Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 218: The Profound Upsides of Mortality | Nikki Mirghafori, PhD

Episode Date: December 18, 2019

Nikki Mirghafori has been an Artificial Intelligence scientist for nearly three decades. She never intended to become a Buddhist teacher, but after establishing herself in her AI career, she devoted her time to extensive meditation training. She now teaches Dharma internationally. In this fascinating discussion, Nikki details her extraordinary life experiences. From growing up in Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, to writing a thank you letter to a tick that gave her Lyme disease. She talks about her meditation practice today and how it has evolved from when she first started. And she dives into the process and benefits of one of her more challenging teachings, the Mindfulness of Death. Plugzone: Nikki's Website: https://www.nikkimirghafori.com/ The Most Venerable Pa-Auk Tawya Sayadaw Bhaddanta Acinna: https://www.paaukforestmonastery.org/about-us Podcast Episode #10 Leigh Brasington: https://podcasts.apple.com/my/podcast/10-leigh-brasington/id1087147821?i=1000367352158 Ten Percent Happier Gift: https://www.tenpercent.com/gift Ten Percent Happier Podcast Insiders Feedback Group: https://10percenthappier.typeform.com/to/vHz4q4 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 um dan heres hey guys before we get started i want to put in another plug for giving the gift of sanity this holiday season we've got a big 40% discount if you want to give somebody a subscription to the 10% happier app. Just a quick note about the app. We've got more than 500 guided meditations on all sorts of topics from anxiety to parenting to productivity and focus. We've got all these sleep. A whole section dedicated to sleep. We've got a whole section dedicated to these mini. I call

them like wisdom bombs. These little 5-7 minute long talks from some of the best teachers in the world. We're releasing new content all the time. We've got these great courses that go up that use a mixture of video and audio. This has become one of the main areas of focus for me in my life this company, so I would love you guys to check it out and or give it as a gift. So you can, if you want to do it as a gift, you can go to 10% all spelled out TNPRCNT.com slash gift, 10% one word all spelled out.com slash gift GIFT. We'll put a link in the show notes.

And again, we've got a 40% discount going right now. Okay, let's do the episode this week. I was really blown away by the raw intelligence of our guest this week, Nikki Mirafuri. She's she got a PhD in computer science computer science she's an expert in artificial intelligence she's also a highly accomplished Buddhist teacher she teaches

at Spear Rock Meditation Center and and insight meditation society at the insight meditation center in Redwood City and which is right in the heart of Silicon Valley. She teaches all over the world in fact, and she holds multiple patents and has co-authored more than 40 scientific research articles. So she just achieved excellence in two really tricky fields. And in this episode, we talk about her life story,

which is very interesting, and we talk about her life story, which is very interesting. And we talk about her practice history where she did a deep dive into a kind of practice known as the Johnna's, which is, well, she'll describe it better than I do, but it's a fascinating, somewhat magical, somewhat controversial area of practice where very interesting things can happen in the mind. And then we talk a lot about a big focus for her in her teaching is about death, which, as we've discussed on the show before, can sound supremely morbid, but her argument is that it actually adds an enormous amount of vividness and electricity to our actual

lives to take in our own finitude. So here we go, here's Nikki Miragafori. Great to meet you. Thanks for coming on. Thank you, lovely to meet you also. So I would love just to start with your back story, how did you get interested in meditation? I love that question. It's the origin story of how we got in. So how did I get into meditation?

So, I'll answer that actually a little differently. That I answer in terms of how did I get into this tradition, teravada tradition, and mindfulness practice, because meditation, there's so many different types of meditation, and I used to do Herbert Benson's relaxation response, meditations, breathing meditation, breathing techniques, and you know, he had a book on that long time ago and also guided visualizations a long, long time ago. So, but I didn't so consider that meditation. It was just kind of a practice, but the way I got into this tradition, the Tervata tradition, mindfulness, I'll tell you that story. I think that's kind of more relevant to where we are today and all my practice that really happened after that.

So 2002, 2003, I had finished my dissertation at Berkeley. I graduated, got my patient computer science, and I was working at a startup in Silicon Valley. And I was camping and hiking and was a really outdoors person. And then I got really sick. I got really, really sick for about a year. And doctors couldn't quite figure out what was going on with me. I was really tired. I was quite exhausted.

