Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 214: The Case for Devotion, Kittisaro and Thanissara

Episode Date: November 20, 2019

Kittisaro graduated from Princeton as a Rhodes Scholar and went on to Oxford before going to Thailand to ordain with Ajahn Chah in 1976. He was a monk for 15 years. Thanissara started Buddhist practice in 1975, decided to ordain after meeting Ajahn Chah and spent 12 years as a Buddhist nun. They had known each other for years when they fell in love in 1991. They decided to leave the order so they could be together and were married the following year. They have gone on to become co-founders of Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat in South Africa and co-authors of Listening to the Heart: A Contemplative Guide to Engaged Buddhism. They are Guiding Teachers of Sacred Mountain Sangha, on the Spirit Rock Teacher Council, and are Core Teachers at Insight Meditation Society. In a wide ranging interview, they discuss their practice and how their monastic lives have prepared them for their life in a relationship. Plug Zone Website: http://sacredmountainsangha.org/ Books Listening to the Heart: A Contemplative Journey to Engaged Buddhism: https://www.amazon.com/Listening-Heart-Contemplative-Journey-Buddhism/dp/1583948392 Time to Stand Up: An Engaged Buddhist Manifesto for Our Earth -- The Buddha's Life and Message through Feminine Eyes https://www.amazon.com/Time-Stand-Up-Buddhist-Manifesto/dp/158394916X Have a question for Dan? Leave us a voicemail: 646-883-8326 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. For ABC, to baby. This is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, quick item of business here. We love hearing your questions via voicemail. So I just want to remind everybody if you want to call and leave a message 646883-8366. Also got the number posted in the show notes. 646883-8366. Give us a call.

I'll answer your question, or even better. We'll run it by one of the amazing teachers we have on the show. By the way, this week, no voice mails for a good reason because this conversation was so fantastic and rich that I wanted to let it run longer than we usually do. So I figured that you're going to get enough deep dharma and technical meditation in here. So no voicemails, but we'll be back with voicemails next week. Our guests are Tanisara and Kittisaro. Those are their Buddhist, monk, and non-n nun names although they're both Western. Kitty Saro was born, that's the husband they're married. He was born in the deep south and Tennisiro was born in the UK and they both went off to become to ordain as in the under a tie, a legendary tie

teacher who you're going to hear all about and that's how they met and then they kind of had this forbidden romance and we're also gonna have to pretty deeply into that story and so they left the order of monks and nuns and got married and then now they teach all over the world. They're legendary teachers. I, in fact, first heard about them from former guest, Seven A. Salassi, and because she studies with them. And so I've been intrigued and have been wanting to get them on the show for a long time. Really happy that they came on the show, and they did not disappoint. I would say there were really three things other than their biography, which is well worth hearing that we dive into here. One of them is what's it like to be in a romantic relationship

given the amount, the sheer volume of meditation practice they both had and have under their belts. What do they still rub each other the wrong way and how does that go? And we also talk about, they make a case for devotional practice that I'd always been, probably unsurprising to many of you, a little bit resistant to the idea of devotional practice,

the bowing and the chanting, but they make a case for it that actually really got me thinking. So I actually wanted to call this episode the case for devotion because it applies both to their personal relationship and also to one of the ways in which they practice. And then toward the end we also get to the climate crisis and how that plays into their practice. So a lot here without further ado here are Tynisara and Kitty Saro. Thanks to me both of you. Thanks for doing this. Appreciate it. Tynisara let me

start with you. How did you get interested in meditation and Buddhism? Well, when I first did a meditation retreat, I didn't really know it was Buddhism. I was about 18. Were you tricked into this? Kind of slightly. I was my boyfriend wanted to do it. Yeah, so I tagged along with him. He was in the UK and it was a retreat center outside of Oxford and it was a lot of young people were just beginning to practice meditation and we were practicing a form that had come out of Burma from a teacher called Ubachin who was famous really for a method that became popular as Suga Wengar, G.E. or the call it Vipassana. So we were doing that method, it was taught by Burmese Munk who couldn't really speak English, I couldn't

speak Burmese. So I didn't really understand a lot what was going on and it was very rigorous so my first experience was quite tough but there was enough in it for a short while I felt something I felt some peace and I knew it was important I knew this is important and even though halfway through the retreat I try to to leave, try to run away. I didn't get very far. I came back. That something caught me in it. So I carried on. And then later I realized, oh, this is Buddhism that I'm practicing. So really was the meditation that attracted me first, and then the Dharma teachings that supported the meditation. Yeah.

What do you think was going on in your life that this was so powerful for you? Well, I'd, at that time I was living in an alternative community, so I'd left my family home and was just questioning very deeply the trajectory that I was supposed to be on in the society at that time. I was studying art and I was actually studying fashion and I began to realize how empty it was for me and so I'm now shifted to do fine arts and I really finance was less empty fine arts oh fine arts oh fine arts yeah yeah no I'm never been good at finance no disrespect to the fine people out there I know but anyway as much as I love that it felt it began to feel more empty I think I went through this experience they call in Buddhism Nibbida, which is a sense of emptiness about everything that's elevated in the society,

you know, like a career or marriage or... I don't think making money was so elevated in the culture that I came from, a deeply working-class culture, but it it was definitely you find a good job, stable job and you get married and you sort of settle down, that was the sort of trajectory and I sort of really didn't want to do all of that. So I dropped out and I was living a commune basically at that time in the city, in the city of Southampton. And we were very experimental. We were just doing all sorts of different workshops. I started to read all of these far out different books.

I've been reading Don Wands book and sort of something about that that was really evocative. So I was sort of really looking for some alternative way of being and understanding. And in the midst of that, it just became apparent that meditation was really the next step. I needed to learn how to shift consciousness and the way to open my consciousness

and what I understood in a very sort of simplistic way. I mean, there wasn't a lot of sophistication in my understanding, but I sort of somehow got the core message that the meditation was important. So when this opportunity for a treat came and when my boyfriend at the time was very focused on doing that and my friends were doing it, I just kind of tagged along. And ironically I landed up to be the person because I wasn't that committed to do the

retreat, but I just thought I'd just tag along and learn a little bit. I didn't realize how serious and hardcore that retreat was going to be, you know, up at 4 in the morning and practicing in silence. And, you know, it was intense, but ironically, I was the person that landed up taking it on out of our group the most seriously until about three or four years later, I learned up all day-ning and taking robes. It became a nun. I became a nun. I became a Buddhist nun for 12 years, and I was inspired to do that by meeting

Ajahn Chah for a small stu of Northeast Thailand. And I think my- What town teacher Ajahn Chah? Ajahn Chah. Actually opened my last book with a quote from him which is the untrained mind is stupid. That sounds like Ajahn Chah. Yeah, he was very direct and simple. Yeah, I think that horrified my friends, I've taken it so seriously, but yeah, I ended up doing

that. Yeah, so the meditative path was something that really... I've been listening. I had been reading a lot of Kushner-Merty and reading a lot about Indian saints, reading a lot of wise people that were a little accultural. I didn't really find that in my culture so much at that time. So the thread for me was this more mystical

meditative approach, that's what was drawing me. And it was a very mysterious thing. I wouldn't say that there was some logical way that I was making those steps, it was quite intuitive. It's like this door open, this door open, and I just went through those different doors until I landed up on the doorstep of Agenthar. And he was the person, I think, that really, and I still think that to this day, 43 years later, whatever it is, that he was the one that embodied such a profound wisdom in such a dynamic teacher, that direct teacher that I was greatly impacted, impacted enough to really want to take the ropes and then

practice his style of practice through that lifestyle. And if memory serves, it was through that community that you met with gentleman seated to your left. So let me just, let me back up for a second with you, Kitsasaro Mike pronouncing that correctly. Correct. How did you get interested in meditation?

Oh, thank you. Thank you, Dan. seeing that correctly. Correct. How did you get interested in meditation? Thank you. Thank you, Dan. I was a student at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship. After having graduated from Princeton? From Princeton. And I was planning to unexpectedly got this scholarship. I didn't expect it, but I was in planning to go on to medical school afterwards.

But in a way, it was quite fortuitous to be an Oxford, because my whole life up to that point had had a lot of ambition and drive and good things. I was working hard, but always aiming for the next tournament or accomplishment. By tournament you're referring to be a good person. But it was while I was at Oxford. In one of the Oxford colleges that I was at was called Worcester College, had beautiful gardens.

And then I felt this, this, what you, what you, what you, what you, what you, what you was talking about, this weariness. You know, I was 24, I felt 104. I was just exhausted with always driving to the next thing. And I used to enjoy sitting silently in churches when no one was there. I had a complicated and a way of religious background. My father was New York Jew, Jewish. My mother was a Southern Baptist.

