Rev Left Radio - Meditation, Materialism, and Marxism

Episode Date: July 24, 2019

Michael Brooks (from The Michael Brooks Show, The Majority Report with Sam Seder, and Woke Bros with Big Wos) joins Breht to discuss Vipassanā Meditation, Buddhism, Marxism, Materialism, and much more.  Find, Listen to, and support Michael's (@_michaelbrooks) work here: - https://michaelbrooksshow.libsyn.com   - https://blackopinionsmatter.libsyn.com   - https://majorityreportradio.com   Outro Song: Drugs with Friends by Car Seat Headrest   ---------------------- LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/ Intro music by Captain Planet. Find and support his music here:  https://djcaptainplanet.bandcamp.com --------------- This podcast is affiliated with: The Nebraska Left Coalition, Omaha Tenants United, Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), Feed The People - Omaha, and the Marxist Center. Join the SRA here: https://www.socialistra.org/

Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. I'm your host, Anne Comrade Red O'Shea, and today we have on Michael Brooks from the Michael Brooks Show and The Majority Report and many other projects to talk about meditation and its connection to politics. So I hope you all enjoy this pretty unique episode of ours. Before we get into it, I just want to remind people that if you want to support the show and get bonus content, you can support us at patreon.com forward slash rev left radio or if you want to find our YouTube page, Red Menace, our sister podcasts, or anything else, you can always go to Revolutionary LeftRadio.com.

And one big way you can support the show without having to spend any money is by rating and reviewing us on whatever podcast app you use. It's a great way to increase our reach and it costs nothing to do. So having said all that, let's jump into this episode with Michael Brooks on meditation and Marxism. I'm Michael Brooks. I'm a host of the Michael Brooks show. That's sort of the home of my primary projects. I'm also a co-host on the majority report with Sam Cedar.

And I do another show which I'm really passionate about called Woke Bros with my good friend, Waz, Wazni Lombray. Let's see. Well, I've been provoking people with this stuff recently. So I'll say I'm a Leo. and let's see um i had a lot of different paths in my 20s and it's all sort of fused together and in whatever this space where it is i guess is you know analyst entertainer provocateur yeah so as i was saying before we started recording and i've been listening to the majority report for a

very long time i was very familiar with you and your work for years before i started rev left and then after I got started, I think I reached out to you or vice versa because we sort of, you know, saw that we had a similar trajectory in our projects and we wanted to get something together, you know, some sort of collaboration going. And we went back and forth. We had some ideas, but it just never happened. And then recently I heard you on zero books talking about psychedelics and meditation and you talked about how you have your own meditation practice and go on retreats. And this is a topic that I've really wanted to cover on Rev Left, but I really couldn't find any inroads to it because it's sort of outside of the main topic. And

spheres of what I discuss on RevLeft, but, you know, hearing you talk about it and maybe thinking about like politics and some of the contradictions between meditation and Marxism, I thought we could sort of do an episode on meditation and tie it also into politics to make it sort of firmly in our wheelhouse here. So I really appreciate you coming on and us finally being able to do this collaboration. It's really cool to finally get to talk to you. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. My exact same feelings, brother. Beautiful. All right. So first and foremost, I just ask this question to most guests, just so people have sort of an orientation towards them.

How do you identify politically? That's interesting. And maybe this is a, you know, this is the, I'll answer your question in a second. I will say I've gotten, even though I've been doing this for really a relatively short period of time, and definitely things have changed pretty radically in the last couple years and really even particularly last year in terms of, I think, you know, basically my reach and sort of scope. and you know still a lot more to do but i i think you know even just kind of coming into the into the space a little bit when i was producing for sam in 2012 you know there was a lot of like

i mean occupy was a very big deal um regardless of one's feelings about it uh and actually overall i'm i'm a defender of occupy for its mistakes and so on i think it was an incredibly important thing um but you know there was so much of a habit of like So I always used to say that I was, you know, basically some type of, you know, either left or progressive or democratic socialist, I might say sometimes, and that I was analytically Marxist. And what I meant by that was that, you know, when I took capital in college and I was an autodidact, I was a countercultural homeschooled kid. and I was, you know, I was pretty political high school age, very much of the sort of, you know, Noam Chomsky, you know, kind of later end of anti-globalization protests. And I think I went through a phase of kind of wanting, I think, especially because I was so alienated,

both in terms of, you know, this very kind of obscure upbringing in a way and dealing with a lot of, you know serious material deprivation but also just like a sense of disconnect from uh you know power and institutions i had a phase where i was you know very interested in things like the third way in clinton and blair and obama and this sort of thing and while i you know my politics never strayed that far in that direction it was also frankly just a reflection then and up until really recently of just how limited politics were and it's very so it's very interesting to me although and then as i say in college when i actually had to study capital and that was very much in a phase where i was you know i was reading the economist i was considering you know i mean i both totally temperamentally am not

cut for it and really i would have actually hated it but you know it was like so freaked out about growing up with no money and so on that I was almost considering majoring in finance, which you know, wasn't going to happen, but whatever. But I read Capital and as soon as I, and the basic argument and what was so distinct about reading Marx, and I'm sorry, this is a long-winded answer, but I think it's actually important. You know, it was that, yes, of course, I agreed with, you know, Noam Chomsky describing how despicable U.S. foreign policy was or, you know, other, you know, dissenters talking about, you know, any number of, like, structural injustices. And certainly, you know, particular areas like the civil rights era was something that always was very, very interesting to me. And foreign policy in general was something that I always looked at. But when you got that flip economically, Which was like, okay, and realizing that it is actually a normative choice, that actually, you know, the economics and capital, of course, it's been updated and developed as a field, both Marxist and non-Marxist, you know, neoclassical Keynesian and Marxist, the kind of three basic options, but that there is actually a really basic, like, this isn't math, you know, there is an actual kind of political choice at the outset of economics. and that political choice is, is something profit, or is it stolen labor that's turned into profit, right?

And I, you know, and look, you can complexify that in some ways, and it's something we can have a conversation about that's worthwhile, but as a general presupposition and as a general orientation, as soon as I read that, to this day, the idea that, you know, I perceive most work, and certainly work in any kind of multinational or anything like that, and whether it's incredibly privileged, well-treated work or the most vicious, vindictive exploitation, whether you are in the upper echelons of management at Google and highly compensated and so on, or whether you're in the most sort of brutal sweatshop conditions, obviously you're experiencing a totally different reality in terms of your level of oppression, but the structure of economic exploitation is the same in the sense that your surplus is getting turned into somebody else's profit, not as a moral thing, but as a structural thing. So I've always, that has been my choice,

and so in that sense, I'm very fundamentally Marxist. And so I think, you know, I don't, you know, I don't dwell too much on this, but I mean, clearly my goals are, socialist. I want to democratize the economy. I want people to have the same, you know, not they don't really have it, but I think I do see socialism as the idea that, well, if people should have some real strong ownership and governance over themselves and political and civic spheres, then they absolutely should in economic spheres as well. And in fact, if they don't in economic spheres, then obviously the political sphere is not really liberated. And I'm a Marxist, because I find Marxist tools to be mostly the most effective way of analyzing the world.

I mean, that said, I mean, I'm, you know, I'm pretty omnivorous in what I read and how I think and some of the sort of fixation that people have right now in this kind of subculture on, like, specifically labeling themselves. I frankly find really off-putting, not because I oppose people being clear. ideologically, but because I think it becomes a bit of a, you know, kind of an obscurest counterculture game, which I'm not interested in. But, yes, that's how I define myself. So I gave you a lot there.

That's good. There's a lot to work with there. I definitely think that the obsession with specific tendencies and then going to war with other tendencies that are not your own is sort of like, one, it's sort of performative for social media. It's a way of having an identity online. and then it also is sort of a function of the generalized impotence of the left broadly, right? We have the luxury to sit back and nitpick about, you know, 1917 or make these nuanced divisions

that any regular working class people would have no fucking clue what we're talking about. But it becomes an obsession in a way to express oneself in this neoliberal age. And so that, you know, on that level, I totally agree with you that it's something to be at least entered into with caution and be suspicious of those. pitfalls and what this is actually generating. But one thing about you that I've realized, especially listening to you, talk on zero books, is that you are also very much a historical materialist. You take that sort of lends to history and you apply it very well. Am I fair in saying that?

To the extent it's possible. Yeah, definitely. Yes. Definitely. Yes. All right. Well, that kind of eases us into this broader discussion about meditation. And the first question I want to ask is sort of related to that, which is what is meditation broadly?

and out of what historical context did it arise. I know that's a huge question, so you can take that in any direction you want, but I'm just throwing it out there. So I think meditation broadly is, you know, and obviously this consumes so much, but I would say in a broad kind of practice sense, like something that maybe you'd have

if we were having more to like, you know, what type of meditation do you do kind of conversation? I think that the distinction really globally and really generally generally between, and again, even this gets really problematic because there's a lot of subtleties and distinctions inside this anytime you make such a crude distinction. But I do think that the notion that there's some practices that are sort of concentration and immersion practices and then other practices that are more sort of. of awareness focused and I do think that that's a pretty helpful distinction and I noticed like in pop culture or even just in like anecdotally a lot of people if meditation comes up you know people might say like oh I can't do that because I can't turn my thinking off and it's almost like this very and of course like that literally never had I don't know even textually including you know I do think people can get into you know very off alter in distinct states meditating. But I don't think that I don't think that that would ever correlate

with like quote unquote like, oh, I just don't think or my mind is blank. In fact, your mind is extremely textured. So, but at any rate, so I think like a practice, like say like, you know, a lot of people know like mantra meditation, the idea that you kind of like you focus on a singular object and you're kind of like, you know,

you're keeping your concentration on one thing and then there's other meditation practices that really are about sort of like almost like globalizing your attention um in a way that you can get a very sort of a continuous almost like physiological response to your experiences and and again it you know it it all it definitely is a field where I mean, you know, there is some degree of like how much can you describe what the sensation of like, you know, picking up a racket and hitting a tennis ball is. Like, I do think it's a very experiential thing because there are a lot of metaphors and a lot of language that either sounds obscure or not really clear that can kind of click in when you're actually doing a practice. And then the more historical dimension, I mean, one, I know probably, I've done several different kinds of meditation practice and I actually still, when I do meditate, which is not nearly as much as I would like, I do a couple, I do do a couple of different types of practices. But I've had the most extensive experience in the posse of meditation, which is where the mindfulness craze comes from.

and that sort of movement, and that's a, you know, that's a secularized version of Apasana meditation, and that's actually a whole, you know, separate, worthwhile conversation. But as an example of Apasana, as it's taught now in the West, there's a fascinating history of it that, yes, no doubt textually, you can go back to classic Buddhist texts from the Poly canon, which is where the original teachings of the Buddha are transcribed. And I say transcribed, because my understanding is that the tradition was oral and passed on orally for, I think, actually, maybe even a couple hundred years before it was transcribed in written form. And that written form is in poly, and that is the oldest, I mean, there's a massive Buddhist canon

that, you know, compromises much of Asia, north, and south. But the Polly canon is definitely the sort of most, you know, not as like a value judgment. It's just like the oldest Buddhist texts. And there are teachings in there that, you know, they definitely correlate. Like, okay, yes, like this is a teaching that the Buddha gave on observing breath, observing body sensations, observing mental states. Like, yes, it's, you know, some form of what people are doing today is there, right?