They thought it was mono. That level of fatigue was showing up. And really couldn't be diagnosed. So by the end of that year, and I continued to work full time. I don't know how, but anyway, I continued to work. And towards the end of that year, I'd continue to work full time. I don't know how, but anyway, I continued to work. Towards the end of that period, I was quite desperate to try anything. And a dear friend of mine, who also worked at this company with me, I used to work at New Ones Communications when it was a startup speech recognition company, which is my expertise.

So this friend, this dear friend, had done a couple of meditation retreats, and so she told me about the value of meditation, and she took me to inside meditation center in Redwood City for a couple of nights to just kind of get the basics and hear a Dharma talk. And now I teach at IMC, by the way, a footnote. So she took me there and then she took me a day long to a spirit rock. So I learned the basics of meditation. And then within a few weeks, months,

I did my first 10 day silent meditation retreat, a Joshua tree with Jack being my first Jack Horne field, being my first interview teacher, practice meeting teacher, and the 10-day retreat was just profound. It blew my mind. It opened my mind to a world I did not know exist. And as a scientist, I was fascinated. It seemed like the mind could see in its own workings from the inside. It was fascinating. It was amazing. And I was hooked. So that's how I started in this practice. And years ago, by the way, it turns out that the illness that I had about 10 years after actually, I first got sick, I was diagnosed with Lyme disease. And it's been the biggest

teacher for me on my path. In fact, years ago, when I was really sick, I remember writing a thank you letter to the tick that bit me, because if it wasn't for that tick, for it, I wouldn't be here. It's, it completely changed the course of my life for the better, I would say. And I don't want to, to underscore whitewash all the pain and challenges and suffering and physical pain and emotional pain and all the changes, all the challenges that really this illness has had. I could write a book about it. And I've grown in ways I never thought possible because it has pushed me to places I didn't want to be pushed. And that's how we grow, how we grow in compassion, how we grow in wisdom.

It's through challenges. We don't want, but we embrace them. They can change us. So I'm grateful to the tech in a very strange way. Now that I wish it done anybody ever, but has changed my life. So that's my origin story. Did you once you got interested in meditation? Did you, you have this background? I was saying before we began recording that I was reading your bio and I wrote the words down. I'm blown away by this bio. This is just the incredible vastness of your areas of expertise.

So you mentioned before that you were working in AI, artificial intelligence, voice recognition. So it's people like you that we can thank for Siri and Alexa and Hey Google. that we can thank for Siri and Alexa and Hey Google. Did you continue doing that work even as you dove into the world of meditation and ultimately becoming a teacher? Yeah, so I did continue with that work and pretty intensely actually for many years after new ones. I left and I went back to Berkeley and I was a research scientist at the International Computer Science Institute at Berkeley, where I was doing research. I was publishing papers, being the principal investigator, leading, you know, advising graduate students, PhDs, postdocs. So I was really in that world for a long time. I was doing meditation retreats here and there, you know, scheduling them when I could, practicing,

but my life was still as a scientist, as an academic, as a full-time nerd. So around, I would say, 2006 is when I think what happened was for me, for each person is different, but for me, I had the existential angst ever since I was a teenager, I was a kid, and I grew up in Iran, I remember reading the poetry of Hafez and Rumi and Farsi when I was a teenager and not quite understanding them, but getting that there is more to life than being a durable and a wheel.

And I would study philosophy, actually one of my minors as an undergrad was philosophy and en psychology. So I had this existential angst and curiosity about the world and what is this all about? Why are we here? Why are we doing this thing anyway? What's the point? So while I was a full time nerd at Berkeley doing this research thing and establishing myself in my field, which had been my goal, the existential angst or inquiry and curiosity became more and more alive. And a time came that I

felt like I had established myself in my field the way I had wanted to. I was in the quote unquote, in-crowd of the conferences and I had students and plenty of grant money and I was well known in my field. You know, I had established myself like, okay, I've made it. Okay, now what? All right, I can continue to do this more and more, more publishing, more students, more conferences, more, and it was great not to say there was anything wrong with it, it was intellectually really, really satisfying and it was also really, really fun to mentor

and support other students, graduates and postdocs. But then the question came up, okay, now what? So what, okay, what's the point of all this? So at that point, I decided to take a leave of absence and dedicate myself to meditation and contemplation for an entire year. So I took a leave of absence and basically with all the funders and all the projects I had managed them in a way so that, you know, I could step away. And during that time,