You were raised in Tennessee. Tennessee. What was your birth name? Harry Randolph Weinberg. Okay. So my dad was Mars Weinberg. And so one day, well, they wanted their children to have a spiritual background, but they, dad didn't want to become a Baptist and mom didn't want to convert to Judaism. But one day, mom saw in the paper a little note, she said, Mo, do you think this might be for us? And it said, are you a unitarian and don't know it?

So they brought us to the unitarian church when they went, when there was just ten people. But it was a very non-dogmatic approach to life. The idea there was a mysterious sacred core to this experience of life, but that one could learn from many different sources. So as I was growing up, we would have heard about Buddha. experience of life, but that one could learn from many different sources. So, you know, as I was growing up, we would have heard about Buddha. We would have heard about, obviously, the Christ and Moses and Muhammad. But I went to a school that was a head a lot of fundamentalist

high school. There was a lot of fundamentalists. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just gonna end up on Page Six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wundery's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud. From the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal

as Brittany and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Brittany's fans form the free Brittany movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other.

And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or The Wondering App. Christian viewpoints and being told that we're going to hell because my name is Weinberg and my dad was Jewish. So I tended, if you'd told me all those years ago that I was going to end up as a Buddhist monk and dedicating so much life to a quote onunquote religious practice, I would have thought you're crazy.

So, but all these years later, when I was exhausted with achieving, I didn't even know if I knew how to put those words to it, I would sit quietly in a chapel and just something about the pausing, the sitting, the resonance of the presence. I realized there's something I had been overlooking. I wouldn't have even known how to articulate that, but I realized I need a teacher and I have always been grateful for teachers,ateful that in this world there are those beings who can share what they know and bless you and encourage you and guide you. And I realized I want to, like I had great wrestling coaches,

great teachers at school and university, but I sensed there was something to do with inner. I wouldn't have known how to put the words to it, but something about an inner landscape. So while I was at Oxford once the, the porter to my college, you know, that guards the gate of the college and sees who comes in and out of their university college, I was friends with him and, and he saw this little note in the paper about that there were some Buddhist monks chanting somewhere.

And so he said, would you like to go? And he said, yeah. So he took me. And I heard these monks chanting, and something in the residence was familiar, something. And I ended up going on to my first meditation retreat. And similar to Tnisra, it was really difficult. My mind's banging all around.

But I think sometime on day three, somewhere three, four, I had moments of being present. And it was even between sessions. I was outside and it was morning, there was a bush and do drops. And I just felt the beauty of pausing and just standing there, being with the beauty and at ease of what it was like a moment of beholding this life. That was so different for someone who my life always had this trajectory. It's not bad. I'm not putting that down. But I never knew what it was like to be more here.

And that was enough of a powerful taste and by coincidence on this, I think I did this next retreat that I was on. Someone was passing through that needed a place to stay in Oxford. And in the manager of the meditation retreats, he said, oh, we have a student here. And they introduced him to me, and this guy wanted to, he lived in Thailand, he was American, but a doctor, a researcher, and I was wanting to talk to Oxford philosophers about the origin of salt and I said, oh yeah, you can stay in our flat, our apartment. And so while talking to him, he told all these stories of he was a trekker, he had trekked across the North Pole.

He had done, and then one of his hobbies was studying meditation monasteries in Thailand and doing, as I think was he a psychiatrist, yeah, he did all these personality tests to see what over time was the impact of meditation on the personality structures of these different monks. So he's talking, and he's a confident guy. But then he said, there's one special monastery, and his demeanor started to no nonsense, man of the world, the way he was speaking about Ajahn Chah and just saying the word enlightened. And the reverence, I'd never encountered it like that. His reverence for this person.

And then he said, oh, and there's a few Westerners out there. And there's another Westerner. And if he's not enlightened, he's close. And he mentioned this American monk named Samaito. And just hearing that, it was like a gong going off in my life. I realized I want to go. I want to meet this wise person. And so I remember asking him, I said, will you take me to him?

And he said, yeah. So within weeks I got this leave of absence from the Rhodes Trust. I told my family, my parents were horrified, they were so excited about me being a Rhodes Scholar, and then looking on the map, and I'm here, there's sons going halfway around the world, and this was 70th. This was after the Vietnam catastrophe. This was the lotion bombings. This was the rumors of the Cambodia killing

fields were coming out. And the monastery where I was going to was right on the near the lotion, Cambodian border. But I got this leave of absence. And it's interesting, the warden to the roadstrust. This was the Sir Edgar Williams, the man in charge of the roadstrollers looking after the American ones. I thought he would give me trouble for wanting to take off.

But he said, yes, he said, I'll give you a couple of years. You can go and I justified it in terms of my thesis and said, I would learn about Buddhism because I was studying the works of Aldous Huxley, art, science and religion in the works of Aldous Huxley. And in Huxley's life he was bringing the modes of being, the creative craft, the brain perception. Absolutely bringing it all together. And so he said, yes, no, you can have a leave of absence, but he looked at me and he said,

my name was Randy. He said, Randy, you can have that leave of absence. He said, but you're not coming back. And so, oh yes, I am. I'm going to come back and finish my thesis. He said, no, no, no, no, you're not coming back. He said, oh, yes, I am. I'm going to come back and finish my thesis. He said, no, no, no, no, you're not coming back. He said, but you've got your degree from Princeton. He said, here at the Rhodes, we're interested in the person,

not the process. Well, I'm not worried about degrees. He says, Randy, I think you found your vocation. I thought, what? He saw something in me that I didn't even know was there. He was during World War II, was the intelligent specialist helping track Ramo and the deserts and stuff, but he had seen something.

And I'm so pleased before he died. After I was a monk, I was able to go back and express gratitude for him. He didn't shame me, but he gave me almost a prophecy. So I then went off to Thailand, Medajin Chah, and then stayed a month. So I'm talking to a roadstrap out? Roadstrap out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I never got my degree, but Sir Edgar Williams wasn't

at all worried. Just brief digression, I love, I've never had the opportunity to talk Dharma with somebody with a Southern accent. So that is a pleasure in and of itself. I read an interview you gave in which you talked about your first meeting with the aforementioned Ajahn Chah, where he imitated a dog. Absolutely. Okay, tell us about that. Well, I was so excited about meeting this master, and I had also read, not long before I went, Rondas' account in B here now.

And he used to be a professor at Harvard, Richard Alpert. And he became Rondas, but his account of going off and meeting his guru named Krolybaba and guru attacked him on the forehead. And it was a powerful experience. And so, to me, this idea of meeting this great master was exciting. And so I was, and yet it was hard to get there, because I arrived on the worst day in modern Thai history.

I arrived October 6, 1976. There was a revolution, usually the coups in Thailand are bloodless. This one was an exiled general had snuck into the country, orchestrated, orchestrated a coup, and many students ended up being massacred. It was, we were told I had to go back. But the person I was with said, hey, let's just wait, let things calm down. And then after a week or so, he then took me on the nine-hour

overnight train ride up to the Northeast. And he took me to Ajahn Chas monastery. And this guy, I was telling you, he was cool as a cucumber. He was really. This is the tracker. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dr. Douglas Burns. And, but as we were...

Well, he loved animals. But as we were walking into the monastery, he saw some of the postulants tormenting a snake, which he said, you know, this is a protected monastery while in... And so when we got to Ajahn Chah's little hut, he was in quite a state. And Ajahn Chah was calming him down. Ajahn Chah offered him a cup of tea and he was so agitated, he knocked over the tea.

And so anyway, I'm just there and watching Ajahn Chah calm him down. I see everybody's bowing. I was in overalls, had a my beard. And I was trying to do a bow because I wanted everybody's bowing. I was in overalls, had my beard. I was trying to do a bow because I wanted to just fit in and just watching. We're on the floor and I'm just charging this little wicker chair. But then at some point he turned to me and said something in Thai and Doug just said, he wants to know why you're here. And so, you know, came up with something, and I think I threw the word enlightenment in

there that I was, you know, hoping to get enlightened. But, you know, sometimes when you talk, it's sort of a bit tinny, and you don't really know what you're talking about, and so it sort of peed her down, and he was, but then he said, well, do you know how to meditate? And immediately I felt I'm firmer ground, because I told you I'd done a 10 day retreat and a half. I'd done another, so I'd done, you know. To me, that was some real meditate. I mean, we're talking all day long,

for 10 straight days. So I start talking about my meditation. And this is all I know, but they taught us sweeping technique where you sweep your attention and are with sensations. Sorry, so instead of staying with the breath, they do a sort of a body scan. Body scan. You start a first few days breath just at the nostril and then they take a very particular attention to very systematically and slowly through the whole body.