There is a certain continuity. Then there's also the reality that, you know, in Burma, as an example, when, you know, Burma was dealing with its colonial relationship with the British, and there was first, there was a sort of attempt from the colonial administration to sort of disincentivize such a strong relationship between the community and Buddhism, partially because they were freaked out about the Sepoy mutiny that it happened in British colonially ministered India, right? And that was a religiously influenced uprising. That was actually, I don't know much about it, but I know that the British put it down. And I mean, this is, I mean, it's countless, but that's worth looking up.

Like, the brutality of how they put it down, they shot people out of cannons, I recall. I mean, just a truly vicious, grotesque thing. So what the Burmese did, among other things, was they start. So the monks, as an example, and I think this is in the 19th and leading into the 20th century, they started doing, and it's funny because you can see kind of a correlation to today. So they started to say, like, oh, well, somebody's, instead of just kind of like, you know, kind of more general teachings for the public, let's bring out some of these monoeuvre. practices. The middle class might be interested in them. There was a thing that was also interesting, which is a lot of the, and this still actually happens, my understanding is, but a lot of the Burmese teachers would teach behind a fan,

so their faces would be covered. And the idea is actually kind of nice, which is a sort of like a kind of anti-cult, anti-personality sort of notion. Like this is the teaching, It's not the kind of personality that's delivering it. But it's also, you know, it's also going to be quite stuffy and conservative in its own form of, like, mystification. So monks started doing what they called fan-down teaching, and that was a more, you know, direct way of engaging in the public. Anyways, to make a long story short, by the time we get to the 1950s, which is before the, you know, before military hunts, which would take over Burma and rename it, Myanmar. Do you have the Vapasana teachings getting steadily updated, changed, you know, different monks and different lay teachers actually adding different methods of how to actually teach this practice? And then, you know, a independent government in Burma that actually helps fund, you know, like some of these monks going and teaching overseas in Japan or the United States.

and there was actually, I think it was the fourth or fifth Buddhist council held in Burma in the 50s. And so clearly, you know, there's also this no – this Burmese government is seeing Buddhism and Vaphasna as a tool of its foreign policy and a tool of its sort of identity in the – basically in Asian post-colonial politics. And, you know, and again, and as I say, as I look at this, what I love is that none of this – this in any way takes from the tradition, the potency of the teaching, the continuity. I like, you know, I like gromchy in the sense of like looking at things in an integral way. Like when I say historically material, I don't want to reduce it and say, oh, no, it's one thing. It's all of the above. But on the other hand, what historical materialism does that's so rich and so dynamic is instead of, you know, particularly I think when people deal with stuff that comes from Asia, you know, it's like if it comes from Buddhism, it's positive mystification. It comes from Islam, it's negative mystification. But it's like, oh, here are these unbroken chains of these just magical preexisting things. And they're in the text versus like, no, this is this is economics and sex and psychology and geography.

like literally everything else. And it doesn't detract from it. It just means that it's part of the same rich, you know, human predicament we're all dealing with. Right. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. That was a very difficult question.

But you did mention you really focused on Vipassana there. And that's the sort of tradition that I'm most used to. I think that's because the Insight Meditation Society, you know, there are these Americans that were born in like the 40s and 50s that traveled the world and brought these practices back and then explained them. I think we'll get into that in a bit. So there's this broad, you know, huge historical context. There's a million different manifestations of this practice we broadly know as meditation.

And it takes, you know, blossoms in different ways depending on the culture and the time period that it's blossoming in. But would it be fair to say that the core practices of meditation are sort of transcultural in that sort of like science or mathematics? They have very specific cultural beginnings, but they can sort of be taken. out of any given cultural context and put into different ones, sometimes grotesquely, sometimes beautifully. But, you know, the practice itself is like the core that can be, that's why, you know, you and I can participate in this practice, even though this practice stems back 2,500 years ago to India and the Asian subcontinent. So is that a good way to think about the practice? Yeah, no, I buy that. And I think even globally, like I, there was a book that came out,

ages ago called the perennial philosophy by alice huxley and i know it's the type of thing that is very much like you know i'm sure you could not cite it if you were taking a comparative religion class it's you know it's not academically precise and i understand you know this kind of new push right now and this is actually to me is in some ways a very problematic push because obviously like and in some ways are really absolutely necessary push. But there's a there's a push that's interesting because in some versions comes from more liberal quote unquote identity politics, but actually some of it like one of the most elegant defenses of cultural difference and distinction was written by Jonathan Sacks that I read. It was called the Dignity of Difference. And he's actually a very conservative

ultra-Orthodox rabbi in the UK. And it's totally brilliant writer. I mean, I have a really profoundly different worldview from him, but he's a, I mean, very impressive speaker and writer. So this argument is, you know, is like, no, it's not the perennial philosophy. It's, you know, these are, you know, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, and so on. Like, these are all radically different things. They mean radically different things. They teach radically different things. And then, of course, you know, like the new atheist stuff, you know, came along and was like,

Like, you know, no, this is all radically different. And in fact, of course, we know the goodies and the baddies. And I get all of those points for sure. But I think what actually does hold up, to be honest, is, you know, inside all religions, there clearly are people that had a relationship to their religious faith that was experiential, for lack of a better word, quote unquote, spiritual. And it usually correlated with taking on. different types of meditative practices that, you know, had their own sort of systems that

had some degree of, you know, ability to move inside, you know, inside and out of particular context. And I think, you know, honestly, objectively, and this is one where I will, you know, assert a difference. I do think a practice like Vaphasana, you know, it is, I mean, it's funny because it's so inseparable from Buddhism. But I do think it's like it's, you know, it's obviously a huge advantage that you can sit and do that practice and it does not require, like, you know, there's no like,

well, you don't need to visualize any Buddha. You don't need to do anything, you know, with your hands. It's physiological. I mean, it's so I think that's a huge advantage. So I think you're totally right. And I actually think that that's true, to some extent, across the board, actually. Yeah, interesting. And you know, one thing about meditation practice specifically is that it doesn't really require you in and of itself to believe anything metaphysical or ontological about the world. What it is at its core is here is a prescription for you to try, like a sort of experiment for you to run. And here are the results and benefits you will get if you conduct this experiment and this in this way. And then you can go see it for yourself. So it doesn't really require you to believe anything absurd about the world or anything radically different than you were brought up in.

And that also allows it to jump between not only, you know, different Asian traditions, but, you know, you have Christian mystics who incorporate meditation. You have complete atheists and scientific materialists who can work with meditation. And so that's sort of its beauty. But I guess in a basic sense, and, you know, I assume a lot of people listening don't know anything or pretty much anything about meditation other than sort of pop cultural chunks here and there. So in a basic sense, what are people actually doing when they are meditating and what are they sort of not doing? There's a lot of different techniques for how this is taught, actually. And I want to actually put in a plug my friend Jesse Vega Frey, who it's so amazing because he's also, you know, I don't know, maybe he's a year older than me or so, but, you know,

another guy in his mid-30s and we've been friends and kind of like brothers in this practice and our friendship now for actually for like 16, 17 years. And I'm seeing, like, he's becoming an incredible. I just did a retreat that he co-led and he's like emerging as this like really great teacher and somebody who also is very of this moment, you know, with a different kind of cultural trapping than a lot of the kind of, you know, baby boomer ethos that still sort of hangs over so much of this stuff. And he has a new, a book he's working on where he uses manuals from, uh like guerrilla warfare like hochi min and chay to re generate the mindfulness teachings which is fascinating wow so because well because as an example like and this is this will get into to where we're going because i actually think this is a really important point um and it's certainly influenced my ability you know i've been really lucky with some of the teachers that i get to

study with um you know it's so he His point is that if you go into the classical Buddhist literature, there's a lot of war imagery, right? And it will be a lot. And it's fun. It's kind of like, you know, when the enemies of greed, hatred, and delusion amassed their forces, then you, you know, you counteract with your forces of wisdom, love, and discernment, or so, you know. And in some ways, it's very cool because it really is an extremely strategic practice. it's very like you know okay go in ease off check this out give that don't check that out right now type of thing his he's that what i love is he's like look but let's be honest and one of the things

i love about this that i think is so relevant for the left and us generally is like uh and also frankly for us being way more forgiving and less toxic with each other is like we're all extremely uh you know we're all very much works in progress to say the least and what jesse said is like look like let's be honest like a lot of times like those forces of like you know greed hatred delusion like they're fucking overwhelming they're they're they're like a superpower and what we're doing this practice is like we're a little gorilla brand and we come down from the hills and you know maybe like we you know actually now i'm putting words in his mouth because i don't think you'd take the metaphor at this full but like you know we go in we do a little operation and then we run back up into

the hills yeah and and i think it's important because how you frame what you're doing will affect uh you know how you do it and honestly you know there's so many different ways in which this is taught because there's even an understanding that different personality traits come in you know with a different tendency right like so there's some people where it's like they're going to go in and fucking bulldoze themselves in a way that can be really unhelpful and maybe even counterproductive, right? And there's other people that maybe will approach it in a super lazy way and they need to like get a kick in the ass.

But I mean, generally speaking, the typical teaching is that you actually work initially to establish a certain level of concentration. That method of finding concentration is by following the physical sensation of the rising and falling of the breath. I've primarily been taught that you focus on your abdomen, that your breath is correlated with the rise and fall of your abdomen. Other people teach focusing on the sensation of the tip of your nostrils. I'll just say, for me, I've found the abdomen to be a lot more kind of grounding and helpful.