I did a lot of meditation retreats, a lot of reading, writing both in the Travada tradition, also studying in the Chan tradition, the Chinese Zen tradition. And after about a year of that, it seemed like it was just getting juicy. I was just getting into it. I wasn't done. So I took one more year of the leave of absence and continued this practice. And it was during that time that I did a three-month retreat with my teacher, Paak Sayada, the Burmese meditation master. Let me just say that name, Paak Sayada. Sayada is basically Burmese term

for great meditation teacher. Exactly. And Paak is his name. Yes. Paoak Toya sciadah to be more exact, because Paoak is also the name of his monastery, so Paoak Toya sciadah, exactly. And I know him because context in which I've heard of him is through, and this may be too narrow to define the scope of his teaching, but I've heard of him as a jonna teacher. So, yes and.

Yes and. Yes and. So he is considered to be the living jonna master, but that is the first part of what he teaches. He teaches janas in order to prepare your mind for practicing Vipassana. Let me just jump in for a second because I did a thing that I try not to do, which is I use the term without explaining what the term means. So we've talked about the John as before on the show, but if you're not a completist and haven't listened every

episode or if you've listened to the episode, we've forgotten, it's worth defining what the John is for. Yes. I've heard them defined as kind of, well, it's a kind of meditation that hones our ability to concentrate. And that once the mind gets really concentrated, this very interesting thing happens, and I'll have to say allegedly,

because I've not experienced it myself, but people talk about it, and I'm sure we'll hear you talk about it, with a lot of consistency about these kind of interlocking, a friend of mine who used this term before, these kind of interlocking rooms in the mind that you can walk through. So there are these eight levels of Johnoprachis that you move through. The more the mind is concentrated on something like the feeling of your breath going in and going out, met to practice, love and kindness practice, you know, sending these phrases, you know, maybe happy, etc., etc., to various targets in your mind can also get you to the genres, as I understand it.

Right. What I'm hearing you say is that the siadah gets the minds of his students very concentrated through the genre practice and then turns that power on examining the nature of reality to be a little grandiose in insight or fit-possident practice. Yes, yes. Faithful reproduction of vocal. Yeah, that's close enough. That's pretty good. Nice job, Dan.

Yeah, nice job. Yeah. So to also say a little more about that. So, basically, you know, in this tradition, in the Turvada tradition, concentration practice, a samata practice is a precursor to vipassana practice. So, samata practice translated as often as concentration, but just to say, I really dislike that translation of the word samata practice because it gives a it brings about a feeling of of hard work, a forward brow concentrate like do your math homework,

concentrate now Dan will you? Whereas actually a bit the more appropriate translation of samata is of Samata is to bring together, to unify, to collect. So if you think of Samata practice as a way to collect the mind, unify the mind, settle the mind, calm the mind, stabilize the mind. Well, they're also sometimes referred to as tranquility practice. It's yes, yes, yes, exactly. So, so that in order to make the mind malleable, to make it really malleable, so that it can, as you were saying, penetrate the nature of reality, to see differently, to see deeply Vapasana, also translate it as, to see deeply, to see with insight, to see differently a different

way of seeing. So when the mind is really stable, calm, collected, malleable, it can have insight. It's more prone to seeing things differently, not seeing them the same way, same old, same old. So in the Buddhist tradition, samatha practices, unification practices, I'll avoid the C word, practices are always taught, not independently on their own, but always as a precursor to the Pasana, because that is considered to be the liberating practice, and you probably know this story, but for those who are listening. So it is said that in Buddha's time, he studied the John as these deep absorbent,

these practices, these states of mind, when the mind gets very, very stable, calm, it's a sense of absorption arises in the object of meditation. And as you were saying, the object can be, can be debris, it can be meta-loving kindness. The feelings of goodwill could be what's called casinas or other practices. So colors, there's some colors that this practice is done with, or the four elements, fire, wind, water, and earth. So, there are different objects. In fact, the Visudimaga, the path of purification, which is this 1000-page manual of practice, put together by Bhuddha Gosha, Bhikkhu Bhuddha Gosha, I think, the fifth century. It's a practice manual, it's a practice manual for all these practices and they list 40 different Samatha objects for unifying the mind.

