Rev Left Radio - Zen Buddhism and Social Transformation

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

Zen Buddhist and Philosophy Professor David R. Loy, author of "EcoDharma" and "Money, Sex, War, and Karma", joins Breht to discuss Zen Buddhism, Western and Eastern Philosophy, Awakening, Socially Engaged Buddhism, the Relevance of Marxism, the psychology of consumerism, and more! Find more of David Loy's work here: https://www.davidloy.org/ Learn more about the Rocky Mountain EcoDharma Retreat Center: https://rmerc.org/ Outro Music: "Revolution" by Heartless Bastards ----- Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio or make a one time donation: PayPal.me/revleft LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, I have on the author and Zen Buddhist David Robert Loy to talk about Buddhism and the intersection with Buddhism and political struggle. I love David's work precisely because he adds this collective political social dimension to his Buddhism and shows how Buddhism can inform that political struggle and how political struggle cannot be divorced from the core values of Buddhism itself. So he's somebody that I've wanted to have on for a long time, and I'm glad to finally be able to have that conversation. He's the author of books like Eco-Dharma, Money, Sex, War, and Karma, Notes for a Buddhist Revolution, and a more philosophically heavy book called Non-Duality, in which he traces the non-duality approach and

philosophy through Eastern traditions like Taoism and Buddhism, but also linking them up to Western philosophers who have touched on aspects of it as well. And that's one of the great things that he does as a philosophy professor is weave the Eastern and Western philosophies together and show how they complement one another. So without further ado, I'll get into this conversation with David. But before we do, as always, Rev Left Radio is 100% funded by the listeners. No advertisers, corporate sponsors. No big money behind anything we do here. So if you like what we do here and you would like to support us, you can go to patreon.com forward slash rev left radio. And in exchange for your support, you get access to multiple, often, bonus monthly episodes. So let's get into

this wonderful episode with David R. Loy on Zen Buddhism and Political Struggle. Enjoy. So my name is David Loy. I'm a professor or was a professor. I'm now retired, a professor of philosophy, mostly Buddhist and comparative East-West philosophy. I'm also a long-term Zen Buddhist practitioner and sometimes teacher. Yeah, well, wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on the show. As I said before we started recording, I'm a huge fan of your work.

I've recently read Eco-Dharma and Money, Sex, War, and Karma. And I have, but I have not gotten into non-duality yet. Good luck on that one. Yeah, I know it's a bit tougher than the rest, but I'm very excited for it. So I'm really excited to have you here, and maybe a way to start for people that might not be familiar with you, is just to kind of talk about how you initially became interested in Buddhism, maybe talk a little bit about the tradition that you come out of, et cetera. Sure, sure. Well, people can't see me, so they can't tell, but I'm another of those boomers.

And, you know, coming of age in the 1960s was a pretty heady experience, including, of course, the Vietnam War. And that in itself was quite an education. I became a draft resistor after graduating from college in 69. I moved out to the Bay Area, worked with the draft resistance union out there. And, but also at a certain point, as the war wound down, I came to the conclusion that it wasn't enough to work, you know, for social and political change that I also needed to work in myself. And that was the kind of transition to interest in Zen practice. And in some ways, it was intellectually too, it was a comfortable kind of transition. I had shifted from an early interest in sort of

British analytic philosophy when I was in college to existentialism. And there's a lot of overlap or a lot of relationship, you could say, between certain types of existentialism, especially people like Nietzsche or Heidegger, and Zen Buddhism. But the big issue was actually shifting from reading about it intellectually and actually doing Zen practice, actually meditating, which is what I got into in the when I was living in Hawaii in the early in the early 70s and I did mention earlier

this this realization growing up in the 60s and realizing that that our country lies to us you know regarding Vietnam for example and that the world isn't what we we thought it was and it I suppose I find it interesting that the same thing is true you know really for Buddhism because the basic claim certainly in Zen is that our usual way of experiencing the world is diluted. I mean, one way to say it is that we think we see the world as it really is, but in fact, it's a psychological and social construct. So in that sense, they fit together pretty well, I would say, yeah.

Yeah, incredibly interesting. And so how many years did you spend in studying Zen and practicing Zen pretty intensely, would you say? Well, in a way that still continues. I started around 71 doing retreats and lived in a couple Zen centers in Hawaii, first the Maui Zendo, and then later when I went back to graduate school and philosophy, I was living at another one in Honolulu. So that was several years of pretty intensive practice. And then later, after some years in between I ended up back in Japan where I lived for about 20 years and there I continued the Zen practice ended up finishing the the koan curriculum as we

call it and and became qualified as a as a Zen teacher so I don't know that it's that it's ever actually ended I mean I still practice every day that I can and although you know there's been a natural shift more more teaching than being taught. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's very interesting because your story in some ways weaves together with mine or dovetails with mine because I became interested in political transformation and that led me increasingly toward internal transformation through Buddhism and particularly Zen. I have an undergraduate degree in philosophy. I'm a graduate school dropout because I couldn't sustain it financially with two young children. But I was born in

in 1989, so our Vietnam was like the Iraq War and all the lies that came with that and the devastation of lives that we're still living through now. So there's some interesting parallels there for sure. Have your politics always been on the left in that sense? I think pretty much. Again, I think maybe when I started college back in the mid-60s, I don't know that I was especially political. My father, interestingly, was a career Navy. man. So, you know, as a Navy brat, we moved around quite a bit. I think the wake up for me was Vietnam. And yes, so I'd say politically from then and pretty well straight through. It's been very much on the left. Yeah. Absolutely. And we'll get into more about how those two things

dovetail later on in this discussion. But as a one more introductory sort of question, something I really admire about your work is how you weave together very seamlessly and well. these insights from Western philosophy with insights from Eastern philosophy and mysticism. Can you talk about what each tradition sort of broadly conceived has to offer and why their combination is so essential? Well, as I alluded to earlier, certain types of Western philosophy, especially, I'd say existentialism, jive with Asian philosophy rather more than some of the other types. I suppose what happened at a certain point for me was I sort of lost interest in the the purely intellectual path, the idea that somehow, you know, the goal was to find the perfect proposition that sort of captures the truth.