And you know, never having really trained my attention to be composed, doing that really with dedication over a 10-day period, I had, you know, the powerful experiences. So I'm sharing this with Audgin Cha, but what I didn't say was, though they used to teach you to sweep, I realized that I could sweep on both sides of the body simultaneously. And so I sort of felt internally that I think I have a gift from meditation. I think I have a gift from meditation. I think I have some skill here. And I was hoping, and assuming, and hoping that he would notice, and notice my skill, and knowledge my having come, and because I so wanted a teacher.

And so meanwhile, I'm talking, and while I'm talking to him suddenly, he gets off his chair, and down on the floor, on all fours, and starts sniffing over his whole body like a dog, and saying some things, and then all the other people there were laughing. And seeing this master doing this was funny. So, I was laughing too, but with my, as I joke, with my pice and intuition, I could tell he wasn't impressed with my manifestation. So anyways down there and at some point I said hey Doug will you give

me a translation. And finally I just chock itself and smiling and Doug says, well, he said, you don't have to sniff all around everywhere. If you understand one thing well, and he pointed at his nostrils, if you understand one thing well, you can understand everything. If you try to understand everything, you might end up not understanding anything thoroughly. Why don't you learn how to be with your breathing? And he said, why don't you go be tomatoes for end and let him teach you how to be a monk. Summator was that his senior western disciple. And it sounds like humiliating. And this might be hard to explain.

But I felt really touched by Ojan Chah. He called it stabbing the heart. He made a connection. And to this day, when I can easily get overwhelmed, I can easily find the challenges we all face and all the different pieces, but to be able to come back to something simple, this body, sitting, breathing. There's an imbreath, an an outbreath, and as one understands that impermanent changing nature in a moment, in a moment of touching the reality of this moment with truth and presence, then the objects or the substance of the experience is recognized. But in seeing that changing nature one also then recognizes the context, the ground, the

awareness, the knowingness that has happened within. And to this day, that's still, you understand one thing well, you understand everything. In a moment to come back to the simplicity of I'm here, I'm sitting, I'm standing. And so it started and I never really seriously worried about going back. I mean at one point, Ajahn Shah on asked me, what are you going to do after this? And I thought I would get enlightened and then go and do a doctor. And I just very arrogant.

The thing of how quick I would do it as an American. If I can be this peaceful in a 10-day retreat, there's three 10-day periods in a month, 12 months in a year, I can do it in a year. I'll be humble. Let's give myself two years. And I just realized, oh, it's a much bigger job than I counted on. But at one point, I just said, what are you going to do? And I said, well, I'm going to go be a doctor.

And then he looked at me. And he said, can they cure death? And I said, whoa, well, he said, if you become a doctor of the jit-jai, that means your heart. If you become a mauljit-jai, become a doctor of the heart, doctor of the spirit, he says, you will learn the cure for birth and death. You will discover that which never dies. And I always felt very, very grateful

that that route to Oxford led me to the forest. And very grateful for having met Ajahn Chah. There's a great story, but there's more of the tale to tell. So let me turn back to you, Sinistera. How did the two of you meet and how did that turn into a kind of, maybe I'm being journalistically sensationalistic here, but a little bit of a forbidden romance? Well, that retreat that Kiddissaro talked about

that he went on his first retreat, I was actually on that same retreat. So that was a long time ago. So I didn't meet him there exactly that we heard about this American that had gone off to Thailand. And I remember with my friends, we all thought that sounds really brave. You know, so I realized later that was Kitty Saur. So that was when I first heard about him.

And then within a number of years, maybe four years, we were both in the monastery. He was in Thailand. I'd been to Thailand, but then Agin Ch charge suggested I stay and train with the nuns there which didn't really work out and I came back to the UK partly because I hadn't told my family that I was thinking of perhaps being a nun or my boyfriend who was wanting to be married so which I realized that wasn't going to happen so I entered the monastery, but before I did that in the UK, but before I did that, I went to see Agend Char. And he was, again, he'd come back. He'd been twice doing it.

And once in 1977, I once in 1979. And so I went to see, in the second time, he was in Oxford in this place. We were both talking about where we began our meditation retreat experience. And when I went to pay respects to him, he said, why didn't you stay in Thailand and I was trying to explain in the monk that was sitting next to him, was Kidditharo. And I fell slightly berated by a ginger, hence stayed in Thailand. And Kidditharo said in this sort of accident, I had no idea where this accident came from.

And I was like, who's this guy? So that's the second time that I at least met him. But we knew each other in the monastery. We were friends. There wasn't any romantic. Which monastery is this? Well, this was in the first monastery that started of Agend Charles in West Sussex in the monastery. We were friends, there wasn't any romantic. Which monastery is this? Well, this was in the first monastery that started of Agents Charles in West Sussex in the UK. Okay, so you were both living there?

We were both, that was the first monasteries, there was no other monasteries in the West at that time. So we were part of the first community that were renovating this old rundown Victorian house and creating a monastery which became Chithurst Monastery, which is literally the first monastic residence of the Forest Schools that came from Thailand to the West. And now there's many, in many Western countries. So this was 1978, 1979, that we were there, about 20 of us. And I was one of four women that had ordained. And so we were about five years or so in that particular monastery, and Kiddysaro then went to become an abbot of a monastery in the south of England.

I went to another monastery that started up the north of London to start working on developing that. But so we knew each other, we were sometimes on the same work projects or at the same meetings and I'd listen to Kisar's talks. But there wasn't a romantic thing between us. We were just good friends and you know we had interests. You didn't get to speak a lot as monks and nuns. We also had separate communities. So, I think after about, I was in the Monster Art 11 years in, I had quite a profound

struggle with the patriarchy of the system that I was in, and the lack of support in many ways, historically, and within tradition for nuns and for the place of nuns. So I didn't realise that that was part and parcel of what I was moving into when I took the robes. So I was sort of becoming disaffected, not with the teaching or with the Dharma or the practice or even my teachers, but there were some aspects of the system that I was becoming disaffected with and quite exhausted dealing with in some ways. So, I'd like to give you a more about how the patriarchy manifests. I don't know how it is in this system, but I've heard in some systems where any none, no matter how senior you are, has to be subordinate to even the youngest monk. Well, that's basically written into the tradition, you know, from the early inception of the monastic order of the Buddha. And that was because the school that we were trained in was quite traditional.

That actually was one of the, it wasn't quite so gross as, you know, you are subordinate to the monk, but the way that it works out means that the nuns weren't very empowered in their own community and weren't really, were in many ways, to all intense and purposes, didn't really have much of a footing in their own ground. It's a very hard thing to explain. When you're in a dominant culture and you're a marginal culture, there are certain ways the power works. Some of it is very subliminally operates that you can't even quite see, you know, who gets the voice, who gets the decisions, how the decisions get made, who is, you know, leads, who doesn't, and so on. And also

when you're in a marginal community in a system where there's a dominant power, it has an impact on that marginal community. It's very hard to be cohesive, it's very hard to draw together. It has quite a complex dynamic. So the impact of the nun's history in what is actually quite a deeply patriarchal system, which is Buddhism, Buddhist structure in many ways, is that it's sort of been quite, it's made the nun's lineage quite invisible, and it's been quite sort of destabilizing. So for example, one of the most obvious things were that we're talking about Ajahn Chah

and a great teacher and a great master. I couldn't tell you an equivalent in that era of a nun. We didn't have any senior nuns. We had no, there weren't any precedence set within the female lineage because the nuns were historically and the ones in Thailand were. To all intents and purposes quite invisible. And in some ways they saw themselves as a sort of in a role of serving the monks community. So the monks community had a lot of high profile. So that was the,

and that didn't bother me, you know, to tell the truth, I wasn't, I didn't even, I was very naive, I didn't even know the word gender. I mean, that sounds... I didn't even think in those terms. I was just there to practice, but the truth was that I was inducted into a patriarchal system and I started to react to what was it. You know, I started to feel this isn't fair. This is... there's effects is this affects from this that are very hard to manage. So then my response was to try and really create ground for the nuns community in a context where we were held quite invivinantly. I'm not saying any particular monks did that,

but the system itself, we do that. We had a lot of teachings and a lot of support for many of the monks. But there was also a certain way that it's hard to understand, like in the same way when we're white people, it's hard to understand what it is like to have the experience of being in a person of color community, in a system that preferences white power. So these are sort of awakenings that happen, I think, more when you're in a marginal space than when you're not.