So in the West we often just use the breath often. Sometimes when people hear Mehta, oh you can actually call them when you unify and do some way to practice with meta and the other Brahma Vihar as the other four heavenly abodes, loving kindness, vicarious joy, compassion, and equanimity also, but there's so many other objects for unifying the mind, so the 40. So anyway, so so many directions we can go from there. I had a metaha retreat about a year ago from the time we were recording this with spring washroom grade. It was just the two of us actually was real privilege for me to do that. And I don't know if I hit the, I'm pretty sure I

didn't hit the first John, but just vibrating with the what's called PTPITI, which is the sort of pleasant bodily sensations that come from a unified model. Yeah, yeah. So Netta has a really powerful unification. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it a concentration? Potential. Now that we put the tag on that, I think. That's right, exactly. I do use it.

I will use it myself too, because that's how it's often translated. And people think of it as a concentration. But, yeah, so what you're sharing is that having done the meta practice with your mind getting more calm and stable and collected, some of the Johnic factors, what are called the Johnic factors, arose for you. And one of the Johnic factors is PT, as you were saying, this bubbly joy that can arise, or a sense of that can also show up as rapture, as this energy that can move through your body and your mind. It can show up in so many

different ways. There are five different types of rapture, again, according to Visuddhi Bhakt I can show up in so many different ways. There are five different types of rapture, again, according to Visuti, but we're going in so many directions. You are, as I often say to my guests, in a safe place for digressions of all variety, so don't worry about that. So let's see, where are we? I'm gonna try to bring it back a little bit.

We had a thread. So, yes. The thread was your practice if I recall. I know. We got so far. Here we are. Yes, here we are. The thread was, so you went to study with Paoak, Siodao, who uses the janas and then combines

them with an insight. So, basically, so, right, yes. So the reason why, and you were saying that you've heard of him as being a jana master. So he teaches both janas and Vipassana, but he is so strict about his definition of the janas that most people only manage to study the j genres with him and don't ever get to the Vipassana because he's so rigorous. So that gets us to the, you know, maybe the controversy or the differences in the genre definitions in the tradition because there is the genre light that I like. I thought, and I think perhaps most famously by Lee Brazington, who's

been on this show So I'll put the link to that episode. He's an utterly fascinating It is a great guy nice, and so I would if you're interested in the genres I think pairing this discussion we're having now with the Lee Brazington discussion is a good idea Yeah, yeah, and then there is the Sutta genres and then there's the Visuti Maga genres So the Visuti Maga genres they raised the bar so high and that's what my teacher Pox, I had a teacher. Just to be clear, the Suta Johnis, so you have John a light, which represented by Lee Brazings. And the Suta Johnis, I believe the way the Buddha talked about it in the texts known as the Sutas. Yes. And then the Vasuti Maga, Johnas, would be the Buddha-Gosa version, the sort of super nerd version

that are of the... You have to have attained a level of unification slash concentration that is a very high bar to meet. Yes. And am I to take from what you described with your time with Paoak's Sayada that that you were able to meet his definition of the janas to a point where he said, go do the Vipassana work? Yes. Yes. He taught me the four the four janas and then actually the eight janas. So all the eight janas. And then when he was satisfied, when he was really satisfied, then we moved on to practice Vipassana.

And actually, that was the bulk of my practice with him. John is just preparatory. There were just warm up exercises, really, as far as he's concerned, for his path. So. How did you not, now this is definitely projection, what I'm about to say but how did you not If I got through the eight John us with paloxidos so in other words if I was able to get through such a rigorous set of

Expectations I would have a lot of ego around that How did you how did you manage that or did it not show up for you? hmm have a lot of ego around that. How did you manage that or did it not show up for you? I think what happens is actually the Vipassana practice is the part that you get to see both the impermanence on satisfactoryness and the non-self nature of all things. So it's not me, it's not mine. But I guess what I would say is that even before the Vipassana part, I don't think it came up for me. I don't know, maybe there's something about the practice. Maybe there was something about the practice itself.