I agree totally. Yeah, yeah, you have the same experience. Exactly, yeah. I kept hearing this, like, you know, follow the tip of your nostrils sort of thing. it was fine but then I just eventually like sort of settled into my own routine where I would focus on the abdomen and I've got a lot more out of it so that's just me personally yeah yeah so exactly so then and then from there you kind of first you expand your awareness and this is the sort of typical progression is of your of sensations throughout your body and so you might do

the way I've been taught usually is you first you kind of do a sweep or you kind of you you place the attention on your face you place the attention on your neck your chest move down your body but then it becomes really just a kind of you know again it's it's it's a very dynamic it's not a static process but say you're sitting and you're like okay I have a little bit of concentration established from kind of focusing on my breath I you know so that basically and it does not mean again going back to the beginning of conversation doesn't mean you have stopped thinking or anything like that it doesn't mean you stop making plans it doesn't mean you've stopped you know feeling great about something or feeling guilty about something else you know all of the shit that people go through

it just means that you have a certain degree of uh of stability achieved in your uh in your concentration so that you can deal with all of that stuff that's rushing at you but not like go with it like okay you know and again not not push it away but not necessarily go with it right so it isn't like that kind of like violent like you know that was another big misconception for me in meditation was it was like it was like you know i'm not going to you know i'm not going to really go on that ride right now it was like no no no that's not happening right now like fuck that get back to the breath you know what i'm saying exactly very violent actually it sort of re-entrenches the ego a little bit you know yeah especially if you think of the ego is just like habit in a way

right you know it's like all like just that that those those reflect and then you really start to realize i mean yeah i mean it's it's it's it is terrifying if you kind of realize in a certain way that like your relationship to yourself in this very dynamic way is a mirror of your reflection of your relationship to everybody else and you can both see the ways in which like you are so terrible and also other ways in which you allow yourself to be treated so terribly and you know it and in both ways and again I think it's another really important kind of check on, you know, the, the, the, just the sort of, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, I'm, you know, they're, you know, they're, I, I'm, you know, I, I'm, and I'm, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm even trying to, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm even trying to, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm even trying to, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm talk about more of this stuff because I think that we all need to be a little bit more humble

and a little bit more forgiving and a little bit more real about about you know the difficulties that we all have right the mistakes we all make and so on so anyways um then it's like I love I'm going to say this and like five minutes later I'm going to be like doing an impression of like Dave Rubin but anyways but but actually that's great And that doesn't contradict what I'm saying at all. So then, okay, so then there's body sensations, and you're kind of like, okay, I'm focusing on my breath, and then I'm going to check out a body sensation. Then there's the next level, or I shouldn't say level, the next phase might be thoughts.

You know, all right, like what's going on at the thought process. Then it might be, and then it's emotions. And then, of course, you kind of realize, like, you know, there's a progression, right? So you realize, like, okay, an emotion is usually some kind of fusion. of a physical sensation and a thought, right? You can kind of get, it's very funny because it's like the stereotype of these practices is almost that they like zone you out.

And what you really get is almost like, is like a huge amount of precision in your sort of actual experience. I mean, it's very like heightening. It's not, I mean, you don't want it to be overheightening either that's actually an imbalance but it's it's definitely not like a kind of wide-eyed

smile kind of like controlled fake bliss that I think people associate with this stuff a lot in pop culture yeah I think when you see pictures of people meditating or like a madman at the end of that series where he's sitting there sort of blissed out it can seem like a form of escapism

you know my sort of thinking is what you're doing when you're meditating and you know you hear a lot of teachers say this a lot is like you're not adding anything to your experience you're not actually doing anything what you're what you're technically doing quote unquote is just becoming aware of the um sort of shifting constantly shifting sensations noises feelings emotions moods and thoughts that go through you know a human being multiple times a day you're sitting back and sort of watching those processes happen and through that awareness through that systematic and methodical watching of how your mind and body actually operate and change constantly,

you start to detach from this hyper association with those thoughts and feelings, right? Like, instead of starting to think, like, you author all your thoughts and you become sort of a slave to your thoughts and your feelings, you can stand back from them, create a little distance, and view them dispassionately, almost, you know, I would, I always say, like, watching clouds to go by, you know, you're not swept up in the chaos of your, constantly changing thoughts and emotions, but you actually get to have some distance and become aware of how they operate. And the awareness is really doing all of the work. You know, you're not doing anything outside of just being aware ideally. Yep. Yeah, totally. That's beautiful.

Yeah. So I guess let's just go into the misunderstandings because this is definitely related. So what are some of the most common misunderstandings about meditation that you've come across, specifically here in the West, because we're largely talking to a Western audience? The misunderstandings, as I said, are one that, you know, I can't do meditation because I can't shut my brain off. You know, first of all, for a practice like Vapasana, that's not at all what you're doing because you're bringing a certain attention and bearing to like everything across the board. And then, you know, I think even practices where I could see where that misconception would come from, you're not doing that. either you know what i mean like in a way you're you're certainly like using your brain if you're doing a mantra practice right like i actually i do a mantra practice sometimes for uh for collie

and you know that's not like emptying your brain you know more globally i think that there is a whole a really interesting conversation to be had which again i'll mention my friend jessie they gofrey where it's like on one hand I think a lot of people like in the political space now well I just I'll be blunt in general I mean I think in general they're just way

to rejecting of any form of spirituality right and so I'm somebody that again I just and to me also ironically a lot of my defense is as a materialist right I'm like yeah

you know in fact like liberation theology is a significant thing right in america you can like it or not but that is the reality of that political configuration um so that's part of it but that being said there's definitely some accurate criticisms of you know certainly if we take it back just specifically in meditation the way these you know practices have been deployed and the rhetoric around the them and what's interesting to me though is that somebody like like jesse he he wrote a great piece on genetically called a genetically martified dharma and or the uh or the buddhist bourgeoisie blues his point was like you know there's so much quote unquote science validating meditation

right now and i'm not like opposed to that i think actually a lot of people doing that stuff have very good intentions and they really do actually have a really strong And I get it, you know, like, it's funny, like, as ridiculous, as cultish almost as it can sound, frankly, there is a part of me that's like, you know, you do attend a meditation retreat. And I don't think everybody should do the same meditation practice. I certainly don't think that everybody should be a Buddhist or whatever. I don't care about any of that. But you do get a feeling of like, Jesus, if everybody could get a dose of this experience, it wouldn't, like, solve all of our problems by any stretch. But that would be very nice.

It would be very nice if every human being could, you know, have an opportunity to access this, right? So, so, but, but Jesse's point is like, you know, to be honest, like, if you really dive into Buddhism or into, into certain, like, Vapasana, like, it could be really counterproductive. Like, it could increase your stress. you might like he he talked about this funny example of of struggling with uh with a i forget what it was but like a real health thing and one of it in the same essay and he had just gotten back from intensive practice in burma and his doctor's like oh you should you should meditate more you should lessen your stress he's kind of like sort of like in the phase of this practice where it can get actually really stressful because you're dealing with mortality you're dealing with you know and

And there's also structural contradictions. Like it's, you know, it's not to say that, well, again, because I think we can, you know, program things to be anything they are. You can have a fascist Buddhism. You can have a communist Buddhism, whatever. But one thing that is very clear about it is, like, there is an interesting and weird contradiction between a practice that is primarily marketed right now as it will increase your efficiency and your ability to succeed when, you know, you know, textually, and this is, again, this is the flip side. I mean, this is what a lot of the people on the left don't like, and I understand it because it definitely is not necessarily intervening in politics, but it's also kind of

not intervening in anything. I mean, it is a pretty monastic world-renouncing tradition to a degree. There's an endless teachings on why, like, you know, building your empire won't get you fulfillment, or that, you know, if you are a householder, you should, like, take care of your business and live a good life. but that that isn't like, you know, that's not where, like, that's not ultimately where it's at, basically. So I think that, you know, so there's kind of, there's, there's broad kind of pop culture misconceptions that, you know, you just bliss out, turn your brain off. Then there's the misconception, I think, from the left that these practices and holding any type of,

spiritual, religious context is innately contradictory of politics or a material's viewpoint. I have to say, for me, I find that particularly ironic because, you know, I'm bluntly, I've been in conversations where I'm the one sort of, you know, batting for spirituality, but on the other hand, I definitely am bringing the most historical materials point to bear in the argument. And particularly, you know, when you talk, I'll be really specific when you're talking, around people who are sort of, I mean, they're better because they have a bit more left politics, but they're really coming from that kind of new atheist place, which ironically is a, is a, it's not a materialist worldview. It's a totally ideational worldview.

Deeply, yeah. So, um, they're idolists. Oh my God, exactly. Sam Harris, I always say Sam Harris, Sam Harris's take on Islam is like a great example of trying to understand regional conflict like through a purely idealist lens where he boils it all down to the beliefs inherent in Islam and not the sociocultural historical context that these conflicts erupt in, et cetera. So I totally agree with that. Exactly. And so, and it's funny because even as I, you know, again, I keep saying, I'm, I think it's, I think a lot of the spiritual stuff is even, I'll even go so far as say it's actually really important. But, you know, I think, one way of, I think, described being like the materialist worldview versus an idealistic one is that,

people like you and I, we look at the world. And actually, Doug Lane helped really articulate this for me, was, you know, that we look and we say, what do people do all day? Like, where do they drive? Where do they work? What are their relationships? And then how does that inform how they think? Now, obviously, it's a feedback loop because then how you think is going to reinforce, you know, I think ultimately it is an integral thing. But the starting point is, what do you literally do all day and then how does that affect how you think i mean people like whether it's sam harris or even you know frankly plenty of people in the new age movement they think what do you think and then what happens after that yep i tend to think in completely the opposite direction absolutely so you know so then there's there so yes so there's that and then and then there's the other not the kind of old uh you know hippie pop culture thing but the but that meditation is like the ultimate killer app of success. I watch this show Billions, you know, it's kind of a fun show, and it's just so funny

because, like, these characters are just like assholes, and, you know, they meditate. And they, you know, because that's part of like, I got to go to the meditation chamber and really figure out, like, you know, fuck somebody in some deal. yeah that's so wonderfully said and i think it really displays all those things you said display on your end a sort of dialectical thinking right nothing is purely black or white nothing is purely good or bad you know trying to take this this more conciliatory path understanding both sides of things can really help sort of a rigid leftist put down their defenses a little bit and engage with this topic more meaningfully i just want to reiterate some of the common misunderstandings

that you said quickly um you keep saying that people and i i get this all the time when i recommend it to my friends. I even have a buddy who is a neuroscientist and a postdoctoral work in neuroscience. And I, you know, constantly telling him to try this meditation thing because he would benefit from it. And one of the big things I hear all across the board is, you know, I'm just not the type. I can't meditate. I sit down. My mind is too chaotic. And they give up and walk away from the practice. But that actually is the first revelation of the practice, right? It's known as the monkey mind that once you sit down and try to concentrate, you'll find just how chaotic your mind is. Try to sit down right now and put this on pause.