So struggling against that, I think the whole point of what I was trying to say in Nitu was that I was getting a bit weary of, because of that struggle, that seemed to be so pervasive in my experience. And at the same time that I was feeling that Kiddisaro had done a year retreat on his own. And in some ways the way he talked about that after was that he began to feel that his connection with the Dharma was was deepening in a way that it wasn't that it wasn't so much

the connection I'm speaking for you and you correct me with that particular monastic form, but there was a sort of more independent experience of the Dharma that was emerging. So in some ways, if I look back in context, I mean we both left over 25 years ago, it was quite a long time, it's true we fell in love and we left and to be together, that was the spark. But I think in our own individual journeys we were sort of outgrowing the form. I'm not saying that to say that the form was something that I mean mean, that could sound arrogant, and I don't mean to sound arrogant because that's a very profound form to train in the monastic form, but I think for our own individual journeys, it had come to the place that we'd outgrown it. And I think it's quite hard to leave that we were like a tribe, it's hard to explain

how profoundly connected we were. We were the ones that started this whole thing, we were the ones that were pulling together to hold this brilliant enlightenment path that we felt was like the way. And we were very bonded together. And certainly I was in the nuns community because we struggled so hard. So it wasn't a small thing to leave. You know, we were both seniors in each of our communities. Myself and the non-Sinkei Saira was an abbot and very highly respected in the monks community. So it wasn't a small decision. It wasn't like, oh, you know, this doesn't have consequences. So when we first started off to Keiiddisar came out of this year long silent retreat, he'd

been in the forest at her monastery in the UK, and I just come back from pilgrimage in India and I started to realise, I think I didn't really want to accept it, but I started to realise my monastic career was finishing. You know, I remember standing, watching this sunset on the edge of the ocean in India and I could see as the sun was setting. I mean it was quite metaphorically I could see my whole time in the monastery was finishing. But I felt this tremendous loyalty that I should try and stay because of the tribe. So I went back with an intention to the monastery, I'm going to really try and help and support the nuns and help support the high ordination, which was not allowed at that point, was being blocked. High ordination. Well, the sort of ordination that the Buddha set up that historically so-called got lost for a thousand years, which was part of that ordination gives nuns a real legal status and a real sense of profound

belonging in the lineage. And so the struggle to reinstate that which has happened, but in that the time that I was in there, it was almost like you don't even mention this territory. But I was so I felt like I should really state a try in that battle, that battle, to hold that battle for the nuns. And then Kidditharo, I think, for his own reasons, felt very loyal to the community. But the truth was, when we started to speak about our experiences and what was happening, it was almost like something in our, the chemistry changed and very, very quickly we realized we were falling in love, you know, and we hadn't really spoken about it and it was quite

taboo. We hadn't touched each other or anything but then at some point you know there was this recognition that we were sort of probably going to leave and to be together. So, Kili Sorrow mentioned this to our abbots, and he didn't have a very positive response. He said, you know, we're just thinking about this. We're just talking about this. And so, we got put in different monasteries, and we got a little bit hysterical in the community for a while,

and it was all very, you know, quite turbulent and difficult, but upshot was that I, I disrobed, I realized it's, whatever happens, it's sort of finished. And then Kiddiesai went back to the Agend Chah, who at that time had been sick for many years, for 10 years. And he was unable to speak. He was paralyzed. He had a stroke of some sort, quite severe. So I wanted to sit with him and really feel

this is the right decision. And I'd gone, I left the ones to, and I'd gone back to Ireland where my father and his family came from, staying there in Dublin. And then on, I think it was New Year's Eve, I decided that he was going to disrobe, and he disrobed, and he flew back from Thailand, and I met him at Dublin Airport and he had this big bunch of Thai orchids. And this is a pre-9-11 world, so at the airport, there weren't any people sort of looking for people's passports or anything like that You know the whole of the Irish airport was having a party So Kitty so I just walked off the plane from Thailand to walk through all this there wasn't any security

And then he gave me these this bunch of orchids and then for the first time we touched how each other's hands And then we went and stayed in Dublin, and then we went to live in the West Coast of Ireland for a while. We hadn't clue what we were going to do. We didn't know what to do. I didn't even know how to open it. I was so naive, I didn't have to drive,

and how to open a bank account. I was really in the worldly way completely. I didn't know how to do anything actually. And so one of our benefactors, who was this wonderful Thai woman, who was a princess, Thai princess, she was really upset that we had disrobed and she came to see us. And she was saying, you know how you can talk about all this letting go and all of this non-attachment. And here you are going off together like this your huge disappointment to me and all of this drama you've been teaching and look what you've done and

And I remember sitting there thinking oh God, you know, so I said I'm really sorry, you know Just what's happened? And she said well anyway. She said now. I've got that off my chest, how can I help you? So, she said us up and she really did help us. She gave us a place to live in the UK for a while. She asked us to teach our first retreat together, which we did. And then we started getting invitations, you know, to teach here, to teach there. And then we got the invitation to South Africa where we went in 1994 just after the liberation. And we became, they were, which, would we help them there, this centre, we said, okay,

I don't seem to do it anywhere else to go, we were, you know, just all a bit fought in the UK, people were quite reactive around us, so we stayed and we taught there and we were guiding teachers of their centre for about seven years. And then we started our own project, our own nonprofit. And we got involved in the AIDS crisis, well that hit, not get involved. It was happening all around us. In South Africa? Yeah, the pandemic, yeah, it was huge. So we started initiated and fund raised for various programs and projects. So we started initiating and fundraising for various programs and projects. So we were there for many years and still involved and then more recently we've

sort of, we've done a lot of teaching and a lot of different situations, a lot of retreats, a lot of our own retreats, a lot of deep retreats on that mountain that Kyrysaro said in Quasura in a tile. And then we started to be invited to come and work in America. So we've been working here on off now for about 10 years. I was invited to help with the Community Darmalita program at Spirit Rock, which was the first real large program that they did where they focus very deliberately

on increasing diversity. So that was a learning curve, you know, like to come into the US and anyway, that's just stopped there. I just got so many stories, but yeah, so anyway, here we are. I want to go back in time for a second to when you you spend more than a decade, both of you in robes doing deep meditation practice. And then you found yourself in the crucible of a romantic relationship. And I know I'm married, we fight sometimes, everybody I know who's married or in a serious

romantic relationship, there's conflict, it's difficult. How did that go for you guys? Well, it was challenging. As she was saying, we were in this monastery and I weren't planning on falling in love and leaving. And I had, as I mentioned in passing earlier, I used to be a wrestling champion. But then early in my monastic life in Thailand, I got very sick and almost died of typhoid, typhoid fever. And so then for very many years I was really ill. But then I had been like three years lying down, because I was so ill, a lot of internal inflammation, bleeding, credible weakness. But it gave me a lot of opportunity

to cultivate the subtle abiding. The subtle abiding? The subtle abiding of just the inner energetic world, and to, I mean, learning how to die is quite important when you're one thing I had been very wolfful. So when you use volition will, when you're focusing on something, you can focus on a sensation, or focus on a sound, or focus on a thought, or focus on a circumstance, whatever one focuses on is part of the changing world, the world that we know, the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and so but when one, as Ajahn Chow said, if you know one

thing, well you understand everything, all the things you can focus on are shifting and changing. When we see that changing nature and start to hold it more lightly, or another way to put it when we hold it, as it's solid and we take our health, our success. You know, all those years I was striving for success. I was imagining I was going to get there. That's somehow you get to a place and I'm well I've arrived. Not realizing that those successful moments like when I won a national championship ebb, hand is raised up, mom takes the picture, there it is, a national champion,

but it actually, that's ephemeral, it's not to take away from what it is, but it is ephemeral. And so as one starts to see that changing nature, then you start to realize, while that changes happening within a sphere, it's happening within the heart of awareness, within awareness. When you get really sick, one of the blessings of being sick, if one can open to it, I mean the Buddha called sickness a heavenly messenger, because there's a message in it if we accept it, that this body's on long. Well yeah, let's look after it as good as we can.

But when you're really weak, then it's not hard to soften your hold on volition, because anything you try to do is so exhausting. Even the whole conversation, you still have to hold it. When you're lying down a lot and working on each out breath, letting go and letting the ground hold you up, letting the pillow, the bed hold you up, and just as the ground holds us and you're not having to strain, as you soften the religion one can allow the awareness to hold one. So when I say these subtle inter realms, I had a lot of opportunity to practice dying,

so to speak, and as they say, if you die before you die, then when you die, you don't have to die. Practice dying, you can touch into that part of us that doesn't die. That is, it is. It's just this home ground. So I'm very comfortable there, touching into that. And then, you know, part of being married is, you know, it's like coming back out into this world of interaction. And we didn't plan it, but it was like we knew we were supposed to be married before we'd even, we haven't, as she mentioned, never even touched each other. So how does one explain that? I mean, we're falling in love, but there was also this sense of destiny.