And the way that actually that's it. Okay, here I'm reflecting, I'm taking the pause and I'm reflecting as I'm speaking with you. Does it actually, what was my state of mind practicing? And I think part of what actually gets in the way of people or people get in the way of themselves is striving for these absorptions, for these beautiful states of mind, which are really healing that can be also addictive, but there's a sense of striving in the sense of identification. So if there is striving identification actually gets in the way, and I think in my practice, in the micro and in the macro level, while I was doing them, I realized that neither of

those were going to work, and I just had to give myself to it. It wasn't me. It wasn't mine. I didn't know how I was doing it, Dan. I wasn't doing the practice. It's hard to say. It's hard to verbalize. All I, whoever this I is, was doing was putting the conditions in place.

I was can put in the conditions in place. I was can put in the conditions in place, completely giving myself wholeheartedly, lovingly to the practice, with curiosity, interest, devotion, dedication, and the rest of it was really not mine. These trap doors just opened, things that I had no idea how to do. It was done. It just unfolded.

So with that spirit, with that way of doing it, there was no ego to connect to this thing. It's just like, it's grace. It's like a little birdie of grace that's sad on my shoulder. Why? Thank you. I don't know. And it could fly away anytime. It's like, it's grace. It's like a little birdie of grace that's sad on my shoulder. Why? Thank you. I don't know. And it could fly away anytime. That's so interesting.

And it gets me thinking about something I've often said about Dharma practice meditation generally, which is it's like a fascinating, yet frustrating video game where you can't move forward if you want to move forward. You have to put the car in the clutch into neutral somehow, which is, and then it just happens, right? And that's exhilarating. And you can stop the process by thinking,

look, oh my God, look what I'm doing right now. And then it all just falls apart. And so you just have to learn that over and over again but it's really humbling in the truest sense of that term because you you come to see. What you just describe which is this. A couple things one is this is just i'm just kind of unleashing forces of nature here right i? I'm not doing this. There is there's no real me here in this picture. You know, I here in this picture. And then the other thing is just the the John is which I've not experienced personally. It's just so fascinating to me as just from a and I'm not a scientist either you are, but just from a scientific perspective that if you do this practice, this concentration or unification practice, certain things, certain phenomena will arise in the mind reliably and predictably.

These eight flavors of concentration, these eight states will unfold apparently reliably and predictably that that that's something that nature has created in some way is fascinating to me. Anyway, I'll stop rapsodizing. I don't know if you have anything to say, but I just said. Yeah, yeah. I really appreciate what you're saying, because especially the four John, as I would say, especially the first four genres, I think there is a way for the mind to find their way into them. And of course, especially the Johnic factors, I would say, even more so, because the Johnic factors, PT, we talked about one, joy, rapture, succa, which is bliss, sense of bliss throughout the body and mind. And the other two, which actually the first two you one does, and the other three arise

on their own. So the first two being Vittaka and Vichara, which is connecting with the object and sustaining the attention with the object. So those are the two that are we put in place. Vittaka, Vichara, connecting, sustaining, connecting, sustaining. Imagine you're rubbing a bowl, so you connect with the bowl, you rub the bowl,

kind of connect, sustain, connect, sustain. So those are the first two sonic factors that we do. And then the other three, PT, the joy, that the rapture arises on its own. It just comes up, you don't make it happen. It happens on its own. You've experienced it. Wow, where did this come from? Bliss, a sense of bliss that's more blissful than anything else imaginable in our sensory world. Wow, where did this come from? Who ordered this? Is this possible?

Is am I really still alive in this human by yep this is bliss okay get familiar with it and the last one being a cagatta which is often translated as one point it is again not a great translation but it's the sense that the mind is not movable is is not moving from the object. It's like the object as if it were a magnet and the mind is just attracted to it. It cannot move, even if it wanted to. There's a sense of such stability. So these, especially, these get experienced.