Maybe, you know, my own career meeting philosophers, taking part in philosophy conferences and that at a certain point I sort of lost interest in that I didn't feel. feel inspired by that as a way to live. But then there was the shift to the existential and there's a lot more overlap in that regard because there's much more emphasis that I think on the experiential. So if we talk about Asian philosophy, there is a different relationship, I would say,

between something like, say, Buddhism and philosophy than you normally find in the West. What I'm trying to say is in India, for example, generally, which is where Buddhism began, there's very much the sense that philosophy is the intellectual part of the spiritual path, and it doesn't sort of stand alone on its own. It's not going to sort of get us to where we really want to go by itself, but that philosophy works very well in coordination

with other types of spiritual practices, whereas in the West, the emphasis on, you know, simply understanding this as an intellectual inquiry, I think has limitations in terms of, you know, how does it really affect our lives? How liberating is it? And at a certain point, I lost interest in that, but I found that the Asian version seemed to work better for me. Yeah, I definitely share that approach and I got into philosophy because I was interested in the quote-unquote big questions, specifically around consciousness. And it's like my focus as an undergrad was philosophy of mind. And it was very fun and interesting, and I still love that tradition and that literature

and that intellectualizing about the mind. But at a certain point, I think that what Eastern mysticism and Eastern philosophy more broadly offers is that first-person experiential, almost experimental approach to dealing with the mind directly as opposed to merely intellectualizing and conceptualizing about it. So those things go together well, but without the wisdom of the East, I think there definitely are limitations when it comes to Western philosophy, particularly in the modern university where it's very analytical philosophy. It's just about propositions and deconstructing other people's arguments, et cetera. It can get very sort of dispiriting if you're looking for something much more profound than that. I would agree completely. Actually, for me, the transition was when I was a junior. I spent a year at King's College, London, in England, and that gave me a really big dose of what's called British analytic philosophy. And the main thing I learned that year is that I really wasn't all that interested in British analytic philosophy for exactly the reasons that we've talked about. It doesn't seem to go deep enough in terms of answering the deep questions about the meaning of life.

and what we want to do with our lives. Whereas I found that, you know, the more spiritual practices of something like Buddhism and then allying the philosophy as an attempt to sort of understand the kinds of transformations that happen if we do undertake those kinds of practices, that has been very meaningful to me. I only went back to graduate school after I lived in a Zen center and, you know, engaged in some pretty intensive meditation for a while and things were happening, changes were happening in my life i'd call them openings realizations insights and then the interest in philosophy we occurred as you know trying to understand what the traditions had to say about those sorts of experiences yeah have you just as a side question um have you throughout

your meditation practice and all the work that you put into it like you know we people talk about nowadays the dark night of the soul or these rough patches in the spiritual journey and like this idea that it's not just about increasingly getting happier and calm or in a linear fashion. Have you had any particularly rough spots throughout your spiritual journey? Oh, for sure. Yes. I think that's a necessary part of it. Because the basic thing that happens when you're meditating is, you know, you're letting go. You're letting go of all kinds of ideas about yourself and who you are and what the world is. And that kind of non-attachment can be pretty painful in the sense that those things we normally,

identify with that give us the meaning of our lives they they they can leave you in a kind of a void and and sort of flailing around so very much in my own experience there have been times a a tremendous sense of loss and yet that I think has been a kind of necessary transition in order to open up and experience the world including myself in a very different way yeah I've found in in my practice as well that anything that is repressed or avoided in your psychological makeup will come up and things that you've, even things that you have sort of consciously thought that weren't a problem for you or that things that you've worked through many years ago, they'll reintroduce themselves in new ways. And it can, it can sort of be dispiriting in the sense of like, oh, I still have so much, you know, stuff that I thought I had cleared. But in that sense, it's always like as this opening occurs, sometimes this nasty stuff does come up and that can be difficult as well. And I just always try to tell people that so as they don't

get too romantic of a version of this path as an exclusively, you know, wonderfully enjoyable path to take, you know. Well, you know, well said. And I think that's another reason, too, why, you know, if possible, it's important to be part of a community of practitioners, which is the Buddha really emphasized. And ideally, you know, if you can have some sort of teacher who understands what's going on, that can make a big difference because you can get lost and confused and stuck in certain ways of thinking. And that kind of guidance can be very, very helpful. Absolutely. Yeah, it's crucial. And I've sort of come across having a teacher only very recently after 10 years of practice, 10 or 12 years of practice, and I've never really had

a sangha or a meditative community. And as my practice deep, I realize the importance of them. As a younger man, I almost had this very egoic sense. Like, you know, I could do this on my own. I could go out on my own and do it. But as the practice develops, it becomes clear that you really do need somebody to help to guide you through. And a community of people that care about you and are on the similar path can be very,

very helpful in that regard. You know, many of us have a very romanticized idea about this path. You know, the idea of maybe going off to a cave and, you know, secluding yourself there and meditating for a long time and somehow going all the way to complete enlightenment or something like that. And I like the way that Joanna Macy put it, that the world has a role to play in our awakening. And a lot of it has to do with how we interact with other people. So it's not simply a matter of going into our heads, but it's the connection of how it is that our usual ways of thinking are, involved in the ways that we relate to other people in the world.

And the really greater charge is, our challenge isn't just sort of coming to sort of understand oneself differently, but actually integrating that into how you actually live and how you actually connect with other people and the kinds of social, political, ecological challenges that we now face. Yeah, absolutely. I think so much of this does really cash out in your interactions, not only with people at large, but particularly with like your family, the close people in your life that know you the most, that see all the ugly sides of you, you know, to try to exclude yourself or

to recoil away from that and go off somewhere and do it alone, it's like only half the practice. You have to sort of be engaged in daily life. And I think that's something that Zen emphasizes that I really appreciate. But let's go ahead and move on to the second section of this conversation. And that's about your work and your books, et cetera. And one of the aspects of your work that I really get a lot out of is your exploration of the self and its relationship to what you call lack. I've had on psychoanalysts, for example, who are not in the spiritual tradition at all, but also use this concept of lack when they're describing their psychology. So I thought that was a little interesting dovetail. But can you talk about the concept of no self

within Buddhism and how that illusion of self is tied to what you describe as lack? Sure, sure. If we go back to the beginnings of Buddhism, back to Shaqa Muni, the historical Buddha. It's pretty clear in his teachings that the single most important concept is Dukha, which is what's usually translated into English as suffering. But that only makes sense if we understand it in the broadest possible sense, right? Not just physical mental pain, but dissatisfaction, frustration, anxiety, dis-ease. And if I had to sort of pluck out this single most important sort of statement or teaching of Buddhism, it would be relating this sense of Dukha dissatisfaction with the delusion of a separate self. That's the other really interesting thing about Buddhism, this kind of counterintuitive claim that the sense of self that we normally all have doesn't refer or correspond to anything real.