Sit down and try not to think a thought for 10 seconds. And you'll find out that you are utterly unable to do that. And that should not be the cause of you turning away from the practice. That, at least for me, is like, that's the first revelation. That's exactly why I need to keep up with the practice to get beyond that. And then the second misunderstanding, which you touched on a little bit, is that it's pretty much just a breath exercise when in reality in this tradition the breath exercise is what you will always start out with because it's precisely the way for you to build that concentration,

that ability to focus your attention on an object for a long period of time that will allow you to take the deeper steps later on when you're talking about open awareness and you're talking about turning that concentration inward for insights into the nature of impermanence and selflessness, etc. So, you know, these are like really the first potholes that I think people step in, and I would just urge them to contextualize those things and keep moving forward. If you sit down and realize that your mind is just pure chaos all the time, good. You're doing the right thing.

Continue with the practice, and you will deepen that understanding, you know? No, that's so beautifully put. And that actually really gets to like, you know, and it's a problematic translation, but like the four noble truths of Buddhism and like the first insight that life is suffering, or I would say i i think i think translations like this sad like unsatisfying or or kind of or like even almost even just like frustrating or filled with agita because even you know it's like good experiences are followed by bad experiences you have good you have good things but then you're attached to them so then they become a source of stress you know and again i you know

i i think it's tricky because i i don't want to obviously i think there's a tremendous amount of joy and pleasure in life and I think people should you know engage in that and you know it's it's it's good to be here too right like I think that that could be balanced by some other really important perceptions but there's such a fundamental truth to it and you get that fundamental truth if you sit down and right exactly your friend that's so perfect like oh I'm just not the type it's like well first of all you're like the human type I mean I don't know Maybe there's like a fraction of people on earth

Who don't have like You know sure I'm sure some people are slightly more Obviously you know certain people have different temperaments or whatever But like you know everybody's incredibly mentally agitated And you sit down and you're like Oh this person did that I gotta do this and oh fuck and Oh man do you remember like in the second season of peeky blinders or oh shit

I want to go to a nick game or you know it's like yeah it's fucking disaster right that's the first that's literally you know all the stuff is very systemic and very strategic that's the first step it's like see it's not looking so good yeah and talking talking about that that unsatisfactoriness you know it's it's duca it's translated as suffering but really you're getting at this more nuanced take where it's like you're this constant unsatisfactoriness and one way to understand that is that we all have this constant flow of desires, whether this desire out of boredom to get up and go look in the fridge or this desire to pursue some career or life goal. But what we find, and we especially see this when the contradictions intensified in the form of hyper-famous, hyper-rich people,

is you see that once they obtain the thing that they're constantly desiring, this unsatisfactoryness sets back in, and they go crazy because their whole culture has told them amass fame and wealth, consume and express yourself, and become famous. and rich, and that is the sort of way towards happiness, and once you get there, you realize that no, even with everything that society conventionally tells me is the things that I should be pursuing, I'm still stuck with this fundamentally, this fundamental sense of not quite ever being satisfied. I'm always reaching for the next moment. I'm always looking for something external to me for me to finally be happy. And what the Buddha said is, you know, this is the sort of fundamental

dysfunction of the mind and you will never get that thing you pursue and pursue and pursue and then you die and and you know so so to be in that frame of mind is is a sort of cause of suffering and even when you are happy by wanting to hold on to that joyful moment and never let it go it already starts to slip through your fingers like sand you know and so even in the best moments they're they're impermanent they're temporary and then you will go back down to bad moments and and so yeah Just trying to stand back and watch the river pass as opposed to constantly being shoved and bobbed inside the river is sort of one metaphor way to look at this problem and how to address it. I just want to add really quick to that. Two quick things.

I mean, one, this is actually one of the reasons that I'm pretty, I'm basically like very much pro Russell brand overall. Me too. I've come around to that, yeah. Yeah, I just think, you know, in addition to the fact that I think he does. I think he has done some things that are actually really great politically, and I think he's genuinely open. I think his, if you look at the way he talks about his spiritual interests and pursuits, it's very, it's fascinating because he's really, he's very self-aware and he's actually giving you a dose of what you're talking about. And again, he's not doing it in a way that's like, you know, bullshit, because let's be honest, like, he's created a life that, you know, this is. the other part where it's like being real like yeah that's a very enjoyable life there's a lot of

great benefits to it that he's achieved and acquired and you know he's not pretending that he's going to get rid of it but then he's also very openly basically saying like through various addictions through career accomplishments like yeah there's still a huge amount here that feels fucking awful and so I'm kind of sincerely engaging in these pursuits and I you know I think that's cool like to me you know that's my just sort of like 30,000 feet view of that is like that is a positive model in the world and I and I also just want to say really quickly too that like the funny result like I think there's plenty of people frankly that you know and I had a whole period of time where I needed to definitely step away from these practices and even like the culture of them, which I think it's to some extent a separate thing, that people can interpret these things whether or not it's in the focus of, you know, a lot of our work as like, oh, well, I'm not going to engage in the world or I'm not going to, you know, deal with the ecological crisis or the, you know, the political dimension. But even also like, oh, well, I meditate. So I'm kind of like a purse.

more. I do think some people have, you know, and I will say on the flip side, the people that I've been around that are like the real models in terms of teachers, you know, that I've been around. And again, they're not perfect. And this is another important thing is I don't, you know, I don't think there's any process that totalizes anybody. We're all still products of our conditions. And, you know, nobody, nobody is perfect by any stretch. But people who really have cultivated something here to the point where you could say like oh these are you know these are human beings that are super admirable and they're living in a way that is definitely significantly better than the average they have extremely full and dynamic and engaged and very alive personalities

so it actually does not lead you to this sort of like you know the kind of like the college kid who's like misread like you know the stoics and is like frustrated that like the dating life isn't going that way and it's like well i've not tempted by the senses it's not that at all yeah exactly it does not produce and you know i've i've been fascinated with like the highest achievers in this realm and for a long time i've sought them out and try to see how do they live their lives how do they talk and that was sort of a concern early on in my life too is like if i do this practice this whole idea of like getting rid of the self is that going to just sort of turn me into some drone some some soulless conformed you know thing that's not really me and it's you're exactly right

it's the exact opposite it lets all of the weirdest parts and the most interesting parts of your personality take really beautiful form and you see like with a joseph goldstein for example who is a big you know leader and teacher in vipasana just like the the sort of effortless way that that he laughs and he can sit in any conversation and be totally present. That is, I think, where a lot of this cashes out. And it doesn't make him dull. It doesn't make him anything other than a really unique individual person. And the higher you climb this ladder, I think, the more unique you get because whatever

is inside of every individual human being that makes them different from everybody else that's really allowed to grow and blossom in an interesting way. And you're right. It's never finished. You can even, in Buddhist tradition, you can talk about. multiple lives and like the pursuit of enlightenment happens over hundreds or thousands of lives and whether or not you want to take that literally or not the idea it's getting at is that you're going to be constantly in a in a in a process of development you don't reach an end point and

insofar as you can get enlightened it's not like everything stops for you it's a matter of deepening that enlightenment deepening that insight that understanding even in that context so you know this this notion that it's a perpetually unfolding process and not just like a thing that you climbed the ladder and get to the top rung of, I think is an important thing to keep in mind as well. Definitely. Let's talk about benefits, right? We hear a lot of the benefits, and you gestured earlier towards the scientific approach where they're trying to scientifically pin down, you know, the benefits of people. But personally, what have the benefits been for you in your life? And maybe after you talk about the many benefits, maybe talk about like the single most impactful aspect

that this practice has had on your life. I mean, that's just a really interesting. I mean, to me, in some ways, like, and it feels so weird because, you know, I just, you don't ever want to be in a position of like, I just keep saying, I just still have just so much to work on. But I would say, you know, it, in those moments that it gives you the capacity to really not be at the circumstance of passing thoughts and emotions no matter how intense it give it it it it's there's a there's a state of

freedom or reset an ability to do things that is just so radically better I don't you know and I and I also have no doubt that like you know I do think on some level like I don't again I don't think it's because of it but even in a really broad way I think that like having had some periods of my life where I've done a decent amount of somewhat intensive practice I think it actually has helped me in terms of hosting in terms of creativity comedy it in some ways is that because everything is kind of opened up and you're less contrasting. it does allow things to go a lot more sort of naturally and elegantly because you're just not

constantly getting tripped up um you know and then and then look i think i've had some other experiences where again it's like i don't want to i don't want to scare people but i mean i've had some experiences where it's like i think in the immediate circumstances of doing some of these things it has not been helpful in in a conventional sense which has been like oh shit that was really fucking intense. I'm going to process that. And, and of course, maybe even led to,

you know, I'm realizing now, you know, I'm not getting too personal, but I think that I, I'm sort of looping back to this stuff. I mean, I think I had the period of several years of the kind of like disillusioned, like, oh, man, whatever.

You know, and, and, and then really realizing, like, how painful that cynicism and that hardening it. In a more relative sense, I mean, look, if I'm in a schedule where I'm meditating and working out with some regularity, life is just better. I don't, you know, I don't really know how to kind of put it better than that. Like, you're definitely less stressed. You're probably being less than an asshole. You're probably, you know, it's probably undermining and contradicting whatever your addictions and habits are.

and I'm using that in really broad sense, so I don't want to, you know, I don't want to dismiss, I'm definitely not trying to diminish anybody who's, like, actually dealing with, like, a capital A addiction. Yeah. But I do think in a vernacular sense, we are, like, I am addicted to my phone. I am. Yeah. Right?

Like, it's not good. You know what I'm saying? So, no, of course, it's not the same thing as, you know, an actual, like, substance area. But it is actually not a good thing that diminishes life. and, you know, decreases quality and connection and so on. You know, people have all sorts of compulsive areas. And I think that it definitely makes you calm or happy. As much as I sort of resist the sort of scientism, it's like, look, it does.