A lot of my spiritual practice has been devotional, offering myself into this ground and almost feeling like this is what we're supposed to do. And so here we are together, and we would go into a grocery store. It's a monk, you don't choose this and that, you just get offered your meal for the day and we would look up at all these choices and what do you want? What do you want? We didn't know. But what we did share, we shared a deep love for contemplation of life, a deep love for the practices of composure, the practices of virtue, the practices of investigation,

that when one deeply looks into things and lets go, one realizes that we all have this common footing, this common ground of the heart of awareness. And so we just began. And so already, in a way, we both realized later, we're fortunate that we didn't get married till much later. So I think I was like, what, 40 or something. Yeah, you were 40 or 30, so. Yeah. And so we knew how to give each other space to recover and then to share. And we had this principle in the Dhamma suffering is not just a bad thing.

Ajahn Chow would say when people were suffering and complaining about it, he'd look at you and say, if it was so bad, the Buddha wouldn't call it an noble truth. And he wasn't being sadistic, but the idea is that our suffering can be open to the deep and our capacity to be with the difficulty of life. Then in giving that space and allowing that alchemy of letting our awareness touch and breathe within, be with the struggles, what do I do here? I don't want it this way. That by honoring those moments, there's the possibility of illumination, of understanding

of how we perpetuate this distress and how when we see that grasping and rejecting, when we soften that we can touch into a core. So we would try, you know, take us some time, but try with each other, also in those flash points. So we definitely had our share of arguments. But we knew how to recover, and we knew how to let go and forgive and begin again. And so, you know, I, in a way, Tannisfer's really my inclination, my was more hermit-like. I did two-year-long silent retreats. I'm comfortable. When I do that, my mind gets big and everyone's inside me. And so the world of contact is much more challenging, much more challenging. And I feel, you know, Tannissar's really helped me, you know, negotiate the realm of interaction

with living beings and start, I had been so used to recharging from the spirit. But now through her help, I'm learning how to appreciate what's called the third refuge in Buddhism called Sanga or spiritual community. Learning how our connection with our good friends, with people of integrity, how the connection with our kindred spirit, how that nourishes a lot too And so we each help each other. Tennis, I'm interested in the flash points that your partner just referenced. Just to take it out of the theoretical for a second.

And I'm asking for those of us who have done way less meditation than you guys and aren't in relationships where there are flashpoints. How can you take or how do you take all of this wisdom you've generated and insight you've generated through practice into a dispute over who's going to do the dish. I think that's a good question. What I feel is important is to, I think for me, what became important was to realize how we've were conditioned in our families in different ways in dealing with anger or dealing with these moments of conflict. And I think I didn't really, I think it really helped me

in our moments of conflict. For example, I can remember an incident where we had an argument. I don't even know what it was about. It was about something. And I realized in migrauring up, in the household that I was in, that to express anger was not a very safe thing to do. So I would tend to retreat and go quiet and go quiet and feel resentful. And

Kitty Sire and his household, there was much more, like just keep probing and questioning and what's going on and what's going on. So his style of in conflict and where he would move to resolve it would actually exacerbate and make my feeling of being frozen even worse. So at some point, I could just see these are two conditionings. He's come from a family where how he approaches conflict is completely opposite to what I do And in the some ways when we hit those moments We're not speaking the same language We're stuck in a pattern in the less than optimum pattern to find resolution and to move forward

So for me it really helped that to sort of be able to in that moment the name say We're caught, you know, this court, let's take a pause, let's take a, let's see. And I think that was quite a breakthrough moment in our relationship when we could actually start to identify and see and then pause and start to understand and then talk, you know, like, what happens for you when you're in this place? Well, I feel like this. And this is how...

Tell us the story like in South Africa, around the tip. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, he's telling you about a story in the patterning. So I think being able, which I can say in a minute, but I think that's being able to see our patterns, that we have different patterns and different conditionings and different ways we've been in our family helps to give a little more understanding. I think we need to understand where we're coming

from because when you go in those patterns, it's a bit like you can't see any more, you're just defending your territory. And they are like who say they are flash points about who's doing the washing up and how do you get just to name, I'm actually feeling this now and some families you never say that, so the other part is completely guessing what's up, I just feel you're going emotionally cold but I can't understand what's happening. So to be able to talk through or to name what's happening for you, you know, or what you need, you know, actually right now I really be helpful if I could have some space. And so that you're so that there's some way that you can start to understand where each of you coming from

what your needs are in that moment and to also look at what can actually trigger flashpoints. And I think also because we're conditioned and we come in some of our condition, I also realize culturally that we come from different places in our conditioning. And so sometimes there's like slightly different misunderstandings, like coming from the south and coming from a sort of background that was quite

resourced, was different for me when I came, coming from a very deeply working class unresourced background, that had a lot of poverty in it and struggle in it, especially from my father's side from Dublin, that there were very different feelings and relationships to something like money and resources and how you make decisions around things like that. And for example, I was saying about a moment we were in South Africa and I think one of the things that meditation does for you is you get to really see those patterns very deeply, not just react and you're just living them out but you get to really pause and contemplate

and see the mind states and the feelings involved. And at the depth of those patterns, some very, very painful feelings that are there that are connected maybe even with trauma, which are hard feelings to tolerate. So my deep patterning in relationship and in contact is when I feel threatened or when I feel like I'm being confronted is that I will go into a freeze mode and just sort of like get very cold and frozen and in a way I'm not deliberately trying to freeze anyone out but

it's like I'm just trying to survive, you know, and I get very disassociated and I can't even think very clearly. So that I'm really track through meditation. I can feel the chemistry and the brain change, I can feel it and I need a lot of care in this moment because my patent has been activated. So in that, it is in deep relationships that our patents get activated. This is the ground of our work. It's not just, as you said, in theory, or when we sit on our Christian, we can take a pause, but it's actually in the moment, in the heat of the moment when you're in your pattern, you know, and then you're there and you know, and then you're just so you can't really think straight and

then you're defensive. So those are the moments that are really interesting to contemplate. We need to see them. This is the value of relationship and close relationship. So, Kenny, so I was doing about an incident when we were in South Africa and I think they were in South Africa where we were in such a deeply traumatized field, where there was a lot of violence and you know a lot of unresourced people and the effects of apartheid was so profoundly shattering into the fabric of the society, that it was really overwhelming to absorb some of that and work with some of that, and we'd sort of decided.

And therefore, sometimes triggering in moments our patterns, the least optimum ways that we could be to do do with it. So we actually, some of the stress would sort of ricochet off each other. And it's amazing that we, I think we had a depth of practice to actually be able to hold ourselves in the context of what we were working with. But anyway, at some point, sometimes we say we need a break. We just need to, you know, fortunately South Africa is extraordinarily beautiful and there are so many beautiful places to go.

One of our favourite places is to go to the ocean, the Indian Ocean, which is magnificent and to just walk by the ocean. So we went on this small holiday and I think I was very activated and we were at a restaurant. And you know, just somehow we got into some argument, a stupid argument over a tip. You know, how much we were going to freaking leave for this tip, you know, and it's like, who cares, what does it matter, but for some reason. And I think this was like our different economic backgrounds. I got really, and you know, when I looked at it afterwards, it was about I was feeling insecure.

I just, you know, felt very disheartened. You know, it's just like I was, I felt very destabilized, I think. And then somehow it all came to this tip. I don't want to leave. You know, and I think also in American culture, there's just naturally the sense of, you know, there's just a bit, there's just generosity. And I'd come from this culture where you just hold, you know. So I just felt,

I felt offended by this tip, you know, and it wasn't my Buddhist best side. It was just me and my sort of tribal conditioning, you know. So I could feel all this, you know, you know, and, and can he say, I was like, his tendency, what's wrong? You know, something's wrong, nothing's wrong. I'm fine. So here we are, this is the pattern, you know, I'm withdrawing and he's like, you know, what's wrong, you know, like I just want to be left alone. So, but I was meditating on this and we were sitting there and I just had this feeling

at the depth of this pattern, was this, you know,, as I was poor, I just wanted to, it's night and I just wanted to walk into the ocean and disappear. It was like quite as almost suicidal, it's like I just want to not be here because that's the depth, you know, underneath the presenting argument, it ricocheted into this very deep place of like I can't cope and this is you know I'm just gonna call up and go and So I was just sitting and and the way it manifests was this sort of freeze and I just freeze and For him on the outside of that it feels very personal

It's like you know like you know, you know it's rejecting. It's like I've done something wrong. I feel you're judging me You know, this is how these conflicts go. And I internally, my experience was I'm drowning here, I'm drowning, I can't find my ground. So, and I couldn't speak, I can't find the words because I'm sort of going into a very early place. And I'm just sitting there and I'm like, you know, and I'm just, and I'm also meditating because I'm a meditator. So I'm like, wow, this is really painful. So, you know, in the therapy world, they call this being, you know, touching the unbearable wound to being. There's these wounds that we have that are very deep places in our being that we are

defend against, but in relationships sometimes intimate relationship they get activated because that's where they got, that's where the wound came from was in, you know, deep intimacy in our primary patterning as we were in developing preverbally. And I'm not saying it's necessarily a parental fault, you know, this is the wounds that happen even, for example, if you're not fed on time, you know, that little baby doesn't know, this is the wounds that happen even, for example, if you're not fed on time, you know, that little baby doesn't know, I'll be back in half an hour, all of it feels like I'm abandoned, no one's here for me. And those learnings go very, very deeply in our system. So, you know, as we meditate, some of these become more conscious to us. For most people that have no access, they just get repressed and there's the affect. You feel depressed, you feel angry, you feel irritable, you don't know why.