In modern language, it's a psychological and social construct. But, you know, because it's not real, because it doesn't have any sort of reality of its own being a construct, there's something inherently sort of uncomfortable about it. It's not only insecure, you could say, but there's nothing there that could be secured. And I think that the way we normally experience this is as a sense of lack, by which I mean the feeling that, you know, something is wrong with me, something is missing, you know, I'm not quite right, or I'm not good enough. And I think this is a really widespread, maybe you could even say kind of universal feeling. I think just about all of us have some sense of something isn't quite right or we're not as kind of together as we should be. And this sense of lack, though, in and of itself, there's something.

vague about it and the particular forms that it takes in other words what it is that I lack that will tend to vary according to the kind of person we are and the kind of culture that were embodied in you know for example I think in the Middle Ages a lot of the power of say the Christian Church was that it gave us an explanation for our sense of lack it talked about sin and original sin and it also gave people a path supposedly to to deal with it you know you have rituals and confession and penance and so forth. But it's interesting in the modern era where we maybe don't

believe in God and don't believe in sin in that sense, but we still have this sense of lack, so how does it come out? And I think pretty clearly in the United States, for example, it comes out in terms of, for example, we don't have enough money. And it doesn't matter how much money you have, it's never enough, because that's the nature of this lack situation. because the sense of lack is a symptom of this fundamental delusion of separation of a separate self. You're never actually going to be able to resolve it by getting enough money if that's your way of understanding what the problem is. So what I like to talk about is what I call lack projects. And I think it's really interesting to see how so many people, maybe almost everyone, you know,

we're caught up in a lack project without necessarily knowing what it is that motivates us. At some level, often very deeply unconscious, this feeling, if only I get enough money, or if only I'm famous enough, and if only I were powerful enough, or for me as a writer, if only more people bought my books, or more people read my books,

or it's really, really easy to get caught up in these ways of thinking. In fact, I think it's very difficult to avoid them. And especially in the United States, I think sort of consumer capitalism is something that fits kind of perfectly into that because the whole point of the consumerism,

which by the way, I would say that consumerism really seems to me as the real religion of the modern world. If you understand religion as that which teaches us what's really important and about the world and how to live in, I think that that for many people, even those who go to church on Sunday morning, for many of them too, it's this idea that somehow consumption is the real meaning of life.

And again, the trap there on the individual level as well as what it's doing to the environment is that if you think that you can consume your way to happiness, it just never happens. You never consume enough, you never get enough. There's always something more to need, something more to to want. And so I do tend to see all of these sorts of things as sort of examples of lack projects fundamentally coming out of this idea that this delusive sense of separate self feels always in some way inadequate, incomplete. I don't know if I expressed that very well. Does that make any sense? Absolutely. I think it makes a bunch of sense. And I think

that most people, as you kind of alluded to, have a vague sense of this. Like, you know, in common language, they'll be like, you know, somebody would say, like, you know, you're trying to fill the void in your soul by doing this, or, you know, people kind of tend to have some sort of folk language around this, although they clearly don't often understand all the mechanisms and how it obviously is tied to this false sense of self. But people do get this feeling. And, you know, we talk about in Buddhism suffering, or duca, unsatisfactoriness. Another way that this manifests in, in and the way that lack manifests is like this sense of never fully having arrived, never being fully complete. It's this sense of like if I could only have this or that, if I could only have the perfect partner, I'd be happy. If I could only have the job, the recognition that I deserve. Maybe if I have kids, I'll be happy.

And then you go out and sometimes you get the thing. And then you realize, oh, nope, I still there. I don't quite feel like I've arrived yet. Maybe I need this other thing. And then society, capitalist society at large, tells us that money and fame are really great ways to fill this void. If you have money and you have fame, you have the recognition and you have the comfort that you need. And then people pursue that doggedly and they come to it and they get the money and the fame in rare instances. And then sometimes they'll go completely crazy because the very thing that they've been told their whole life they should shoot for and that would bring them that sense of fully arriving or being fully complete once they obtain.

it, they realize it turns to ash in their hands. It, you know, it's not what they, it does not at all address the underlying lack. And in fact, just new desires, you know, new drives replace that old, that old one that you've, that you've accomplished. Or in some cases, you know, like with hoarding of money, it's just more and more and more and more and more is like at some point, if I could have all the money in the world, maybe I'll be happy. And obviously, it's destroying our planet. Mm-hmm. You know, the one thing I'd want to add to that, too, is I think modern media, social media, really aggravate this. I mean, if you think about the inherent sense of sort of comparison that's going on, well, if you lived in a small village, you know, who were you comparing yourself with? It would be just a few other people, maybe your age. But it's interesting now, you know, those of us, we go online and we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're. offered these images of incredibly beautiful, incredibly sort of physically perfect people,

wonderful singers, et cetera, et cetera. And I think, interestingly, that does tend to aggravate our sense of lack that compared to them, you know, they're so perfect, so wonderful, so successful, maybe so famous and rich, whereas we feel sort of anonymous in comparison to that. Yeah, absolutely. I think in so many ways, social media. is an outgrowth of the worst aspects of the ego of this sense of lack and an agitator of it, a cause and an effect in a sense. One of the things that Buddhism has allowed me to do that I've played around with a lot and gained a lot from is this ability to sit back and observe the desire to, like we're

talking about consumption and consumerism, like watching the desire to go out and buy something arise and then letting it pass away of its own accord without having to fulfill that desire but often you'll realize in those moments when like that that random desire to go out an impulse by that thing it's often coming from a deeper sense of maybe anxiety or discomfort some subtle sense of of not quite feeling right and the the impulse to consume whether that's going to the fridge and literally consuming food or going online to Amazon and buying something on an impulse is like a way to get out of that sense of that little subtle sense of anxiety in discomfort. Does that ring true to you? Yes, and that's what I'm calling sense of lack,

yeah. That these are the kinds of responses, you know, solutions, quote unquote, to lack that our society sort of bombards us with. It tells us, it inculturates us or conditions us to understand that this is what it is that we lack and this is the way to become happier and to fill up that sense of lack. Yeah. In what sense do you think does Buddhism offer a way to meaningfully address that? I mean, I know that you know that and it's sort of implicit in what you're saying, but I was hoping you can make that more explicit. Well, I think to some degree you already mentioned it in the sense that the practice of meditation,

for example, involves, you know, becoming more aware of our thoughts and other sort of mental processes, including, you know, naturally desires, and being able to observe that to see them arise and pass away without identifying with them. I think that that's really important. But, you know, the other thing that Buddhism talks a lot about, of course, is waking up or enlightenment. And in the terms that we've been using, the idea here would be enlightenment as seeing through this delusion of a separate self. And if the delusion of that separate self is the root of the sense of lack, then seeing through the delusion of separate self gives us much more of a handle, that we don't feel

the sense of lack when we feel more connected with other people and indeed more connected with the world as a whole. So for Buddhism, I think this would be the ultimate solution is realizing that we're not separate. We're not separate from other people. We're not separate from each other or from from the earth and experiencing that that non-duality that interdependence is incredibly liberating liberating from this usual sense of lack beautifully said in your book which i highly recommend money sex war and karma you talk about how the three poisons have been institutionalized in our society and i really found this a helpful way to to think about the problem and lead us into a discussion here in a bit about the relationship between Buddhism and politics.