It makes you calmer. It makes you happier. Almost certainly you will deal with your circumstances better. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And insofar as it helps with like sort of. of habits like that or bad habits is that you know it's exactly what we're talking about with awareness is if you can cultivate this level of awareness then when that when that first little urge

that first little desire to do the habit crops up if you're if you can maintain some awareness you can see it arise and in that sense you can sort of veto it in a way right you can say oh I see I see this thing coming up this is where I go to the fridge and pull out the food but you know this time I'm going to check that impulse because I know that it's just this ultimately bad thing, and that little distance, that that little sliver of awareness that gives you that second to veto that, I think, is important. So some of the benefits for me, and I definitely don't want to oversell these. It's not some radical transformation. I'm very fucking human. And as Michael's said many times, I'm much closer to the never having meditated

at all side of the spectrum than the I'm literally a Buddha side of the spectrum. So I don't want to come up as anything but just a genuinely curious amateur who's been doing this off and on for a very long time, but one of the best benefits for me is in the same way that you can sort of check a bad habit, you can check negative emotions. And when I have anger or anxiety or jealousy, when I'm actually putting this stuff into practice, a lot of times this shit sneaks through and I'm an asshole about it. But once in a blue moon, when you can get that awareness, you can feel that anger or that anxiety or that jealousy or that negative emotion, not as some cerebral story you're telling yourself

that sort of continues to fuel the flames of that emotion but you drop that conceptual apparatus and feel it as a physical sensation in the body and when I'm able to do that I am literally at the best times able to kill anger or anxiety or jealousy right in its tracks and just you just spot it

you see the energy form and dissolve and you're not thinking so you're not feeding that energy that emotional feeling you're not feeding it with an internet narrative that keeps it going. And that's one of the things that's really helped out in my interpersonal life and my family life. I don't dwell on things. I try not to hold grudges. And then the other thing that I really want to focus on, and this is something I want to get your thoughts on, is the sort of brightening or the expansion of aesthetic appreciation.

So I find that when I'm meditating and I take this meditation out into nature specifically, and I quiet down the internal dialogue. I quiet down the chatter constantly going on in my mind for a little bit, that my mind starts to default to a deeply aesthetic place, the wind through the leaves, the sun on a puddle in the middle of the street, everything sort of brightens and becomes more beautiful. And, you know, I've had peak experiences of sort of being brought to tears over the joy or beauty that this practice has led me to sort of see. Because when you're not interpreting your world through this thick veil of constant inner dialogue, you can sort of see the beauty of everything more precisely.

And, yeah, and so I think, like, what are your thoughts on the aesthetic dimension of it? Because it almost seems to me that, you know, outside of the internal chatter, the quote unquote default setting of the human mind is sort of a beauty appreciating machine. And that's something I've gotten out of this practice. What are your thoughts on that? Oh, I think that that's totally beautiful. I love that. I think, and I haven't, you know, I want to actually be more mindful of that.

my own practice now that you put that so well it's inspiring um but yeah there's no doubt that when you i mean i just got off of i hadn't sat a retreat in quite some time and i actually just did a retreat about a month ago and like walking on the property uh by uh by insight meditation society which is where i did this retreat there's a lot of i mean there's a lot of a land that the center owns and then there's it there's some like state owned so there's a there's some very beautiful like central massachusetts new england ecology and it's like yes you can walk and it's like you know sure you know always yes that's beautiful that's lovely but you can really get into a state of like wow like let let's really take in like how green those leaves are the texture

Sure. How, you know, how the smell is hitting you. And I think, and it's absolutely the same, you know, in a totally different way of like, you know, filling your senses in the middle of New York City, you know, like, because that's actually one of things that, you know, for all of the fucking, well, you know, the politics of how, of, you know, all of the problems of this city and then not wanting to actually romanticize, you know, the pre-gentrification, pre-oligarchic. But. But where, you know, New York is cool on some level is just like, if you like it, some people don't. But it's just like the just rush of impressions. You know, it's like there's cab, there's this, there's that. Like, sometimes that's actually exhilarating. And you can actually apply the same energy to it. I want to just also loop. I mean, just really briefly, too, everything you said about.

the sort of how you relate to emotions a hundred percent there's an experience of things being less sticky i want to add you know there's a there's a woman that is also like a important i i've actually had the privilege of studying personally with joseph goldstein and then a woman michel mcdonald is another incredibly i mean she's probably my you know she she and joseph are my main vipasana teachers and i've had others that are really important than that tradition but there's a woman Susan Green that I've been doing a lot of work with the last couple of years and she's um you know more like in that you know very much in the sort of like I guess like basically Hindu tradition and she's actually gotten like yeah I mean jealousy is not a good one but she's super she's uh she's kind of down with

anger she thinks anger can be extremely healthy and powerful uh and you know and when you get into this like you know like collie imagery this idea you know collie's like portrayed in this incredibly melodramatic and violent way she's got like skull necklaces and everything but there's one version of the teaching that she's basically like the destroyer of all of that that threatens innocence which is really interesting sort of like this machine against you know all of the forces that are you know poisoning earth or whatever So I think there's also a way, but I think where they correlate, I mean, the traditions and the way they speak about energy and stuff is extremely different. But they think where they correlate in some ways is that like the anger itself, you know, it's like it could be super appropriate.

Like, this is a trivial example, but it's like, well, it's not actually, I'm not even going to do that. It's a somewhat good example. when I'm on air or you're doing your podcast right if this happened the other night I wasn't planning yeah I sound like Alex Jones totally unprompted but like I was talking about you know Elon Omar and all of this you know this fucking travesty

with Trump and the four congresswoman and so on and you know I got pissed off and I and I did a you know and I and I spoke and I spoke from a place of passion and hopefully clarity and I know some people it you know it it means a lot when any of us speak like that authentically right and that really can't be plans or put on now that's a that's another reason by the way that i know i'm obsessed i'll do the reference that's another reason i mean lula is just such an unbelievable

political leader is just that the realness that comes across uh in his speeches and his communication i was unparallel um but so it's like when i do that and they're and i'm expressing anger i'm expressing disgust but i'm also i'm actually also expressing a lot of admiration and solidarity a lot of different things that's a totally different um and cleaner expression than when i go on twitter and call somebody an asshole exactly and i think the difference is is that you know one is super separate super mental super repetitive and the other is just kind of like, oh, like, I, you know, I got that out. And that was really important, right?

Like, it's not that sticky, repetitive, like, well, they said this. They did that, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, all that bullshit. The actual expression of, like, something like anger can be totally clean. Yeah. You know. That's super interesting. And I deeply agree with that. And I'm sort of thinking as you're talking, like, where is this distinction, right?

Because anger is a big word and there's lots of emotions packed. into that one big word we call anger. And so on that side, because I also am very emotive, and I think part of the reason I'm so emotive and can be so quickly emotive is because of my meditation practice, it sort of makes me more raw to the injustices of the world. It makes me more sort of like heartbroken when it comes to other people's, especially innocent people's suffering. And so there's an anger that stems out of compassion for innocent people that is more properly

called probably righteous indignation, where, you know, you're moved. to speak out vociferously against a deep injustice and to speak out with not holding any bars or, you know, taking the NPR democracy now sort of civility tone and just speaking the truth to power sort of thing. And then there's the other sort of anger, which often is rooted in insecurity, egoism and oftentimes fear even. Like Joseph Goldstein said, you know, one time I heard him in his talk, that a lot of times anger is really just fear coming out in a different way. and I realize that this is a little anecdote for my life but when my fiance was pregnant with our son

we were driving at night and she was in the passenger seat and my daughter who must have been five or six of the time was in her car seat in the back and we were stopped at this intersection getting ready to take a turn waiting for the other cars to pass and just got fucking back slammed by a car who didn't even touch the brakes right boom I look over and my daughter's screaming

in fear when all the metal stopped clanging and we're off the side of the road my fiance's bawling holding her stomach and i don't have time to think what i did is i jumped out of my car and i was fucking furious i was going to whoever was in that other driver's seat i was going to pull him out and beat them you know to death um and as i'm walking and i'm lurching and i'm screaming motherfucker you know like atop of my lungs yeah an old lady pops out of the driver's side and in a moment in a moment every aspect of machismo violence that was was surging through my blood, fell the fuck away, and I realized my legs are shaking. I'm just

scared. I'm not angry at this lady. And I rushed back to my family and, you know, helping them out and getting my daughter out and holding her. And I realized everything was fine. Nobody was ultimately hurt. And it was just this old lady who had bad vision fucked up, basically. And I was very apologetic to her later. But I saw in that moment how my anger was really just my deep-seated fear expressing itself violently through anger. And so there's interesting distinctions there, right? Yeah, I mean, you know, it is. And I think some of it is just a, you know, I guess because I'm so, I am, you know, biased with this teaching of getting really comfortable with the idea that, you know, a certain kind of clean anger. Because also I think it's, you know, again, I don't think it necessarily means I'm, I am totally not of the school that, you know, I frankly, I frankly, maybe you can call it conservative.

I'm kind of, I think that there's some real lack of health, frankly, and, like, the fact that the culture has gotten so, like, everybody always needs to express their feelings all the time. Like, I think actually a lot of time it's totally unnecessary and counterproductive. I don't want to, you know, get back to, like, people repressing themselves, but I don't think, like, you know, just because you, you know, feel and are clear about something. and you know again the right move out of that might be like oh well this is something i need to be really uh tactical about you know what i mean you one move like it could be like yes i feel terrified i also feel absolutely justifiably enraged but uh actually let me take a beat and the most important thing right now is to a protect my family and attend to them and be you know if that was like a stoned kid in a car

you actually wouldn't want to catch a bid for beating the shit out of them even if they deserved it frankly but I think it's like I think that it's that you know again the reason I'd use that Lula example is again it's like there is this

incredible comfort with a really wide range of expression but it's not and it is bigger you know and it's not you know it's it's on behalf of other people can be on behalf of yourself if it needs to be uh but it isn't you know it isn't that kind of stuck clingy i'm mad and you know and they get this and yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i actually think like because to me that's so much of what that practice is kind of busting up it's all that like second order bullshit you know

like and that and you know and that is where I do think like it's a conversation for another day but you know I I am I'm a you know I think everybody does need to read exiting the vampire castle and I think part of it you know I think that there's real critiques that need to happen in the left and I think people need to think and much more critical and creative ways about a variety of issues but I also just think that like that's a consequence of the fact that that that while there is a correct revulsion at like the conservatism of much of religious new age and therapeutic culture, you're also turning away and throwing away the idea that like human capacity building in terms of emotion, psychology, like any culture that dedicates

itself to disregarding those domains is going to produce really unhealthy culture. Yeah, absolutely. And I do think sort of the social media chaos that everybody calling each other out, the one-upmanship, it's sort of deeply counterproductive. And it's a manifestation of a sort of, I hesitate to say neoliberal postmodernism, but in a way it's kind of true because there is like this infinite array, yeah, this infinite array of singular narratives. And there's no way to connect those narratives up in any meaningful sense. And so it's just, you know, your identity becomes a. bludgeon by which to beat somebody else over the head with or to it's really performative right you're performing your your ego and you're showing how smart you are to everybody else and that really

disallows nuance and humanity and humility so the platforms of course tend to this because it gets engagement and they incentivize that yeah I'm sorry to interrupt but that's a that's another actual perfect dialectic right of like that's a perfect example of how the tendency are incentivized through the actual material, the platform itself, the actions that it incentivizes, and the practices that it triggers. And then, you know, yeah,

and then you have, like, you know, a conception of, like, being on the left, which means, like, sitting on predatory tech company platforms and trying to, you know, tear down other people in a subculture. Right. It's like, okay, if that's your version of the left,