But it's a meditative feeling more deeply. So I'm meditating and I've got frozen spikes and, you know, it's amazing. Can you say I could just sit there and he's a brilliant meditator. So he's just sitting there breathing while I'm kind of feeling what I'm feeling. And this is all happening in the restaurant? Yeah. And well, we actually walked down and we were just sitting by the beach in its dark and, you know, I'm sort of sitting there like, and at a certain point, Kenny, so I just, he's not, you know, the expert, he doesn't need an expert, he's just held my hand,

which was a really good move. my hand, which was a really good move. You just sit there and I could feel just like, you know, it's not a moment to have to explain everything. This is the moment just to show solidarity and there's moments that we can do that for each other in these relationships. It's like, yeah, I'm pissed off at you. This hurt, this feels really person, I'm activated. It's just like you just say, this is duke. You know, you're just sitting there. That's the word for suffering. Yeah, sorry, this is painful. This is painful. You just sit at hold hands and then, you know, gradually, you start to start to join the human realm. We can come out of that vortex, you know. So it's just, you know, just one way of working. I want to bring you in on this, you know, sir.

So I'm hearing two things there, but fact check me on this. One is implied in what you said there is that. So being a monk or a nun can be a very powerful way to practice to sort of mainline the Dharma, but being a relationship is also, it sounds like you're saying a great way to practice. And that one of the benefits of bringing meditation into a relationship is that you can see that while it all feels really personal and I, we can't help that, that it's some really important fundamental level.

It's not personal, it's these two hurricanes coming up against one another, the two forces of nature, two deeply ingrained patterns that are as impersonal as a weather system may be coming up against one another. And of course, there's gonna be wind shear. But that doesn't necessarily, I don't know if I'm using my meteorological terms.

Correct, because of course, I think they were really well. Usually bump against one another. Anyway, my apologies to my meteorological brethren here and sisters right here at ABC News. You get the point that you can start, after the initial point that you can start after the initial upset, you can start taking it less personally because you see that we're just acting out our patterns.

Yeah. Beautifully put, yes. Yeah, right on. Absolutely. And one of the advantages of a contemplative background training and meditation is I like to think of it as cultivating primary relationship. You know, it's fine.

Wouldn't it be nice if we all lived together in harmony? I mean, that's a lovely thought, but in the meditative training, you're learning how to relate to what I'm calling primary relationship, how to be with sensation, how to be with feeling, how to be with the essential elements of experience, of being here in this mysterious realm that we call our life. And so as you're developing skill of relating, even in your own space, actually in the so-called relations with others around one, it's those very same principles. You're learning how to breathe, bring contact with another person through how you see them,

how you feel them, how you connect with them, bringing them into your heart. So this training of how to, the training of attention, the training of inquiry, the training of recognition when there's a snag, when there's some tension, when there's some friction of how to say, oh, what's happening here? That is really helpful. And I think the fact that we each knew how nourishing it is when you have space and permission to withdraw your attention for moments, for times, for periods, from external responsibilities,

jobs, this and that, when you have permission to just let that go for while, while one composes oneself, while one calms down, while one centers oneself, and that from that refreshment, from that grounding in a more true or skillful relationship with reality, then one begins again to open up and gather in and revisit one's relationship with the external world. So we were, you know, using that in our relationship with each other and that was really, really helpful. Stay tuned more of our conversation is on the way after this. You teach retreats all over the world now and you mentioned before that there's a devotional aspect to your teaching and the way you run these retreats, I have a bit of a negative

reaction when I go to retreats and people are bowing to the Buddha at the front of the room as a Western secular, you know, my parents are scientists, my wife is a scientist, as I've often joked, not good enough at math to be a scientist, but you know, I've been a lot of respect for it. So those are retreats I've been to where there isn't a pronounced devotional emphasis that people do the bowing to the Buddha because there's a Buddha in the meditation hall. But I think you guys do even more than that. Well, we do a lot. And what does that look like and why?

Preciate the question. And I think basically a misunderstanding to devotion. Devotion means dedicated to and devoted to. And we're devoted to all sorts of things already. People say, I don't have any faith. We have a lot of faith. We have faith in our views, faith in our righteous opinions. We bow down in worship.

My idea that I'm right and you're wrong. And the external bowing is just a symbol. Anybody who's really bowing to the Buddha and imputing all this magical power to the Buddha and projecting the sacred out there is missing the essence of the devotion as it was taught in Buddhist practice. To be devoted to, for a contemplative path, to be transformative, there has to be devoted to, for a contemplative path, to be transformative. There has to be a shifting of our devotion from the status quo of our commitment to and blind obedience to and belief in the values, structures, the views, the opinions, the biases, we don't even see my biases.

They're just the truth. When we start getting devoted to the notion of, well, I, like, for example, when I had all those scrapbooks my mother had made of me winning all those five time mid-south champions and my national champion and my road scholarship and on paper I should have been really happy. But I knew I was suffering like mad. And so I realized, well I've been running this show. My own show, the way I want to do it, trying to get to success, I've made myself miserable and distressed. So the idea that I met a wise teacher that said, hey, you're

generating all this suffering through your misunderstanding of how this life actually is, and that you can also devote yourself to what's called the Dharma, the way things are, and that there are practices of training attention and inquiry that can help you to realize that we have at our core a spring, a source of what's called Buddha, but it means reflectiveness, inner awareness, inner listening, and the external Buddha image. And even the historical Buddha, who is an amazing example, living with integrity and wisdom and compassion,

in his teachings he's continually pointing back to each individual, you discover the timeless Buddha, the real Buddha, the real living timeless awareness in your own heart. So the bowing is just an external symbolic way of in a moment finding your body, finding your thought, finding your awareness, and to take your head and touch the ground is the symbolic way of seeing it. For a moment, can I take my opinions and not trash them, but realize that an opinion, if we're honest.

I am right, as resonating in the mind and then there's silence after it, and yet the awareness remains. No, no, no, this is no joke. My way is right and the way they're doing is ridiculous. And you hear that well up in the mind, that sound. And you hear that sound in as it subsides. If one's devoted to truth, one can listen into and start to recognize that dimension of our being that remains, that is timeless, that is what's

called the heart, or as a Junchaw would say, the knowing. Now in a bowing practice, you're learning to touch something like your hands together, a thought, and touching the ground is symbolic for when you let a thought dissolve, you're letting it fall back, so to speak. It's an analogy into the ground of being, into this listening, this context, this, what the Buddha called the matrix of awareness. So actually devotional practice is a powerful practice of training yourself, not only to hold focus, but also to soften and let go and begin to notice the root condition, the

fundamental condition. I'm just trying with words, the point to something that's really hard to point to with words, so I don't know if it's getting through, but the bowing practice in a sense is a returning to the ground. So ironically, rather than bowing to a buddha image, you're bowing to your own deepest nature, every bow. And having spent three years lying down and having spent years so attached to volition and willpower and with hard work making it.

I love hard work. But if one only knows the forcing, the forcing keeps you on the level of the temporal conditioning, only through also learning to soften. There's one notice that all these experiences of pleasure and pain are happening within an unmoving, timeless ground of being. The bowing practice also helps us know that. And then as you come up, so you're honoring the stuff of our life, all the circumstance,

experiences thought, but it's a devotional practice, one also, is plunging into and honoring the great mystery of this silent awareness that's holding it all. So what does it look like? The bowing, is it simply just bowing from the waist toward the statue of the Buddha? Well, there's different traditions that do it in different ways. How do you do it? Well, both, well, because we bring different traditions together. There's, as you say, in the T the Thailand, Southeast Asia, traditional Buddhist, you're

kneeling, and then you just bow from the waist down, you bring your head to the ground, in China, in Tibet, in Mahayana countries, Southeast Korea, and so on. Then there's from the standing, and so you're holding, you bring your hands, sometimes you point your hands to the head. These are the three calmness, these are the three energy streams through which we generate action and result. You touch the head, the mind, the mouth, the speech, the heart, the feeling nature, and then you bring that to the ground. So I think it's, you know, I can really hear that it's, it's very difficult for us in the West because a lot of religiosity is connected historically with, you know, quite frankly, ways of trying to control and oppress often. And I think the rational

scientific movement from the European enlightenment is a breaking away from that historical shaping of Christian, through the Judeo-Christian culture that we're in, where things like bowing, a scene as suspect, a scene as somehow almost abdicating the rational and the empirical and your own empowerment. So there's a lot of very badly taught religious teachings. So the secular movement in a way is enabled a lot of the core practices of the Dharma to be accessible to people without them feeling that they're taking on some religious system. And I think that's very understandable and very fair enough.