But I was hoping that you could tell us what those three poisons are and the ways that they've been institutionalized in our society and culture. Sure. Well, you know, to start, it's interesting that the usual duality between good and evil that we kind of take for granted, that's very sort of Christian or Abrahamic generally. Understanding the world in those terms, you know, Buddhism, doesn't see the world in that way. Instead of this struggle within ourselves and in the larger world of good against evil,

Buddhism emphasizes much more the problem is delusion and ignorance. And in terms of understanding where we go wrong, the Buddha talked a lot about what he called the three fires or the three poisons, which we could translate as greed, ill will, and delusion. delusion and traditionally Buddhism understands and expounds these in an individual sense it's like they're individual problems they have to do where you know how to say it if if what I do is motivated by greed ill-will delusion and they often work together then it's going to create problems it's going to

create bad karma it's going to create difficult situations But it's been traditionally very much understood on the individual level, whereas I think it's really important for us today to see, as you said, that they have become institutionalized, by which I mean they've come to take on a life of their own. And it's not as though this disagrees with earlier Buddhism. One of the other interesting things about Buddhism is that from the very beginning, there's a lot of emphasis on impermanence and insubstantiality. And that applies to Buddhism itself in the sense that Buddhism, too, we can see how it's evolved and transformed as it's gone to different cultures. And I think now that it comes to the West or to the modern world, I think this is one of the natural developments that we can see. So, for example, greed. Well, greed is not only an individual problem, but I think you could say, if we understand greed as you never have enough, you always

want more, I think that's a pretty good description of corporate consumerism. You know, on the one hand, we as individuals, we never have enough, we always want, and that's encouraged. But also, if you look at corporations, they're never profitable enough. Their share, market share, their share prices are never high enough. There's always this wanting more and more and more. But as I like to say, why is more and more always better if it can never be? be enough that seems to be the kind of trap that we get stuck in and I think something like that applies to the other poisons or fires as well for example

ill-will well I think that's that's a pretty good hmm that's helpful for understanding a number of sort of institutionalized problems you could look at our very punitive legal system it maybe helps us understand to why we in the United States having what four percent of the world's population and have something like 25 percent of its inmates its prisoners those numbers may be a little off now but just you know something about that or our attitude toward undocumented immigrants refugees and maybe even more generally are our militarism maybe that's the best example of all I mean it's quite

incredible if you think about it you know we spend I mean if you measure our military in terms of the amount of resources that we devote to it we the United States is by far the most militarized society in in human history and the other side of that of course is that if you spend that much on the military well you're going to have to use it once in a while you're going to have to justify that or or you could say if if the main weapon that you've got is a hammer well everything is going to look like a nail and I think all of that encourages us to to view the world in a particular kind of militaristic fashion so

I think our militarism too would be a I mean we always rationalize it in terms of self-defense but but I think that's that that gets harder and harder to accept you given the role that it plays generally in trying to impose our vision and in our way of extracting resources from other countries all around the world oil right oil in the Middle East and all all about that so anyway I I would say militarism is a good example of ill will and likewise if you think about how to say institutionalized delusion well I think that that applies a lot to the media in particular certainly it's you know in in this country well I mean

There's so many ways to go there. You can talk about it in terms of various types of tribalisms, nationalism, racism, and so forth. But there's also the sense in which the media, the mainstream media, being private corporations for the most part, you know, they're not so much interested in informing or educating us about what's really going on. It's much more because they make their money from advertising, from finding out ways to grab our eyeballs, sell them to the highest bidder, built into their function has been sort of rationalizing or somehow socializing, conditioning us into understanding the world in terms of consumerism, that the meaning of life is about making and spending and spending money.

So, I mean, these are just a couple ways to try to understand how the fundamental problems that Buddhism identifies from the very beginning, have taken on a particular kind of collective or institutionalized form that sort of takes on a life of its own. And therefore, this creates new kinds of problems in the sense that requires different types of responses. Because whereas traditional Buddhism would say, well, the problems of greedy or delusion are individual,

and so you work on them in your own life. Once we see how they have become collective and institutionalized, It raises really difficult questions about what do we need to do in order to address them collectively and actually resolve them. Right. Yeah. Well, said, and I think there is this inseparability that arises from such questions of the transformation of the individual weeding these poisons out within yourself and the simultaneous collective process of weeding them out in the society at large. it's not sufficient to just weed it out in yourself and to like not pay attention to the to the social and the collective and on the on the political left you want to change these institutions on the political level

but greed hate and delusion are alive and well within you well that's going to limit what you can accomplish politically and collectively so seeing these two things as simultaneous parallel processes that need to happen together i think is is part of what we try to try to advocate here at Rev. Left. And, you know, the three poisons are known as, like, you know, one way to talk about them is planting the seeds of further suffering. If you're as an individual are acting in ways that are rooted in greed, hate, and delusion, you literally are planting seeds of your own future suffering and the people around you. And then collectively, I mean, I look out at American society and at the world more broadly, and I see infinite amounts of suffering. Every major

city in America, the richest country that's ever existed, has blocks and blocks of homeless people, untreated mentally ill people. You know, during this pandemic, the rich got double, triply, quadruply rich while working and poor people lost everything they had, were evicted with no protection, got a few, you know, stimulus checks, but, you know, for most people, especially if you were depending on that to pay all your bills, that is nowhere near sufficient. And all these sufferings, I think, are piling up and really pointing out some of the pathologies at the core of not just American society, but the sort of global society that because Americans is a hegemon is sort of made in its grotesque image.

So, well said. And of course, one more point that you pointed out is how these things are all interconnected. I mean, the greed inherent in corporate capitalism is also rooted in delusion, right? And the hate of the foreigners rooted in delusion and often greed. And militarism and imperialism is extractive, which is rooted in greed. etc. So they really all feed on each other and they perpetuate one another. Let's go ahead and move on to another one of your books, Eco-Dharma, which I'm a huge fan of. In that book, you outlined which you dubbed as the Eco-Satfa path. Now, many people listening might not even know what a Bodhisattva is.

So maybe start there and then elaborate on this concept of Eco-Sat-Fa. Sure. So Eco-Sat-Fa is a kind of, I don't know, neologism or a pun on the Bodhisattva, as you said. It's a version that emphasizes the ecological side of that path. So, you know, within Buddhism, there are a couple different tensions in the sense that, and this is a very rough kind of way of talking about it, but in early Buddhism there's a lot more emphasis on individual awakening or enlightenment, but in later Mahayana Buddhism, which you find in places like to Tibet, China, Japan, Korea, and so forth, there's a lot more emphasis on what's called the Bodhisattva path, which basically means that you want to wake up, you want to follow

this path and become enlightened, not just for yourself, but for the sake of helping everyone to wake up, to helping everyone not just wake up, but you could say deal with the social duca, the social suffering that you were so well describing. just a moment to go. And at the roots of that really is the realization. As I was trying to say earlier, if the fundamental delusion that's so problematic is the delusion of a separate self, and if waking up involves realizing our non-duality, our interdependence with others, then that includes the realization that my own well-being is not separate from the well-being of others. And so as long as we have this delusion of self, as long separate self again, and as long as there's this, this delusion that, you know, somehow if I can fill up the, the sense of lack, then everything is going to be okay.