I think if I'm, you know, if I'm Peter Thiel, I'm definitely not worried about it. So I think that, you know, yeah, but more broadly, there has to be, you know, I'm, you know, Marion, one of the things I found I really was enjoying watching Marianne Williamson deal with Dave Rubin. And partially, to me, it was just because, you know, Dave, and it's hilarious. I mean, Dave shouldn't be arrogant going up against anybody. But I think it's funny because I think he had the same perception that I see so many people, you know, in my crew, you know, tweet, oh, you know, here's this like, you know, new age, whatever, get the fuck out of here. You know, and meanwhile, she's, of course, infinitely more well-read and informed than he is. But it was very interesting to me to watch her, like, even just say, like, as an example, like, he was like, ooh-hoo, like, I take collective responsibility for reasons. Isn't that like I'm going to be guilty for something I didn't do?

And she's just like, no, it's not about guilt, it's about collective responsibility. I mean, that is such an elegant and obvious distinction, which both neutralizes a narcissistic, racist talking point of the right and then also frankly counteracts against this ridiculous, performative, like, you know, toxic emotional nonsense on the left of really actually trying to. to personalize all of these things and to like interpersonal acts of like weird repentance plays instead of like serious, you know, combination of like, you know, obviously like, you know,

of taking on things structurally, right? And so what's so funny to me is like, that's one of the reasons I've been defending Marion Williamson is like, in a way, it's like, no, she's, and on the flip side, she's actually also rebuking the new age culture that. her and she was a success in because she is saying it is clearly not just sufficient to individually think positively because we have all of these social problems we need to take care

of collectively. So here, you know, here's someone, and again, she's not perfect and blah, blah, but here's somebody who's like so many people are dismissing or like turning into a meme. And it's like, you know, guys, she's actually more elegantly handling a lot of these dynamics than a lot of people who have a lot more credentials and maybe in some way sophistication than her. Yeah, I think I even, I even tweeted about, about her and some of the cynicism surrounding her, obviously, you know, in a lot of ways she's an idealist and her political project is not one that I, as a Marxist, am on board with. But what she does, what she does bring to this entire political sphere that people underestimate, and I think exactly what you're gesturing at, is a genuine

sincerity and authenticity that you just never see. I mean, think of the Ted Cruz's and the Trumps and the Bidens of the world. Everybody and the Kamala Harris is these careerists. They're so cynical that everything is like PR tested and then pushed out to the population. And she's just being so fully sincere in an age of hyper irony and cynicism that that in of itself is sort of a breath of fresh air in our politic. Absolutely. And I think also genuinely synthesizing some of these things that and, you know, again, I just thought that distinction that she made about collective responsibility and structure, you know, and, and it's so funny because I could totally see Dave Rubin making that, you know, again, just a totally appalling, immoral, a historical, you know, anything you could put on him, I will put on him, point. They were like, oh, I don't want to feel guilty.

But then the answer being, well, you should feel guilty. You know, like this whole, and then all of a sudden it's just this like performance piece about, and look, I'm not saying it's the same. Look, you know, somebody who is acknowledging in this instance, the reality of structural racism is inherently on higher ground than somebody who denies it. But at the same time, I don't like, I know that as a manner of political and material practice, you know, one's personal guilt and performance is not going to do the trick. And I also know that outside of a very narrow left-wing subculture, most people across the board of backgrounds have no interest in these kind of performances. They do care about the actual delivery of real things. And so the fact that she managed to just totally bypass that bullshit and take it back to a collective problem, and in that case, actually get to some material solutions, I was like, wow, look like she's doing a better job than almost anybody in that instance. Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, like, you maybe think too of like this whole, this whole concept of guilt. And especially in a hyper individualized society like our own, what all these, like when you're looking at like, let's say, structural white supremacy, right? What the status quo, the sort of ideology of our time wants to do, is sort of invert that awareness into something personal and individualistic, and that can only be sort of internalized as a personal sensation of guilt, which is not productive and can only ever be sort of a performance of showing others how guilty you feel, you know?

And the other side of that is, and this is what our society does not want, is to realize, no, fuck guilt, fuck my individual personal feelings about this or that, I have an obligation to other human beings. We have a responsibility to every other person on this planet, and that gives rise to a structural and collectivist approach to solving these problems that does not get sort of filtered through the prism of hyper-individualism and become another feeling that you have, but can actually result in collective struggle, which is the only way forward, you know? Yeah, no, I think that that's really it. And then I think the other paradoxes, I actually think from, you know, I think from that

place of actually honesty and openness, then I actually, there is actually more room for the dimension of that sort of like, you know, transformative work and change and atonement, like all of those things. But if it's just from a place of turning it into micro performance art and like toxic relationships and performance

across social media space then it both is not going to do the job that it needs to do and it's also and again this is this is where I'm you know just really objective

like I don't want to be part like I don't want to be part of an ongoing political subculture I want us I want people to actually gain power and I want to actually do things.

And I know that a lot of, like, and that's why so much of my politics, like, you know, again, it rests on like, yes, I think that there are things that would be overwhelmingly popular with people across the board, and the reason we don't have them is definitely because of, like, just, you know, concentrations of wealth and power. And then I think there's other areas where the distinction is actually really simple, which is like, you know, would I, like, as an example, if you told me, hey, like, you know, we could, we could get a left-wing agenda, but we have to endorse, you know, concentration camps. No, that's the moral, right? Like, no, absolutely not. But then, but then conversely, you know, like, you know, we aren't going to do this until everybody shares all of our, you know, cultural habits and language and agrees with every single opinion that, you know,

people may or may not have on various, you know, social trends or controversies. It's like, first of all, a lot of us disagree with ourselves about those things. And most normal people are absolutely don't give a fuck. And, you know, I think a lot of people can actually be persuaded on really basic moral stuff across the board. But they are not interested in being, you know, forced to conform to a subculture and be enlisted in that. And I, and I, you know, and I, and so I, and again, I think it does relate somewhat to the practices we've been talking about, which is, and again, even just like discerning those distinctions, you know, as we actually engage with a, hopefully a much broader set of people in the real world. Yeah. And insofar as this practice cultivates a sense of, of humility and works

against narcissism and ego-centered traits in an individual, you start to lose that narcissistic that says everybody should, you know, talk and think and behave like me. And you start realizing, actually, I have to go out and I have to do the work of trying to educate people. I have to educate myself on these topics. And I have to go out and communicate these ideas in a way that people actually care about and are meaningful in their world. And when you do that, you're surprised to see just how progressive a lot of regular working class people's instincts and intuitions really are. It's just a matter of meeting them where they are and doing that work of education, which is much harder than posting something online for a bunch of likes and shitting on everybody who disagrees with you. And so that easiness, that laziness is part of the problem.

And also as part of that process, too, I would say, like, you know, again, without, you know, with the clear, you know, just the lines of clarity, obviously. But there's other times where it's like, oh, this person's actually right about something. Like, I'm wrong. Oh, yeah, all the time. You know what I mean? That's like the other thing that it's like, because I even get, because I even get wary that other discourse of people is like, no, no, absolutely. We need to like have humility and go out there and realize that, you know, everybody's great

and they're, you know, and they're on board for our project. I don't know. And that's why I do think that, you know, for me that, you know, the politics, and maybe this loops back to the first question is like, I think that there needs, like, power over your economic life and absolute security and things like housing and health care are just like indivisible like i just don't know a human being that doesn't need those things and then there's the and then there's like the broader which is like you know can the category of your identity be used to block your civic rights and this is where i think of it frankly i do think

we're in a pretty liberal way like it's like no it can't be and people's rights and expression you know, an ability to safely kind of exercise who they are needs to be ensured. And then, but then beyond that, it's like, there's going to be a ton of people who are still, like, you know, they want to have, like, eight kids and go to baseball games, you know, like, there's going to be other people who want to, like, generally be in, like, a more narrow cultural subset, like, you know, these, and my kind of test is, like, well, are you on board for like, you know, co-owning and co-managing your business across all of these lines in a democratized economy? You know, do you understand that we need to get rid of police violence against certain, you know, populations?