They arise and the John is these states of absorption. It helps to have guidance from a teacher to support and see when the the Johnic factors are rising, how to support them, how to guide. So having a guide is really, really helpful. And these are various states and various factors that arise. In fact, so I was born in Tehran, Iran, and to a liberal Muslim family. And when I was a teenager, I remember I was reciting the Quran and I was praying. I was so deep in my prayer and meditation that there was this eruption of light and energy, just explosion in my head, in my whole body, and I had no idea what had just happened, and I didn't talk to anyone about it.

Years later, when I'm doing Sumata practice and Peking is arising, these explosions of energy and rapture throughout my body, it's like, wow, that's what that was. So they arise and there's so many mystics and so many different traditions that talk about these Johnny factors, about these states in very different ways, associating different meanings with them. But they are part of this mystery of being human that

our hearts and minds, bodies open up to. With your permission, I'd like to turn the conversation now to something that we talked about beforehand of one of the great interests. You're one of these people who we could do, as I mentioned to you earlier, we could do four different podcasts right now because your interests are so vast and fascinating. But one of the things that you and I talked about before we started recording that might be interesting to dive in on is an area where you turn your attention ultimately after this extensive training that we've kind of just touched upon is the mindfulness of death.

I would imagine that the tick contributed to that interest, but I don't know, you can tell me. And you've been working on a presentation around mindfulness of death that I would love to dive into the sort of nine benefits of this practice, which is super counterintuitive for most of us. The upside of our mortality does not occur to most of us. So, are you comfortable diving into that now? Or is it something we missed? Sure. It's all good.

We can go any direction, any in all direction, so many places we can go. We'll come back to Poxytid, Johnopractis, Vipassana, past life's practice. We'll do the last life practice.id, John, a practice, Vipassana, past life practice. We'll do the last practice. Now we gotta do that. Okay. That, now I wanna hear about that. Let's stay with the current life for a second. Let's do that.

That sounds good. That sounds great. Okay, so you've been working on a presentation around mindfulness of death. But as I said before, a lot of people don't want to think about death. We've talked about it a lot on this show and you have developed this list of nine sort of benefits of doing so. Can we start going through those nine? Sure, sure. Well, first though, was I right that the tick contributed to your interest in this issue or was there something else? Not exactly actually it wasn't wasn't wasn't the tick. Yeah, I didn't jump in

No, there have been many other interests as I think many other sources for this interest. I don't know It's I think part of it is so so I think the bigger picture is, as I said, the existential curiosity interest about life and death. So that's the framework. And then perhaps there have been life experiences that have led to this. I'll share one with you. I grew up in Tehran and when I was a teenager, still in Tehran, it was during the Iran-Iraq war. There was a period where actually the Iraqi bombers were coming to Tehran and there would be sirens and we would get, you know, I remember the sense of fear of running down the stairs and getting into the basement

of the house and there was quite a sense of fear not knowing where the bombs would be dropped. So, and I remember once actually I think it was about 12 or maybe 13, quite young, that, you know, the sirens went off and we got into the basements, a bit basement, and we could hear, I could hear, I could hear the sound of the bombs, not just the artillery that was also quite loud and deafening, but the sound of the bombs that were hitting, it sounded like close by and it sounded as if the bombs were getting closer and closer and closer as the glass windows shook harder and harder and in my teenage mind the sense was harder and in my teenage mind the sense was, ah, I think this is it. I think this is the end of my life. I'm gonna dino. So I held my breath. I think I was paging my mom and held her and held my breath and said goodbye to the world. Thank you, it's been nice, it's been great.

Okay, here I go, held my breath, said goodbye and I didn't die. And the lights came on and I came back upstairs home to our flat department and and I came back upstairs home to our flat, to our apartment, and there was a sense of how precious life was. How precious, precious life was. All colors were deeper. The tastes were sweeter, more intense. Seeing people I loved and cared for, was just everything seemed so precious. Such a gift to be alive, not to take it for granted. There was a sense of, wow, I'm alive. This is amazing. This is so amazing.