As long as we're motivated by that, in some way we're going to be self-preoccupied. It's like because of the sense of lack to a larger or lesser degree, it's going to encourage a kind of, yeah, what's in it for me? Because I'm trying to get somewhere. I'm trying to get something up that will make me feel okay. And right now I don't feel okay because of the sense of lack. So a certain sort of self-preoccupation, as I said. But once we can see through that and get a sense of our non-separation, our interdependence with others, then there's the possibility of this really momentous shift from, you know, what's in it for me, to what can I do to make this world a better place for all of us?

And so the idea of the Bodhisattva path is that one understands the path as having two components. On the one hand, we continue to work on our own awakening. You know, we continue to do meditation or whatever our path, may be, but we also know that that's not sufficient, that we also need to be engaged in the world because we're not separate from the world. And so we get out there and do what we can to alleviate the suffering of other people. Because in some ultimate sense, they're not other to us. They're not separate from us. And that their well-being is very much connected with our own well-being. You know, there's a very interesting

quotation from a actually he's he's not a Buddhist he's a Neal Vedantin named he's Arga Data but I think he put it so well when he said quote when I look inside and see that I am nothing that's wisdom when I look outside and see that I am everything that's love between these two my life flows and and I just find that brilliant because I think that's really a description of the Buddhist path the two pillars wisdom and love or as we usually say wisdom and compassion. And that way of putting it really shows the relationship between them, you know, that somehow although at the beginning of our meditation, of our path, you know,

we're motivated by the sense something is wrong with me. But sooner or later, as we follow that path, we realize that the fundamental delusion is separation and that we need to be engaged. Traditionally, as I said, Buddhism has focused very much on the individual level and therefore So often it's been understood as the engagement that's necessary involves helping other individuals, maybe helping them wake up. But as we were just mentioning a moment ago, one of the other really important developments is understanding how the three poisons are not just functioning on an individual level, but that they're also collective and institutionalized. And it's kind of interesting to observe what's happened in, say, American Buddhism over the last generation or so. I'm very much heartened by the fact that I think more and more it's recognized that it can be really helpful, helpful to our own practice, helpful to ourselves as well, to be engaged, maybe to help homeless people or prison Dharma or hospice work, something like that.

But for the most part, I think to use a metaphor here, we've become a lot better at pulling, drowning people out of the river. But we're not very good yet at asking why there are so many more people drowning in the river. Who or what is pushing them in upstream? And that's why I think this new development, looking at the institutional version of these poisons, has become so important. Yeah. That reminds me of a quote. I forget the bishop who said it, but he says, when I go out and feed the poor, I get called a saint.

When I ask why there are so many poor people, I get called a communist. That's exactly. Right, right. I think that speaks to what you're saying there. I love that quote that you mentioned earlier about the connection between wisdom and compassion. And in my experience, the meditation practice that I've undergone for many years, just like you said, it started with us like, well, how do I, these feelings? I want to know myself and all this stuff, right?

But as I've done it, I've opened up what, like, I think Jack Cornfield calls it, calls this ocean of tears within you, or, you know, is known as the Bodhi Chito, or the heart, the awakened heart mind, where the love for other beings, the suffering when I see a total stranger suffer bringing me to tears constantly, like that compassion and that wisdom go hand in hand and they've never been separate for me and it's not like you know this intellectual sense of like oh yeah me and that person you know we're the same or we're all one it's this visceral felt reality that is just as undeniable as the wind blowing on your skin when you step outside on a windy day it's it feels that visceral and so that that bodhis sotpha path has always seemed natural to me

and always appealed to me but i think what you're saying with the eco sotpha path is and correct me if I'm wrong, but in the same way that the Bodhisattopath is about seeing yourself and others as not fundamentally separate, and therefore this huge wave of compassion comes up naturally when you see another suffer because in some sense, this deep connection you feel to them brings that suffering into something like your own suffering. Well, the eco-sodphopath, at least how I understood it, is to do that same move but with the natural world, right? Like, I'm not fundamentally separate from the natural world. Moreover, all beings on the planet are dependent for their happiness and well-being on the healthy sustainability and biodiversity of the earth.

Therefore, you know, I'm not separate from others. I'm not separate from the natural world. And I actually have a responsibility not only to others, but to the future and to the natural world as such. And I think that could be a profound thing to weave into a practice. And I think it's much more Buddhist, if you will, than denying that responsibility, than turning away from the social, the political, and the ecological, and just dwelling on the self and your own attainments. Yes, yes indeed. And it's interesting, Buddhism has actually been a little bit slow in this move, but it's definitely happening now, you know, the concept of ecodharma and the importance of our, you know,

understanding and feeling more deeply our relationship to the earth it it's interesting if you go back to the life of the Buddha insofar as we have it and it's it's always hard to tell what the real fact is there behind all the myth but the Buddha had a very deep relationship with the natural world I mean especially trees supposedly he was born in a grove of trees when his mother went into premature labor and then you know much later when he went out and on his spiritual path he went into the forest he he studied there he practiced there he meditated there he got his enlightenment under a tree next to a little river he mostly taught outside and then when

he died once again he died between two trees so he had this really profound relationship with the natural world and and i think that that's an interesting kind of challenge even to Buddhism insofar as most of us now when we meditate we meditate inside you know four square buildings with windows and screens so we can control you know temperature and humidity and insects and so forth but but it's an interesting question to wonder you know whether we've lost something or whether we're missing something because of this disconnection from the natural world and and so part part of the concern of this new development ecodharma is

is finding ways, personally, to reconnect. We have this new Rocky Mountain Eco-Dharma retreat center up in the mountains above Boulder here. And in the retreats that I teach, as much as possible, we're outside, we're meditating outside. We're doing everything outside, whether permitting. And I think that's important. It's hard to defend something.

It's even hard to love something if you don't have a personal relationship with it. And I think that's part of the task that's facing us today. Yeah. Yeah, I could not agree more of the importance of practicing outside. And even if you're not actively meditating, just the energy put into going out and being in the natural world, particularly I find it beneficial to be alone in the natural world because I think so much of the self, you know, the ego is bound up with others and how other people think about you. And if you spend enough time out in the natural world alone, the sort of bolts on the ego begin to loosen just a little bit, you know, and it can be very rewarding and instill within you, this deep love for this natural world and this natural desire to want to protect it and preserve it sort of blossoms up in that open space. What we often don't realize is that our ego is a really, it's a social construct as much as a psychological one.

It has to do with our relationships with other people. And so insofar as we want to see through that and get deeper, as you say, spending time by ourselves, which, by the way, is something we emphasize in our ecodharma retreats. People go off on solos. That's a very important part of it. And I think most people find that as the most profound part of the retreats,

that it does help them do what you were just referring to. Beautiful. Um, let's go ahead and move on. And this is a question I ask, um, to anybody that comes on from the Buddhist world, because I always like to get everybody's take is more or less pointed at the same thing, but it is always a little different in how they articulate it. So in your opinion or in your verbiage, what is awakening or enlightenment in Buddhism? Um, and I think we've already covered the second half of this question, which is, is individual awakening necessary for the, well, I guess we've kind of touched on that. But if you could talk about that as well, is individual awakening necessary? for the kind of social transformation that we so desperately need. Well, important questions, yes. Buddhism too, how to say it, when we look at something like, say, Christianity or even the Bible in general, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that, you know, the ultimate goal of the practice of the path is to transcend or escape this world, you know.