If you're down for that, then, like, I don't give a fuck what comedy you listen to, what, you know, what cultural habits you have, what beliefs you have, frankly. And I think that there needs to be a lot less kind of focus on sort of socially engineering imagined people that you probably don't even know to begin with. Exactly right. Exactly right. I think it was Lenin that talked about that as like, you know, some of these, you know, utopians or idealists on the left, they wanted to create a world out of people that don't yet exist. And he's like, as Marxists, we have to go with people as they actually are and work from there. And I thought that was always sort of interesting. no that's that's beautiful yeah let's go ahead and two more questions i know we skipped a bunch of questions that's just inevitable i have two more and then we'll go into the conclusion um how does your how does your meditation practice inform your politics and vice versa right how does it how do you view that relationship personally inside yourself well i don't i mean i don't want to cop out but i've been kind of i've been spelling it out um i think that to me it's ineffable and i don't necessarily i mean

look, one of the things, again, it's a whole other topic, I'll go so far as to say a slightly traumatic experience for me has been looking at Burma. You know, when I grew up in the context of doing this spiritual practice, and the reason I call it Burma is that when I first was exposed to Myanmar, it was primarily through people that traveled frequently to Burma, both because they did serious, intensive Buddhist practice, and because they usually had some connections to what at that point was the anti-Hunta movement, and the anti-Hunta movement did not call the country Myanmar. They called it Burma. And that was a political signifier at that time. So, you know, I understand it is Myanmar in that sort of general consensus now, but I grew up in

the, you call it Burma, and that means you're against the junta. So anyways, that's part of the habit I have. But um, the, uh, you know, Aung San Suu Kyi coming into power. And my first experience of her, you know, my, my first thing actually, honestly, with some of the compromises she made, I, I even co-wrote a piece actually in 2013 called the Politics of Sainthood, where I kind of, my co-author and I were sort of arguing like, you know, Aung San Suu Kyi, yes, this is an incredible leader with a lot of physical courage and she's also a politician. And, you know, she's not going to come out of the gate in a democratic transition and do everything we want her to do. And now, of course, a couple years later, what is beyond abundantly clear is like, no, her

politics have actually always been. Yes, there is this physical courage, but she is a narrow Buddhist and ethnic nationalist and chauvinist, and she harbors horrific politics. And, you know, there is a Rohingen genocide happening right now, part of the engine of which is a form of, you know, Buddhist fascism, frankly. So I, you know, I am under zero illusions of the idea that, like, like, I, there's also a really fascinating book called Zen at war about, you know, very sophisticated Zen teachers that help provide, like, context and propaganda for Japanese imperial adventures. I don't think that, you know, I guess the way my politics informs it is I don't think that there's some magical technique that can make everybody love each other and, you know, deal

with all of our problems. Now, on the other hands, I, there is not a single moment in left-wing politics or in media or even in our national life where I don't. think like you know i like cornell west language like yeah we're incredibly spiritually sick and malnourished and so many conversations uh and so many serious problems clearly need they need love they need wisdom they need compassion we need to not feel embarrassed when we say these words and you know and and and that there are incredibly potent practices and teachings and ideas that can help us at the very least build a much healthier left-wing political culture i mean this is joshua kahn is another person who means a lot to me he's on my show

a lot a wildfire project and is a climate and uh and in general serious activist and organizer and he's done a lot of work with First Nations people and it's like yeah this is it's and he's a Marxist and so on but like

there is a dimension to this that is for lack of a better word and I really wish there was a better word but it is spiritual it is not just a question of you know it's certainly not the liberal people becoming woke and you know having a bunch

of new kind of like you know social practices and social agreements some of those are good some of those are not good whatever and it's not even the deeper structural critiques which are indispensable you can't get anywhere without them but i do think that there's something there that is that is uh that is felt individually and collectively and i you know and and it has to it's part of the picture i don't know how that manifest but um so the way those two things inform is yeah is is is in the first examples uh you know there's no magical spiritual out of history and politics and then conversely uh we're spiritually sick we need to deal with it so that's my dialectic yeah yeah uh totally totally agree with that

and i think the the big word you're getting towards is the sense of of connection um In an hyper atomized, competitive, individualistic society, especially a consumer society that, you know, not only makes you an atomized individual, but urges you to consume as your main behavioral pattern, you know, these principles and values and the sort of traits that a good practice can cultivate within yourself are antithetical to those shallow, dead end approaches of the way that one lives their life. It increases connection not only with nature, but with other people and with yourself. And that can then turn around and make you a better educator, a better friend, a better, you know, partner, a better organizer. For me, both traditions really chip away at my sense of individualism and selfishness from both directions, right? I really, and I'm very much a collectivist in a lot of ways. I'm an anti-individualist. And so probably that's why Marxism and Buddhism have been the two philosophies that I've consistently gravitated towards more than anything else.

You know, both of them chip away. The meditative practice literally from an internal standpoint, the sense of self that gives rise to petulance and an ego narcissism is chipped away at. And then on the Marxist side, the sense of I just need to recoil into my personal life and do what makes me happy, that's chipped away and replaced with a sense of obligation and responsibility towards other people, other, you know, sentient creatures on this planet. And the planet as a whole, you know, nature, preserving nature, etc. And then I think both Marxism and Buddhism in the sense that we're talking about it are a theory that that inexorably urges one into practice, right? It's very hard to be merely an intellectual theaterition when it comes to meditation and Marxism, right? The more you read of the theory, the more you are nudged and sometimes shoved into actual action. You can't separate those two.

And so on those different aspects, I think, yeah. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I'm just thinking of Marx. You know, it's like, it's not, it's our, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm but basically, you know, it is an hour job now to sort of theorize history. It's to change it. And, you know, and I think, yeah, and the Buddhist, like, there's that Buddhist parable, which they use to kind of, you know, sort of slightly deemphasize focus on kind of like cosmic speculation where, you know, the Buddha's getting all those questions about, you know, okay, well, all right so there's gods but like where did that come from and why is their karma and why and blah blah and he's like basically like you know you're a dude who got shot with a poison arrow and I'm a doctor who has the path to remove it and it's now you're instead you're asking me like where did the arrow come from and all that he's like like just like help me get this arrow out yeah and so it's kind of like you know the job is to liberate the job is the change history

I think you're right. I think both of those traditions at their best, there's a huge amount of like, right, let's, we got to theorize this well and understand it, but then, you know, but convert, but then even, it's not even just that then we act, it's that we can't theorize it well and understand it without acting.

Exactly. That is actually a way in which, in which the meditation practice can be really fun in a dialectical marks a sense, because you literally are theorizing what's happening and how it works, and then you're doing it. And then you have like a real-time feedback loop to your model. It's incredibly, yeah, it's incredibly fascinating. And in the same way on the Marxism edge of things, when you go out and you organize, you know,

you are also learning things that you turn around and embed into your theory in the same way that you do it there. So there's that feedback loop between theory and practice. both philosophies, this sort of dialectical relationship between the two that is beautiful and really complimentary. So, yeah, it's definitely made me less navel-gazy, less self-absorbed, and made me outward looking and figure out how can I use my life to help other human beings. And once you ask yourself that question, as much as we don't want to get caught into the very liberal, be the change you want to see in the world sort of approach, there is some kernel of truth in that you know if you are a bitter angry traumatized hurt jealous person it makes you a much

less effective organizer and educator and so if we're talking about self-care or we're just talking about how to make me the best sort of organizer and and political educator that i can possibly be you know it goes back to cultivating within you this sense of humility and serenity and awareness of the pitfalls of your thoughts and emotions etc so done best, done well, done in conjunction. These two things are not at odds, but can actually be very complimentary, and that's sort of a beautiful thing, you know?

Definitely. All right. So last question before the conclusion, and that's just to be fair, you know, what are some good, valid, or otherwise valuable criticisms of, or more importantly, warnings about this practice that you think are worth mentioning

to anybody who's maybe become interested in this stuff during this discussion, but you want to warn them against some common pitfalls. What would you say to that question? One is you should definitely be really thoughtful about certainly anybody you do any kind of actual, you know, if you wanted to do like intensive practice, like go on a retreat, I would, you know, I mean, I'm obviously, I've primarily gone to the Insight Meditation Society. I think, you know, there are teachers that are probably pretty hard maybe to sit with, but just in terms of like their booking and their schedule. But I would be. if you're going to do intensive practice, you should be extremely thoughtful about who you do it with. And I don't just mean, like, I'm not getting into like the real, you know, I mean, more generally, obviously, you know, there's a huge amount of cult activity and stuff and you should look up any group you're interested in and all of that. But even less dramatically, like, you know, you could be sitting with somebody who's, you know, an above board person.

and whatever but like you know they might not get you you know they might like it might be you know and it's and it's an extremely uh you know it's not you know it isn't like so many other interactions right like it isn't where again i actually kind of think like yeah you know what like yeah people make mistakes whatever but this is this is uh you know this is the type of environment where you know you're in like a totally radically open space and people say something that you misinterpret or they like don't get and you know it can be super subtle but it can be pretty unhelpful so I would both do research and seriously check your check your gut before getting into deep with

anything like that and and you know kind of and and I guess in a similar vein like kind of explore too like what way of approaching the practice is going to be best for you because I do think that even you know even some approaches that are like you know extremely enlightened and really good they could still teach things in a way like I'll say Michelle McDonald I mean this is someone you know I I've done a lot of retreats with her and like and Jesse Vega you know those these are two people I, and obviously, I mean, certainly Joseph Goldstein, although there's, there's differences between the three, but Joseph's just like, I mean, these are all, first of all, these are all like very high quality human beings. But like, you know, Michelle teaches this in a really different way. And in a way that I think is really helpful for, you know, particular kinds of people. It's certainly helpful for me. So, you know, check it out. And don't, you know, and don't get dogmatic. I mean, I like as an example I think like I haven't actually done one of those just because I wasn't inducted in it but like the Gawank I mean Mr. Gawanka passed away but like those Gawanka 10 day retreats I know a ton of people who've had incredible experiences doing them but I'm also I'm a little bit more wary than I used to be of like the idea like there's a power and a beauty and going to a place where you're you know for 10 days you follow originally. regimented schedule and you sit and you sit and you sit and you sit and you sit and that's it but then

there's also like maybe you go on a retreat to a place where it's actually still frankly a pretty disciplined limited schedule but like you can go take a walk and taking that walk isn't just like you not being disciplined or whatever maybe that's like really what you need to do you know what I'm saying so I would yeah so those are kind of things I would check out. I mean, I think, you know, as far as the broader pitfalls, I mean, I think we've talked about some of those. I think there is a huge amount of misconceptions about what the practice is, about why certain people think they can't or can't do it. There's, you know, I think fortunately overall, particularly if you're interested in Vipassana, it's probably relatively speaking pretty safe. But there's definitely, you know, obviously if you get broadly into the world of spirituality, there's a, you know, there's a tonic.

so I would look out for that I think that's incredibly important you know it took me a long time I got I first got introduced to like Taoism in a hospital because I was hospitalized for depression in my teens and that's the first sort of ever hint of of Eastern philosophy that I got was from a nurse there who handed me this book on Taoism and said you know you're a smart kid you might actually find this pretty interesting and that led me down a long long path of of sort of learning all these different methods and different schools of thought and so it took me me a really long time to find the teachers an approach that fits best with me so start slow don't jump into anything over your head before you go on a long retreat i would say put in a lot of time with like

10 20 30 minute sessions you know so you sort of get a good idea of what you're doing before you get plunged into the solitude which can be which can be a huge challenge to somebody especially if you don't have that base level of of practice sort of already down you know um and then i also i would warn deeply against two errors on each side, I would warn against those who insist that you adopt certain anti-scientific metaphysical beliefs or that have too much woo-woo sounding bullshit infused into it. You can think of like the Deepak Chopra types of the world. If you're listening to my or Michael's show, I assume you're a little bit more scientifically minded and skeptical. So anything that I probably like Topchopper more than anybody watches my show. Really? That's weird.

