q That's fascinating because I, I have a theory that the way that we talk to ourselves matters, right? That inner voice we all have, and I know it's just trying to protect us. Yes. But that narrative that, you know, it often goes into the drama triangle or these, these patterns that are not helping us. How do you think about that?

A It's true and deep what you say, how we talk to ourself. Because most of us have a whole running commentary going on. Um, and one of the beautiful things is that in learning mindfulness, you start to actually become conscious of that rather than just repeating the patterns of it. And as you become conscious, then another interesting possibility opens, which is you can see which of these thoughts Are healthy and helpful, and which of them are unhealthy or destructive, and you get a chance to then, with that spaciousness, you go, oh, there's that pattern. I've, since a teenager, I felt shitty about myself, because I didn't think I, that my hair wasn't thick enough. I'm looking at you on the screen, and we're, we're both guys without much hair on our head, you know, and you have that whole story. And then you hear, I hear that story and I go, oh yeah, I know that story. Is that a helpful story? Um, that there's something wrong with me, you know, is it, is it, is it even true? Um, and I see it and I say, okay, thank you for the story. I'm not going to go there. Um, not exactly like that. You said something also really important in your comment, because our thoughts Try to keep us safe in all kinds of ways. Try to keep us safe from pain, from, you know, difficulty, from humiliation, from loss, and so forth, and try to help us get everything around us that will keep protect us and ke…

AI assessment note: “in learning mindfulness, you start to actually become conscious of that rather than just repeating”

Q there's, which, which is, um, super recent for me. I, I wanna, when I struggle, and I, I assume other people are like this too, I have a tendency Not to ask people for help. And I think it's because I don't want to inconvenience them. And the result is that I tend to isolate myself or withdraw, withdraw. Is, is struggling something we should do alone or with others?

A And of course, the answer to these kinds of koans is always yes. You know, because part of it is an inner job that you have to do, right? But it's not healthy to do all that in yourself. And that's why we have one another to talk to and learn. And in every spiritual tradition, you know, there's the sangha, the community, the satsang, the Jewish minion in Christianity, whenever two or more are gathered in his name, there's There's an understanding, um, that we help each other to be more fully the best we can, more human. I mean, we can also misguide each other, and that happens in all kinds of war and political and so forth, but for the work that we're talking about to become a mensch, a gracious, wise, you know, human being, we need each other. And we learn from one another.

AI assessment note: “the answer to these kinds of koans is always yes.”

Q I want to dive into some of the emotions that you, you were talking about earlier in terms of anger and rage that you felt, uh, with your father. I mean, we all, we all have a lot of very strong emotions, and what help, what skills sort of help us deal with our emotions?

A Um, my father was, was a somewhat brilliant scientist. He was a biophysicist who Help design some of the first artificial hearts and lungs. He taught medical school for a bit. He worked on space medicine, but he was also, uh, paranoid and periodically rageful and violent. Very abusive to my mother. He would, you know, throw her down the stairs. She hid bottles behind curtains so that when he came at her, she could reach for a bottle to defend herself. She had four boys, We didn't know when he came home which father we would get. The terrifying one or the kind of norm, sort of normal one. My strategy, each of us brothers had our survival strategy. Mine was to be the peacemaker in the family. Try and clown things down. Um, I still do that for a living. That's a whole other story. And so when I got to the monastery, I considered myself a very peaceful person. And there I was sitting in meditation for quite a few hours a day in this remote place and being in a community, and I started to get irritated by folks around, and then I started to get angry, and it was an anger out of proportion to what was happening, and I started to get quite angry, and I realized, wait, I thought I was a peaceful person. So I went to the teacher, and I said to Ajahn Chow, my teacher, I said, You know, I'm starting to feel really angry at stuff that's happening around. What should I do? And he smiled. He…

AI assessment note: “I said to Ajahn Chow, my teacher, I said, You know, I'm starting to feel really angry”

Q of, recognize those feelings, pause, and, and sort of, Give them the space they need so that they don't grow, but we don't want to suppress them because if we suppress them, they're going to come out in a different way. And if we overly feel them, then they're going to come out too extreme. And so we have this constant tension. How do we get out of this tension?

A I'll use an image from my friend Ram Dass, who I learned a lot from over the years. He, he learned to view his personality like his pet. Right? You don't want to beat the puppy. The puppy doesn't like it, and you don't feel that good about it either. So, you know, we have temperaments, speedy, or slow, or introverted, or extroverted, or whatever, and you see it. You get a body, and it's for this human incarnation, and you're born with a certain kind of personality, and then it gets shaped further. So you see it, and there's a certain bemusement, like, oh yeah, Here's, here's Jack speeding along, good New Yorker style, and you know, maybe judging people who get in his way. And so, it's not suppressing it. It's also not getting lost in it. It's a sense of, oh yeah, uh, kind bemusement, um, there's the pet, and it's fine. And this is really still in that, in some way, in that same terrain of Mindful self-compassion. Because otherwise, you either try to get rid of it, as you said, or run away from it or suppress it, or, or something like that. And we can treat ourselves more graciously in the same way we treat others. And forgiveness is another part of this. There's a whole training that is so, uh, healthy and helpful for us as human beings to, to learn the art of forgiveness, and there's some critical things about it. First of all, forgiveness doesn't mean forgive and forget, and …

AI assessment note: “it's not suppressing it. It's also not getting lost in it.”

Q and unconsciously it centers you because you've associated that with a certain thing. And so it doesn't even have to be a conscious thing. It's like the presence of it alone is speaking to your unconscious. That is the ultimate question, right? How do we live a meaningful life, and how do we live consciously? Is there a difference, or what is the difference, I guess, between compassion and empathy?

A Beautiful question. And I just want to say one thing, going back to what you were saying. At the end of life, there aren't that many questions. If you have lived even a bit conscious life, did I love well? Did I bring my gifts to the world? Um, Maladoma said that in the, his, the Dagora people in West Africa, where there are all these rivers that have always had, you know, boats, whether they were dugout boats or simple boats or more. So, he said, we believe that every child who comes into the world Um, has gifts to deliver, and that their task is to deliver their cargo. So did I love well? Did I use my gifts? Did I offer them to the world? And then of course, in the end, did I learn to let go? Because otherwise you get a crash course, you know. But anyway, so then you, you switch the theme, repeat the question again.

AI assessment note: “so then you, you switch the theme, repeat the question again.”

Q Why does nature seem to have such a profound effect on our thoughts?

A I generally speaking don't know how to answer why questions very well because everything is so multi-determined, but you're acknowledging a truth for many, many people. That walking into the forest, or going by the seashore, or up in the mountains, and so forth, it changes us. It steps us out of that modern, constant thinking, moving to a different dimension of our being. And it can change us even more deeply. There's a reality that we know, but that we forget, like that poem from Juan Ramón Jiménez, um, Who you are is not your body. You rent it from hurts or something. You get it for a certain number of years, and you have to give it up, and I've had the remarkable experiences many of us have of sitting with people as they're dying, and there's that moment, especially if it's a kind of conscious, where the person is more or less conscious as they die, when they're there, and then they are not, and it's silent, Like a falling star, this amazing moment where spirit leaves the body. But in that moment, the body just becomes meat, basically, the corpse, because it's not who you are. You, consciousness uses this body. You're also not your emotions. If you were, you'd be really in trouble. They come, But if that's who you are, then each one would throw you around into a different universe for that emotional time. And it can if you're not so conscious, but that's not who you are. And…

AI assessment note: “I generally speaking don't know how to answer why questions very well”