But I think I would question the limits of the scientific in terms of when it's not, when it takes its, when it sees reality always as an object to itself, always looking at how much you can extract from the objective world and from nature, and doesn't really have a sense of the subjectivity that Kisara is pointing to is of consciousness itself. And how everything from an older, more indigenous world view, how everything is infused with consciousness, so everything is in, we're in a web of life, how there's a great subjectivity as well in all beings, not everything is an object that we're looking at, but there is the subjectivity of awareness and consciousness. And that when we see from that subjectivity, when we really feel into and honour the conscious

beingness of all things, including the material around, then there's a sort of sacredness that's infused within life. And I think one of the problems that we have in our contemporary world view, where we have in a very extractive, extractivism culture, where we have seen nature as something to dominate, and where that has led us to the planetary crisis that we are in, the planetary emergency that we are in, that science in a way, although it can offer technology and solutions, it can't really offer the wisdom of infusing a world with the kind of sacredness and other nature where we would be in relationship to all things with

a deep level of respect, particularly nature. So for me, that bow, it's not necessarily about the religiosity and it doesn't matter if you bow or not. I bow, it's not necessarily about the religiosity and it doesn't matter if you bow or not. I mean, it's just a form who cares ultimately, but it's like, can we bow in the heart? Can we be humble now as humans and realize we've screwed everything up? You know, I mean, we've really screwed everything up that we're actually decimating. You know, we're in the middle of the sixth extinction, we're losing the ice caps, the oceans are dying off, you know, something is, this has come as a result of human action, something we're out of harmony somewhere. So I think the Bauer is a very important gesture,

and that's the very, very first thing I saw Jean-Charles do when I first literally saw him, and the first thing he did was bow before a Buddhist statue. I didn't even know that was a Buddha. I just thought it was some Asian artifact that was looked nice, but that bow, I just thought that's a perfect expression of how to be in this world. It's this deep sense of reverence. So for me, it's less important ultimately about the religious forms or whether we do devotional practices or we chance to mantras. It's more about whether a secular Buddhist or not or we don't call ourselves Buddhists,

we're just doing these practices because they're mindfulness-ly based and they reduce their... It's like how can we inculcate a sense of the state code of reverence and bring that interrelationship with nature, our nature, our bodies, our relationships with everything that we're using and doing now, because I feel that's sort of very critical for all of us in our ability to continue living in in in relationship to the very systems that are supporting us in you know, of nature herself. I get hung up a little bit on the word sacred because it has

metaphysical overtones to me. And I mean, I'm not a big fan of at least for myself of you know, engaging in practices where there's a where I'm asked to believe in things that are not provable. And so that's so that when I hear sacred, I feel like, oh, were we getting into this sort of metaphysical realm here? So what word when you when you say if you're your mysterious, maybe? Yeah, mysterious. That's fine. Mysterious. Yeah, it's the semantics. I think, you know, for me, what's in what, if you're like, you know, if you're by the ocean, or you're working in a beautiful forest, or you look at something that really catches your breath,

you know, and touches you in a certain way, what would you call that, you know, that feeling in the heart, that evokes a sense of reverence, evokes a sense of awe. Oh, that's, that's a word I'm comfortable with. If you look at the stars at night into the vastness and you think, what are we doing here? Yes. So that's perfect. Sake was just a word I like awe. I was in the Amazon recently and there's no light down there.

We're very little light. And at night, it really felt like you were on the prow of a spaceship moving through space. It felt like you were really in amongst these stars. And then I felt a very genuine, uncontrived, infinitely renewable, because every time I looked up and the sky felt it again, of wow I am really small and This this universe is vast extraordinary

It's that that's the feeling and that's also I mean I Sorry, we're no kids. I was hoping we've also been in the Amazon and had that experience within the jungle and the sounds and Amazon and had that experience in the jungle and the sounds. I think it's the feeling. How can we bring that feeling and not just to tribute to religiosity? This is a deep reclamation that can inform science. It's nothing wrong with science, but can guide science. In an era, and I think this is what you were saying before in an era, well, we been in this era but in a species where we're stuck kind of in our head a lot where we're on the surface of things you know we're seeing the our thoughts well to the extent we're stuck

in our thoughts in our stories in our emotions and very infrequently unless we've been taught some meditation practices dropping back to see that it's all playing out in this mysterious backdrop of, for lack of a better word, consciousness, awareness, that the bowing can be. That's what I'm calling. I mean, there's such a thing, I think we can agree, where one's relationship with this mystery of life is extraordinarily distorted. Where the Buddha has an image,

where you're taking a bubble to be the whole ocean. A bubble might be a mood, a thought form that's righteously telling one to go kill someone else or even righteously despairingly telling one, I don't deserve to be here and we kill ourselves. And it seems like everything. And yet when there is a possibility of starting to notice, when you notice that thought as it changes,

you're just as you've been realized, whoa, as you were looking up at that night sky, there's a whole shift of consciousness. And one is touching into a different, a more profound relationship to what is. You can use the word sacred for that, if one wishes, but it is rather than what you could call a separate consciousness, where one's totally believing in the separate entities of this and that. One starts to get a sense of being part of something vast and mysterious and experientially,

even getting a sense of how it's all interflowing. For example, if one is in a forest and you realize that, you know, so-called me doesn't exist unless I can breathe in. And what I'm breathing is what the trees are breathing out what I breathe out the trees Breathe in and when one has these experiences of widening and Realizing that we're part of something of vast and mysterious to me Sacred can it doesn't it is

There's unfortunate connotations perhaps with that word that you're experiencing, but it can remind us of returning to a reverence on all, a freshness with this life that helps us break out of these conditioned responses where we're just perpetuating problems. And it's in that vein. The Buddha taught that just blind following of rights and rituals, and yes, bowing can be that, chanting can be that. And as Tanisra was saying, religion has been taught sometimes in ways that are so oppressive and shaming. And yet one can throw out the whole proverbial baby with the bath, you know, water, and using

some of these structures like ceremony, ancient ceremony, where for a time you're not just being the separate person you're using, recitation, the word phrases, and intentionalities to honor that there's a vastness here. And not only just to believe in something one doesn't know, if one even starts, in a moment listening to how sounds keep dissolving in an ever-present silence, not a dead silence, but a listening silence. And that listening part of our being doesn't have a wall. How big is our listening? It's measureless.

Then we start to find ourselves like you in the Amazon, realizing, whoa, look at this sky. As sometimes spiritual practices call the great return, as we start to realize, there's another plunging into nature that happens when we honor this body, this sensation, and these thoughts, if we honor them and listen into them, our portals into a wondrous revelation. So, that's how we were taught, and I'm very grateful for that, of using religious structures as tools, rather than as ultimate truths that you believe. Very reductively, the bowing sounds like it could, again this is simplest,

it kind of get you out of your head. Exactly. Very well put. In our remaining time that you touched on this, but I want to go back to it. As I understand it, a big emphasis in your retreat teaching has been climate change. Or I don't know if it's all of your retreats But I know some people who went to a retreat recently that you were at Or maybe is the one you've just finished teaching where The climate was a big part of it So I'm just what how does why and how does that look on retreat in our training? We do a to your training. It really is to... Or meditation teachers.

For, yes, practitioners as well. But it is for them to meet the multifastored crises that we're in the mid-stuff now, just remembering political systems, the devastation of our biosphere through the warming of the, of the warming of the planet and the devastation of biodiversity, all of those issues and more. So it is really, you know, to have some working knowledge and some ability to help guide people at this time and support people. Some of the deep, like we've just taught a month-long depth meditation retreat. We don't necessarily bring a lot of climate issues into the retreat. We might refer to it or we're looking at helping people resource themselves and build reliance, internal capacity, reliance on their capacity to meet our

challenging circumstances, but we don't shy away from it either. So for Massina in our approach, it's been, you know, the Dharma is about the Dharma's teachings of awakenings about being realistic. We're not here to just try and spiritual ourselves outside of this world and sit on a cloud somewhere. We're here to have the capacity to meet the reality of what's happening. And the climate, it's more than climate change, what's happening in California this last few weeks, we were living. And our house was, you know, many people's houses,

we were lucky, our house was in the fire path, we got missed because of the enormous extraordinary work of the firefighters to stop it jumping the freeway. But so many people's all over the world experiencing the results of climate catastrophe now. And it's coming right home to us. And you know, been reading even the New York Times today, is California habitable? Is the whole way we've understood this paradise of California?