And there does seem to be a kind of subtle or not so subtle devaluation of this world as simply a kind of a means to prepare for an eternity with God in a much better place. And to some degree, you find some of that same, you can see that in Buddhism, especially in early Buddhism. The idea there is nirvana nabana is not to be reborn into this world of suffering. But there are different ways that that can be understood. And another way to put it, which is the way we've been talking, is that the path is not about transcending this world in the sense of not being physically reborn into it, but transcending the way that we normally experience

and understand the world and coming to see its essential nature, including our own essential nature. So the differences between our usual kind of experience or understanding of experience, where the world is a collection of separate things, including me that sometimes bump into each other and interact with each other, versus letting go of the sense of separate self and realizing the interconnectedness of everything that nothing has any separate reality or being of its own. So I guess that's the way that I tend to look at awakening or enlightenment. As you say, there are many different aspects that one can focus on,

But the fundamental one that I think we really need today is this letting go of the delusion of separate self, which the practice can help us do. And sort of falling into the world, well, the great Soto Zen master Dogen said it's about forgetting the sense of self and realizing your intimacy with all things. And so that's the way that I tend to sort of understand what the Buddhist path is about. The second part of your question, is individual awakening necessary for social transformation? You know, what I see is problems on both ends. Within Buddhism, it seems to me that there has been so much emphasis on individual transformation, which actually I don't think is really what the Buddha was so focused upon. Or what I'm trying to say is I think he had a much broader social understanding.

If you look at the Buddha's attitude towards, say, women and caste, he was a lot more progressive than the Buddhist institutions that developed after he died. I mean, the situation of women in his time was pretty bad as a pretty patriarchal society in India at that time. But he created a songa, a community of practitioners, nuns, you know, for women with the realization that they have the same Buddha nature or however you want to say it, they have the same potential to wake up as men. Huge, huge, something we take for granted today, but in that cultural context, that that's pretty progressive. Likewise, India at that time was already sort of falling into a pretty

rough, tough caste system, which you could call their version of racism, to some degree, where people were sort of split up in terms of what they were supposed to be doing, and it was very much hierarchical. So the Brahmin priests were the best ones, and, you know, the Buddha emphasized what really makes someone a Brahmin. He understood this in a more metaphorical way. It's not how you're born, it's how you live. And he emphasized that when you join the Buddhist order, you lose caste. So, I mean, when you sort of reflect on that, I think it suggests he had a lot more understanding of sort of the duca connected with social issues.

But then after he died, I mean, Buddhism became patriarchal. The women sangas for the most part died out. And Buddhism came like so many other religions. do for the most part it came to an accommodation with the state it didn't it didn't challenge the social structure it it didn't force or it didn't challenge the kings but it tended to sort of take advantage of them because it wanted to be supported by them so it's only in more modern times that we're becoming more aware as we've been talking about about some of the social and and political

implications of the Buddhist Dharma. So that's on the Buddhist side, but I also see it on the sort of social side as well, the way that so often the political process has been understood simply as overthrowing rulers and getting new people in. And I think it really fundamental Buddhist insight there is that if you don't also work on yourself, the danger is that you're going to end up simply replacing one gang of thieves or nasty people with another. I mean, when we look at how so-called socialist revolutions have gone wrong, if the people involve simply understand the problem as one of social structure and they don't see the importance of working on their own greed, ill-will delusion, it's going to be very difficult.

So the conclusion that I sort of draw from this is the importance of transformation on both levels that we need to work on ourselves, on our own greed, ill will delusion, but we also need to work on the institutional and the collective level. And if you only work on one of those levels, it doesn't really work well enough.

You don't get the kind of transformations that you really want. Yeah. well said and i and i completely agree with that conclusion and it's something i i i push pretty hard on the show because i've been um for many many years in left wing radical revolutionary circles organizations etc and there's tons of really like well-meaning loving people in those things that just genuinely want to build a better world but you know as myself and many others are we're limited by the very things that buddhism can address and as as you said if we

overthrow the systems that exist today and they certainly deserve it, but we repopulate it with the same old, greedy, delusional, egoic people, or those problems are never addressed. And I think, yeah, as you say, we replicate some of the worst patterns of the very thing that we're trying to transcend and transform. Do you think this is like sort of a two-part side question? Do you think more people are getting involved in this waking up process as like nature is sort of demanding it? And what are your thoughts on mindfulness becoming so pop-cultural in America today? Hmm. Some good questions there.

Definitely something like, you know, Buddhism is in transformation. I think more and more in the direction that we've been talking about. In particular, when I started practicing back, say, in the early 70s, you know, Buddhism was very, very white, very middle class. And, you know, people of color didn't really feel comfortable there, and they weren't very attracted. And I think one of the really important developments that's happened, even more influential than Eco-Dharma, has been helping, Buddhist Sanghas becoming more aware of racism and sort of implicit kinds of white privilege that sort of were taken for granted, which is, you know, difficult not to take for granted. if you've been, you know, socialized in a certain kind of way, you know, being white and middle class.

So I'm very hopeful about that. And I'm also very hopeful about even looking at ecodharma, the idea that those are two separate fields, that on the one hand, you have socially engaged Buddhists concerned about racism and other and maybe gender issues. And then on the other hand, you have Buddhists concerned about ecodharma and the ecological crisis. One of the really exciting things that's happened is the way that those are sort of interacting. Certainly with our Eco-Dharma Center above Boulder here, you know, the realization and emphasis on that the kind of, you know, transformations we're looking for aren't simply a matter of sort of in some abstract way trying to change our relationship with the Earth, but that we can't really separate those challenges from the challenges of a more socially just society where black and other people of color are treated better. Interestingly, you know, we can understand those as really parts of the same problem, parts of the same delusion insofar as we split.