whole another episode on that one. Well, partially, I'm just, you know, look, I'm a little bit of a contrarian and I love provoking people with this stuff. No, I mean, look, a few of these things that I've read are actually just sort of like, you know, popular versions of the Vedas, which I think is fascinating. You know what I, I have a problem and I don't know this, but I, because I just don't know the area. I don't, I really don't like when, you know, people hinge their spiritual argument.

on saying that like you know quantum physics validates it or something I think that that is but well I think that because to me it's bullshit on both ends because I think it's scientifically you know I assume it's bullshit because that's what the people in the field say mostly but then I also think it's like like I think looking at the Vedas or you know that can be really fascinating and interesting and it's I think adopting different cognitive frames of the world is useful. I don't mean, of course, I'm talking about, you know, I'm not saying like, oh, adopt the idea that the world is 3,000 years old. Like, that's just false. But I'm talking like broader structural, like capacity to move in between worldviews, I think is actually super valuable. So to me, it's like, and it is, I think, also true in India. I listened to an interview with a very highly regarded Indian physicist recently. And he was kind of just like, You know, he's also quite observant, and he was just like, yeah, like in India, this kind of split in both directions is genuinely less pronounced in some ways, right? Like, the idea that you need to, like, jettison material realities in order to have, like, a very spiritually infused worldview is just a little bit different there.

But that being said, and I don't even know if I accept that argument. But regardless, I don't like it from either direction because I think, like, you should just be able to, you know, like, explore something like the vision. betas, you know, in its own terms. And again, where I don't like the kind of like, well, that's not true, so I won't read that. I really think I wish people would let go of that perspective and enlarge their capacity, not to accept things, but to think about things and engage with things. And then on the other hand, yeah, I think it's actually kind of a disaster to hinge

spiritual validity on rapidly changing physics and science that you're probably almost certainly misunderstanding to begin with. Yeah. Yeah. I just mean like the, I used him as an example, but the worst excess is, you know, you can get pushed in the direction of like the secret or like extreme forms of idealism. And, you know, I just think just be skeptical is what I'm saying. But then on the other side is this, and I think you were getting at this a little bit, I would

warn especially against those who want to strip the practice of its ethical foundation. strip it completely from its Buddhist context and strip it from like the the notion that you are trying to gain insight into selflessness and impermanence right and I think the obvious form of that is like using it in Silicon Valley for productivity and efficiency but also in more subtle ways that can be done as well I think the Buddhist context is important to engage with and I think having an ethical foundation throughout the practice and really thinking about ethics in conjunction with your meditative practice can go a long way in blunting some of the worst edges of where this practice can go if it's totally unhinged for many sort of ethical

commitments whatsoever. Yep. All right. Well, this has been a long episode. Thank you so much for coming on. It's almost two hours now. We didn't even get to all the questions, but I'm sure this will create some dialogue in our audiences, and we have plenty of Q&As on our patrons for people to pursue some

questions they might have. But as we're wrapping up here, what recommendations or resources would you offer for people who might want to get into this practice as a total beginner? somebody who, you know, has no experience at all, but wants to find a way in. What would you recommend to them? So I would definitely recommend, there's some podcasts from Joseph Goldstein and then actually also Jack Cornfield, who are like, you know, and Sharon Salzberg, who are basically three of the prime people that actually brought this stuff over.

There's the Heart of Wisdom by Jack Cornfield. There's the Insight Hour with Joseph Gold's theme. I actually, for me personally, I'm a really big fan of just the talks of Baba Ram Dass, who was like another important figure in this stuff. Partially just because he was just like this incredible storyteller. Like it is an incredibly entertaining public speaker. But that's very kind of broad flavor. I would really actually check out my friend,

he has a website called do less for peace um and his writing on vassana on politics on burma it's it's fascinating like i would say like i do think i think the buddha the buddwasi blues the prices and perils of genetically modified dharma is a very um And the PGB and the false promise of mindfulness, I think these are, I think for people who, you know, I'm just assuming coming from this, you know, listening to your show, they're going to have a really sharp and critical bent. And Jesse writes exactly to that and has a very deep understanding of that. and like you know we'll specifically talk about like the historical process of political economy and how Marx's you know modes of production relate to how Buddhism is disseminated in the West and then how that's actually affecting how we're processing mindfulness so I think it's both like a really good intellectual grip and I think it also really will show for people who are are, you know, strongly in the left and are rightly allergic to so much of the bullshit that this line of inquiry is really compatible.

I think the experience of insight by Joseph Goldstein is a really good book. One of their podcasts is Dharmaseed. This is just, like, collected talks of Buddhist teachers across the country. But, you know, I don't know. I don't know what, you know, I'm trying to give, like, a range of things. things because there's a lot of different pathways of what people are going to resonate and find interesting. Yeah, I don't think you can go wrong with, as you said, I even had this written down like Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Jack Cornfield. Those are really interesting

people who don't strip it out of its Buddhist context and who have been practicing this stuff for literally, in Joseph Goldstein's case, over 50 years. At times, he would go out for one or two year retreats. So this is somebody who is very humble but has obviously achieved high levels in this field. And then, you know, we live in an app-dominated society. And I don't, I'm not one of these people that thinks this is, this is anathema to practice. So I think there's guided apps like 10% happier, which was actually made with Joseph Goldstein. And so you'll get talks from Sharon Salzberg and Jack Cornfield and guided meditations in this 10% happier app that I think you can get for free. I'm sure you can pay for more stuff. But there's good stuff there. And I'd really recommend, especially

people trying to get into the practice itself to try those guided apps. And then one person that, you know, inspired me from a very young age and who was instrumental in getting me sort of involved with the philosophy behind this stuff when I was a teenager in early 20-something was Alan Watts. He's this weird, theologian, scientist, philosopher guy from England, I think. But you go on YouTube and they have a lot of little clips of him talking about this stuff, lots of interviews with them. His books are great. And so that's really inspirational. inspirational philosophy that you can really get into and see why this stuff matters and what its implications are that I think is accessible and genuinely fascinating for people to jump into.

Yeah, I mean, I would kind of put Ram Dass and I think that's sort of complimentary with Alan Watts. Agreed. Oh, and one other person, if you're more, you know, it's a little, maybe a little bit more of a reach, but I think Krishna Merti is another pretty fascinating kind of philosopher.

Yeah, I mean, he's, and on the end of like this real kind of, actually at times incredibly poetic and touching, but in other ways, like just incredibly ruthless assessment of our human predicament. Oh, yeah.

He's, Christian Mertie's powerful. Oh, and one last thing I I think a kind of a book that's super accessible but is like not, I mean, Sayada Upandita taught a huge amount of Westerners and was very much part of that direct relationship between Burma and the United States and Vapasana, but he was a, you know, he was a Burmese lineage holder and a very traditional teacher in some way. So it's kind of interesting to get that flavor.

So he wrote a book called In This Very Life by Sayada Upendita, which is another. are like very good, just sort of like, you know, I mean, basically life is super short. You should do Vapostina because it's a unique opportunity and then you're going to die. But it's very powerful. Hell yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, that should be a bunch of recommendations for people to get started.

You can always reach out to me or Michael on Twitter too and we could help you with more specified needs if you have that. But Michael, thank you so much for coming on. It's been awesome to finally make this happen. Let's continue to collaborate in the future on different topics because, we have a good vibe together and I think our conversations are genuinely interesting um to people so before we let you go though can you can you can find you and your work online for anybody who wants to follow your work well first of all brett absolutely i agree 100% uh and i i i do get antsy on a weekday

night with the amount of stuff i have to do and this time totally flew by so it was awesome thank you it's my honor we'll definitely do more um yeah i mean the prime way if you want to get the whole show and there really is a you know a lot of you know a lot of history content a lot of i mean that that is sort of the basis of the show in some ways pitch but uh you know you can go check it out and i don't have to give a whole spiel but check out patreon dot com slash tmbs um we have an extremely active i mean obviously you can see people see me on sam cedar uh majority report on youtube but michael brook's show on youtube now is almost that 60 thousand subs and we

in the last several months we've turned that into like a very real channel with a lot of clips as well as the full main show and you know we cover a fair amount of things with a more left emphasis but you know there's

a lot of you know there's definitely a lot of stuff on you know Sanders the U.S. election but I would say you know especially for that space I mean there's deep dives on Thomas Sankara on dialectics. We cover Latin America,

the political imprisonment of Lula extensively, but also other topics, like, you know, redefining human rights to enlarge them, anarchist critique of technology. You'll get a pretty decent flavor of the show, and, you know, it's a great way to engage with it. And then, you know, you could find me on Twitter

and Instagram and all the rest of that stuff. Absolutely. And we'll link to a lot of that in the show notes so people can find Michael easier. All right, Michael, thanks so much, man. Let's keep in touch and do this again, brother. My honor, brother. Thank you so much.

Have a great night. You too. Solidarity. Solidarity. Solidarity. I took acid and mushrooms I did not transcend I felt like a walking piece of shit

in a stupid-looking jacket I walked around town felt like I wasn't sodden there were filthy people seeking comfort for their bodies it was so obscene Filled with loathing and religious fervor, I laid on my friend's bedroom floor for an hour

and tried not to face my prince. And then I saw Jesus, and he said, To go against the word of my father and who The scum of the earth No, we are just, we are just, we are just teens to start Oh, we are just, we are just, we are just, we are just, we are just teens of stun There were people getting drunk, there were people getting high, they were falling to pieces right before my eyes, and I said, mm-hmm, a lot. And there was one guy there who kept asking me, how does the feel, and I didn't even know how to begin to answer that question, so I just said, I don't want to say, I don't want to ask me, how to feel, and I just said, I don't want to know how to begin to answer that question, so I just said, I don't want to say, I don't want to hear

to talk about it. So there I was just another shitbacked civilian. Afraid of the cops when I was outside. Afraid of my friends when I was inside. And I grew tired of the scene. When my dad showed up, he was like, to go get somewhere

of our fathers it goes to glue. We are just we are just teens of style No we are just we are just we are just victims of the contemporary style Yes we are just we are just we are just we are just gone along with the modern style And now everybody, everybody, everybody, everybody's going along with a modern style. Let's do it together. Digots.

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