You know, the whole perceptions change over the last three years, because these devastating fires and winds and droughts and so on, and floods that we're experiencing, not just in California, but in America. So these are things that we have to, not just in California, but in America. So these are things that we have to figure out how to bring into our teachings. This is an unprecedented catastrophe that we're facing as humanity that caused into a question our ability to even survive.

And we haven't got a lot of time. So it wouldn't, it would not do justice to the Dharma if we weren't actually, if we just pretending that this wasn't happening. On the other hand, to just flood everyone with that, when they've just trying to take a break, and they're, you know, we're sort of faced with this enormous amount of information every day, and every piece of it seems to be increasingly challenging, and people just want to go on on a treat and then you just sort of face some of every emergency. That's not necessarily the most skillful way to approach it. So to name what's going on to some degree,

but to also focus on the building of community, the building of resilience, the building of these internal practices that can help us. And to explore, I've been very involved in activism, in climate activism, I was at Standing Rock, and I've been involved in declaring climate emergencies, and bringing, writing up guidelines to bring that into Dharma communities, how we can do this, how could we do this in institutions and universities, how can we actually, because once we consciously name this is an emergency, then we realize

that business is usual, isn't, you know, it's getting more difficult to continue business as usual. For example, just in the, in California now, the turning out of the power for days on end. There's no traffic lights, there's no petrol, there's no pumps going, there's no credit. You can't ATM anything, you can't go to the shops, there's no internet. You know, this is nearly over a million people. You can't say this is business as usual, this is nearly over a million people. You know, you can't say this is business as usual. This is like, you know, it's a fifth leading economy in the world or something. You know, so these are things that are happening increasingly.

So how do we face this? How do we bring these practices to this so that we have resilience, that we have clarity, that we are not b****ing ourselves. We are just looking head on into what is coming. I don't think this is something that we should be facing personally. That is my main focus point. A lot of these practices, we're looking at how we personally develop these but this is something that we need to have collective conversations

around in these communities, these are things that we need to talk around, these and things we need to share, you know, because this is unprecedented, this is an unprecedented multi-faceted crisis, it's like the whole systems that we've been in are not equipped to do the political systems, the whole systems that we've been in are not equipped to deal with the political systems, the economic systems. They're not equipped to really deal with this crisis on all the levels that it needs to be dealt with or responded to. So that's the difficult news, but in the heart of that news, there is just an enormous amount

of awakening and questioning and re-visioning and re-looking and, you know, this is an energy revolution as well. It's a sort of revolution that we're in so many parts of our beings where all the old structures that we've been in, it's like this isn't working, we need to reconfigure. We need to dump this, it's not working and we need to do something radically different. And I do think that I know at the moment there's a lot of struggle, particularly politically in the US, but America is known for the innovative spirit. You know, this is what a lot of people globally, inspired of some of the difficult histories that have happened since 9-11,

you know, that has faded America's stars somewhat globally. But there's still this sense of this tremendous spirit that grew America. And there's a tremendous shadow as well, but this tremendous spirit. So I think that there's a great hope in that, that it's a culture that can move quickly, that has innovation that's able to go,

this doesn't work, let's move here. So, you know, this ability to meet, have that spirit and the Dharma, what the Dharma can offer into that dialogue, I think is, there's a tremendous amount, you know, the resiliency and the support and the collective community conversations like you're hosting here. And the internal skills to be able to grow that wisdom and that compassion and that clarity, so that when, you know, the lights go out literally, when the fires are coming down on us or whatever it is, that we're not devolting to some tribalism or some nationalism or some sort of fear or some violence that we

have some capacity to hold. What's the best in us for ourselves and for each other? So that's some of the ways that I'm thinking about all of this and bringing that into our teaching. So it's not just disaster, but also let's consciously prepare ourselves and grow some real skills and strengths together as well. What do we need and how can we do that? Is there anything I should have asked but didn't? I just thank you to Nasser for that reflection. I think I would just add that these contemplative practices, these meditation practices, are shifting, are refuge, are place of safety, place of abiding, from overreliance on external things.

Like if you're relying on things out there, it is being the same and trustworthy. As our teacher, our young child would say, if you look for certainty in that, which is uncertain, you're bound to suffer. And so of wanting things always to be pleasant or wanting the economic structures, the political structures, the service industry structures, you know, if that's where your security is only, then is that? Is some of those things a shake and tremble and even collapse? One is totally lost. When you're learning how to find an abiding, that's not just a refair, but there's a based on learning to know and being connection with how things

are, but learn to recognize the in-breath and the out-breath. Things going well and things not going well. Things being pleasing and neutral and even painful. One learns how to recognize that and find a peacefulness and abiding in being with things the way they are. That's a huge blessing. And also in our training, learning how, rather than only to be excited and look forward to a life that needs constantly a lot of external stuff, learning how to touch this world lightly and to rejoice in a breath, to rejoice in presence, to rejoice in the experience of being able to share, the experience in being able to rejoice in others good fortune, the experience of being able to appreciate simplicity.

This is also a revolution and a way of living. It's not exploitative. It doesn't just two up resources to quite the same degree. And especially if we, this appropriating consciousness, this consciousness defines only security and what I own, what I have, what I control. And Voin starts to investigate that and relinquish that hold a bit and start to realize that we are this part of this mysterious vast totality. This is a, there's a soft, surrendering in that.

Where one is holding the world more lightly, and where there's a possibility of appreciating our deep kinship with each other, with our fellow beings, and with mother earth. So that's also not only a part of learning to face the coming challenges more economically, but it's also part of the solution of finding our collaborative spirit, finding out being able to live simply, and also finding just as if we know from a you like science, you measure how a body is of someone that's so driven and so stressed out, and that heart rate, and that blood pressure and that

System is jumpy is someone who and that's why mindfulness is so big You for years the meditation was mumbo jumbo, but suddenly when it shows up in the tests and the labs whoa whoa everybody's interested Because even though the mind is so called just the mind mind, the body, the heart rate, the calm, the peace, and so attitudes of mind bless and transform matter, just as your mind has its effect on this physical body, also collectively, you know, as we really compose ourself and change our attitude, that can also bless some of the earth, bless our environment, bless the world that we live in.

And that's a mysterious world. It's hard to prove, so to speak, but it's one that we're deeply devoted to and interested in exploring. If people want to learn more about the two of you or one of you individually are there resources, books, podcasts, websites, social media feed. I think the best thing is our, well, we did write a book called Listening to the Heart,

which we wrote together, which gives us a sort of overview of many of the points that we've been touching into today. It's called subtitled, Engaged Buddhism for Our Time, something like that. I wrote a book called Time to Stand Up, which is more focused on issues around climate climate and also resourcing ourselves and looking at the systemic challenges, particularly within Buddhism, of being able to really meet the times that we're in, particularly around patriarchy. So that might be particularly manifesto for our times. And the website is sacredmountainsanger.org. So that's probably...

We'll put it in the show notes, but sacred mountain essay and gha.org. Yeah, so there's stuff on that. People can can and then we have an online course that people can access on a freely Which goes over the main principles of Buddhism some three parts three modules Ten lessons for each part and so it's Some gathering calming meditations in site meditations Zen meditation. So it's got quite a range of

teachings and resources in that. So that's online. You can access that on our website. Such a pleasure to be both. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you. We've got what honored to be invited. I felt like quite a journey. Top of the day. I was an amazing discussion. Big thanks again to Tyniser and Kittiesara for coming on the show and to Seven A. Salassi for waking me up. I was sleeping on these guys and I'm glad to know that how amazing they are and hopefully to stay in touch with them. Before we go, I want to say two things and hopefully I don't say it in a perfunctory manner because I mean both of them. One is if you want to do us a solid and talk about us on social media or text individual episodes to your friends that kind of organic growth is huge for us.

So if you feel like it that would be great. And the other thing is to just thank everybody who puts this that people working incredibly hard putting the show together and I really am grateful Ryan Kessler Samuel John's Grace Livingston More in Heart Saga Tiffany Omahundro Brittany who's operating the boards today on a Sunday morning as I record this Thank you to all of you and thank you for listening. We'll be back next Wednesday with another show Hey prime members you can listen to 10% happier early and ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.

completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.