Insofar as some people, some races, some species feel that they are separate and different from and better than some others, you know. So in terms of eco-dharma, we need to overcome what you might call speciesism, just like in the case of the relationship between, say, white people, people of white privilege, and say people of color, we need to overcome that sense of duality as well. So I'm very encouraged by the kind of developments that are happening on that level right now. I've forgotten your other question, Brett, if you can remind me. sure yeah the other aspect no i really love your answer to that and more people getting into it and the the dharma itself expanding um in these different cultural contexts and and taking seriously

the issues that are in those cultures and in our culture racism is certainly a huge one the second question was uh just surrounding like the the pop cultural popularity of mindfulness to the point where like you know even like tech bros are meditating and like corporations are having their workers do five-minute meditations to increase productivity. I was wondering if you see that as a negative thing or just pointing to the fact that these are becoming more mainstream and therefore they're going to have these sorts of manifestations. Yeah, it's interesting that within the Buddhist world, there is a variety of responses to what we might call the mainstreaming of mindfulness. For the most part, I'm very hopeful.

about it or I find it as a positive thing I mean I remember back in the 70s when I started you know there was the sense of oh my god this is a wonderful practice and it's you know everyone's going to want to do this and it's going to transform the whole world well no everyone isn't going to want to do Zen Buddhist meditation but nonetheless I see this as a kind of offshoot it's something that Buddhism offers that then can be modified in a way that many other people can find it very beneficial. Now, inevitably there, as we know, I mean, you know, capitalism can sort of incorporate and distort kind of anything, well I guess the word is commodify anything in the sense that

mindfulness too can become very problematical in the sense that it can be understood as a technique to as you put it you know become more efficient become more profitable right so maybe somebody maybe some boss rather than reducing the incredibly heavy workload on some of their employees they they might send them on a mindfulness course to help them become more efficient and and be more focused so that aspect I can see as very problematical but nonetheless when we look at other aspects in particular like using mindfulness in terms of PTSD certain types of medical conditions and in schools I can see it very beneficial but nonetheless

you know one always has to keep in mind this this question about how much is it that mindfulness is is used as simply one more technique of the corporate capitalist system and how much is it that ultimately challenges that whole way of understanding and and relating to the world I mean I have heard stories about people I heard about a boss out in the Bay Area who stopped sending his employees on mindfulness courses because after they took the course they would quit his job and you know maybe that's apocryphal but but the point there is really an important one that you know when we start mindfulness training

and we don't necessarily know what that's going to lead to. Our initial motivation or the motivation of the person who paid for it might be one thing, but once we actually get into it, it can sometimes change our lives in some pretty dramatic ways. So it's very early in that sort of revolution, and it's too early to know exactly where it's going to take us, and we certainly need to be wary about the corporatization, the commodification of it.

But for the most part, I would say, I think it's a hopeful and a beneficial thing. Yeah, I largely agree with that. Actually, I completely agree with that. And I think, you know, I appreciate work like yours and many others who advance these practices in their proper cultural, philosophical, psychological context and not strip out one little itty-bitty practice, reduce it to more or less a breathing exercise, and then use it to increase productivity, which is happening.

But when anything new or anything, you know, novel takes off, it's going to manifest in every way, from the best ways to the worst ways and everything in between. And so it's not surprising that with this newfound interest in these practices, there are some elements of them that are being, you know, co-opted, corporatized, etc. But overall, the movement that is getting more and more people into it, I think is important. The medical and scientific benefits is very interesting, particularly in a secular scientific society, which, you know, is sort of disenchanted with religion increasingly. to have the insights of Buddhism. So again and again, so vociferously agree with the insights of science and science validating meditation as useful in so many ways.

I think that only helps its spread. And I think it's a testament to the profundity of these practices and the insights that people 2,500 years ago, you know, we're doing these practices that now in the scientific age are being continuously validated at the scientific level as really important and transformative practices to engage in. That sounds right to me, yeah. Really quick side note again.

I like asking these side questions, and they come up as we talk. Sure. Are you, because we cover mysticism broadly. We talk about Christian mystism, Sufism within Islam, you know, all these different forms of mysticism. Are you a perennialist in the sense that you believe that all these mystical traditions are more or less getting at the same thing? Or do you think there's fundamental differences in these different, really? contexts? Yeah, that's a very big question and something I've sort of thought about and worked on in a number of different ways. I don't have the sense that they're necessarily

talking or aiming at exactly the same thing. Nonetheless, what I do have a strong sense of is, you know, so many resonances between them. In other words, without saying they're exactly the same and just different ways of expressing it. Once we really get into it, I think the overlaps are truly quite extraordinary. And the other thing we need to keep in mind is that every one of these spiritual traditions is very complex. I mean, because we have one word for it, the tendency might be to think it's like one thing. In fact, you have a great variety of people talking about a great variety of different things. And so it's a little bit dangerous to generalize. So I guess I'm saying that I think there's lots of important overlaps and resonances,

but I'm still a little reluctant to say that they're actually talking about or aiming at exactly the same. Fascinating. Very fair. What are your thoughts on the relevance of Marxism in today's world? This show is obviously coming from a left-wing in Marxist perspective. So I'm just wondering your thoughts on the relevance of that class critique. And then how much culpability more broadly do you think capital? capitalism has in the many interconnected problems that we currently face. Well, I have a lot of appreciation of sort of Marx's basic perspective and something that I think we're constantly reminded of again and again is the whole superstructure, substructure.

I mean, for me, the fact that the people who own and control the economic system tend to control the political system as well. And I think we see that, you know, coming up again and again, and if anything, becoming even more important with sort of recent Supreme Court decisions. So, I mean, I see a lot of wisdom in that way of understanding, that particular way of understanding the relationship between the economic, between the political and the cultural.

know. I also appreciate, too, Marx's critique of religion, by the way. I mean, I, obviously, I have a lot of interest and support for, you know, Buddhist practices, but I think it's really important to acknowledge how much religions have and generally continue to have or function as kind of support of the state. And, you know, sadly, that happened in Buddhism as well. I mean, we know how that happens, say, in Europe, with Christianity and so forth. But if you go back to what I was saying earlier about how Buddhism came to an accommodation with the state, it didn't challenge the kings. It didn't challenge the duca, the suffering that might have been created by how they were ruling. In fact, I think that was probably a major factor in the emphasis simply on the individual level, That if you're suffering, it's your own karma, that attention was turned away from the suffering caused by a very hierarchical structure with kings or emperors at the top.

So I think that too has been very important seeing how religion has, in most cases, been co-opted and used in that degree in that way. And of course what we've been talking about is basically based on the realization that there are other potentialities within religions. You mentioned mysticism, not a word we usually use in Buddhism, but I suppose that's okay. And certainly, you know, when we look, say, in Christianity or some of the great mystics there, Meister Eckhart or Sufism, that there are these other potential. that can be and need to be developed. I think Marx in his time maybe wasn't so aware of that, and so this is a kind of a new development. You know, the other thing that I've been thinking about recently, frankly, is the whole question of a working class. And I'm wondering if we still have one in the sense of, I mean, obviously a lot of people are still working and are very working for very low wages and having a very hard time getting by. But again, because of the way media work now, I wonder whether that makes it a lot more difficult to have a kind of working class consciousness, right?

That when you look at, you know, television and Netflix and the ways that people spend their time and what they tend to identify with, I wonder if a lot of social media have tended to really get in the way from understanding class consciousness and the conflict of. classes and and and how much that that contributes to the incredible gap still growing gap between rich and poor and why it is that so many poor people especially white rural areas support somebody like Donald Trump which is you know really flabbergasting I think that that in that regard to the kinds of social technological changes ask questions you know whether quote-unquote, the working class is going to be the engine that creates revolution and

brings about the kind of society we want. I mean, I don't know how that's going to work. Yeah. I don't know. Does that make any sense, Brett? Yeah, I think those are very interesting thoughts. And on your point about the media and it's sort of ideological buffering against class consciousness, I think that's certainly true politics because it doesn't deliver economic

material benefits to people for many decades at this point, especially after the 2007-2008 crisis, there's this turn in politics towards the cultural. So, you know, it's more inflected across cultural differences as opposed to class struggle. And so you get people that are desperately poor or working class voting for a rich boy, want to be fascist like Trump. And there's also the precarity of the gig economy. In the olden days, there's factory floors where you have have hundreds and hundreds of workers stacked on top of each other all day and the spread of class consciousness, you know, in mines or in factories can be much easier than all these atomized Uber drivers and DoorDash delivery guys and, you know, these service industry works.

Then you have three jobs. Well, which job am I going to unionize that? I'm just trying to keep my head above water. And so I think that also breaks down some of the advantages that the working classes had in the past with at least the spread of class consciousness. Right. Well, it's interesting, working from home like so many people have been doing and will continue to do, you know, that's very different than, as you say, being on the floor together and relating to each other. Yeah. Again, this, it aggravates the individualism and the sense of separation that has become such a problem.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I think the deunionization efforts in the 80s with Thatcher and Reagan, there's really a concerted effort on the part of the other. the ruling class to break up the one mechanism that workers historically had to pursue power and have a seat at the table. And so now we live in this de-unionized, precarious gig economy, and there's no wonder that people are hyperatomized and can't really get that class consciousness to a point of organization. I did want to mention something about your religion point on Marx because I definitely agree, and Marx is very insightful when he says that. But there's also a lot of compassion in that opiate quote where he's like, you know,

religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world. He's gesturing to the fact that people use religion as an escape from the grind of industrial capitalist society. And there's some compassion in there, which I've always liked to emphasize, but, you know, particularly thinking about Christianity coming to American capitalist context, we have these white evangelicals all over the country that are very, very far right, made up a huge portion of the Trump support base, still support him entirely. You know, they have these mega churches where the pastor's a multimillionaire and this prosperity gospel, which is really cuts exactly antithetical to what Christ himself stood for and said. And so I think that's a great example of religion being

subordinated to the overall goals of a broader culture and then just acting as a perpetrator of that culture instead of a challenger to it. Yep, yep. I think you're just right on there. Absolutely. Well, I love this conversation. This is incredibly interesting. As I said, I've been a long-time fan of your work and remain one. One question I like to end with with somebody like you is what main lesson do you hope that readers take away from your work overall? If you could have one impact on people that read your work, what would you have that impact to be? Well, maybe a double answer here. I mean, I think something like Buddhism, which I tend to focus on, even though I've, you know, I've done a lot with other spiritual traditions. But, you know, the importance of sort of demythologizing Buddhism

or trying to communicate its teachings in a way that speak more directly to our situation today. And the second side of that is one of the really, if not the most important way that it speaks to our situation today, is the necessity of this double bodhisattva path that we need to find ways to work on our own transformation to find ways to address our own sense of lack and the delusion that somehow my well-being is separate from the well-being of others you know a delusion that is so rampant in our society that so many things encourage right we we need to work on that level but we also need to see to see the importance of engaging with other people realizing that this pursuit of our own individual transformation

ultimately it needs to dovetail into this larger context where you and I find ways to come together and work for the larger kind of social political, economic, and ecological challenge that we face today. The importance of bringing these two together. I guess if I had to sort of pick out the one thing that I would hope people would get from my work, it would be that. And I certainly get that of your work. And I think that's why I'm so attracted to it is because we share that goal. And I really appreciate your work, your books. I'm continuing to read them. And I would love to have you back on. in the future to discuss more of your work because there's a lot of it and we could have a very

good conversation on a multitude of fronts but uh before i before i let you go can you just please let listeners know where they can find you and your work online sure again a double answer i mean i have a website uh davidloy.org you know wwwd davidloy dot org one word david loy um and there's a lot of on there including you know sort of summaries of all the books and lots of articles and blogs and videos and such but the other thing I want to emphasize is I'm one of the founders of this new Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center and I also encourage people to kind of check that out and see what we're engaged with doing and we have our own website R M-E-R-M-E-R-C

that's for Rocky Mountain Ecodarmor Retreat Center.com and there's a lot there about, well, in particular, ecodharma. Wonderful. I will link to all of that in the show notes. And I know you're located in Colorado. We're actually going on a trip next month with my kids and my nieces and nephews because they've never seen the mountains. We live here in Omaha.

So I think we won't be stopping in Boulder. We'll be driving through it. But it's a beautiful, beautiful place out there. And I would love to spend enough time out there to be able to participate in your retreat center. but yeah so just keep up the great work and let's let's keep in touch and hopefully you could come back on another time to have more discussions i'd be pleased to do that brett yeah thanks for your interest i've really enjoyed the conversation and yeah look forward to doing it again sometime when you're gone my friend have you forgotten when

There was a time filled with hope instead of fear that's in your heart. There was a time when life was simple and innocent to start. Do you remember? Do you remember? Way you going, my friend. Have you forgotten what? There was a time when false information wasn't so ramping in the sphere. There was a time when you weren't questioning everything you hear.

Do you remember? Do you remember? and constantly being advertised or life commercialized and disguised is happiness and pills and potions fancy threads and cause emotions hypnotized by guilted lies to lie in the pockets of so few while hungry politicians feed bullshit to the masses to ensure their statuses and other divides the classes Are you a bone with a voice

So open up and speak your mind Raise consciousness and elevate How we all relate Don't hesitate Don't need to be a better smile And anybody else Leave judgment at the door For others in yourself

The revolution is in your mind The revolution is in your mind The revolution is in your mind The revolution is in your mind Big brothers watching you And trying to sell you something new And I just want to take away Take away the blues

Big brothers watching you And trying to sell you something new And I just want to take away Take away the blues The revolution is in your mind The revolution is in your mind The revolution is in your mind The revolution is in your mind

Revolution Revolution Revolution Revolution Revolution Revolution Oh Revolution

Revolution When I get up I get up in the morning All I really want is the truth When I open my eyes And I get up in my eyes Get up in the morning All I really need is the truth

You are falling with a voice So open up and speak your mind Raise consciousness and elevate How we all relate, don't hesitate No need to be a better smile I'm any anybody else Lead judgment at the thought For others in yourself

The revolution is in your mind Revolution is in your mind Revolution is in your mind Revolution is in your mind Revolution is in your mind When I get up Oh I get up in the morning All I really want is the truth

Oh when I open my eyes And I get up in the morning All I really need is the truth Revolution! Revolution! Revolution! Revolution! Revolution!

Oh! The revolution is in your mind. The revolution is in your mind. The revolution is in your mind. The revolution is in your mind. So, you know, I'm going to be able to be. Revolution, revolution, revolution, revolution, revolution, revolution, revolution, revolution, revolution, revolution. Revolution is in your mind

Revolution is in your mind The revolution is in your mind Your ambition is in your mind Thank you.