So it completely changed my perspective and being a teenager to off 13. It was quite, I would say, a turning point in some ways. So there have been many other experiences for me, many other influences, having lost people that I love throughout my life, my 20s, 30s, and 40s, and in a way contemplating their death, being mindful of death of people who have been so close to me, so dear to me, so that has been another way that has come into my life. And I had one other experience of almost dying in the state of Magellan on a little boat, But yeah, so there have been plenty of influences, plenty of reasons for this has become an

interest of mine. And to say, I guess another layer of interest is there was a time doing that two-year period of contemplative leave of absence that I mentioned earlier from Berkeley. And during that time, during the first year of it actually, my practice was going into very nihilistic spaces, the practice of the realizations of Anata, not self, we're kind of going off the rails into nihilism. Like what is this all about instead of being grounded in the middle way? So in this dark space that I was in this dark space

of dark night of the soul, I remember practicing, trying to figure out how to work with this. This is not an uncommon stage in the practice where you just, I think sometimes referred to as disgust. It's different. It's so, yes, so there is the Dukhaneanas, the knowledge, the the knowledge is the the challenging knowledge is we're discussed and and fear and and um they arise when um when the mind opens up to the the the challenge of the the gets to see

reality in a different way. I'm not quite sure if that is exactly what was happening to me at that point. It's kind of unclear. But yes, it is common in the practice for these challenging states of mind to arise, which are actually not depression, but because life is perfectly fine, there's nothing different, but there's just something about nature of reality that is hard to witness. So Dukhaneana is these states of challenging states during practice. So yes, fear and disgust are one of them. So when I was in this state at that point, I sat with a teacher, I sat a retreat with a teacher, and their recommendation at

that point was, which is really funny, their recommendation was to do mindfulness of death practice in that period that I was, in that nihilistic period, I would say. So a little different perhaps from the fear and disgust states, but it was in nihilistic. It was basically really in that at that time, it was the Anata going off the rails. It wasn't so much the fear and disgust in Dukhanean as firm me at that point. So it's not a meaning you would see that there's no substance of this concept of I here that we build our lives around. Yes, but again, for me at that point, it was going to nailism not in a very constructive

way. It's the point of all this exactly. So it was not exactly constructed. Because the Buddha's main proposition was once you see through the illusion of the self that all these, you know, you can stop building up and defending your ego, compassion emerges, uncontrived. Lots of positive things happen when we stop clinging to this self concept, but there is a trap door, not a good one, which is nihilism, which is a pitfall of the path, which is, oh,

well, if I don't exist, it was a point of any of this. Exactly. So I think it was too early in my practice. I didn't have the basics already. It was before I had sad with PogSide at all. I was kind of an early meditator. I think at that point, still in some relative ways, but somehow these insights had come up for me and they had destabilized which happens for some other people too. And then later when these insights actually came

up for me when my practice was a lot more stable and a lot more rich and grounded, they were actually really liberating to actually see that there is not a self and everything is impermanent. So in a very different way. But going back to that, so this teacher suggested that I do mindfulness of death in order to get out of this nihilistic period, which seemed like fighting fire with fire. I still can't quite understand. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that to anyone today,

but somehow they recommended that and I did it. And it worked in a very strange way. So, so mindfulness of death became a primary practice for me for a while. That this could be my last breath. This could, I could, I could die any moment. That's one of the practices that the Buddha teaches. This could be my last breath. So as you're doing every bite, this could be my last bite. This could

be my last step to really, really bring the impermanence of your life to your mind's eye. Just to put a fine point on what you're saying, that these are med- this is a meditation practice that one can do in the context of a retreat, where sure everybody at every meal is, as you were saying, this could be my last bite, every breath as you're feeling it, you're contemplating, there's an element here of using discursive thought that we don't often use in meditation of this could be my last breath, etc. Exactly. So in a way seeing to superimpose a particular way of seeing on a phenomena that's arising that, oh, this could, this might be my last in breath, right here right now. I could,

I could die. This could be my last out breath right here. Wow. So really trying to drive home the reality, the feeling because we don't, you know, we know we're going to die. We know it up here in our heads, but we don't really, really know. We don't really feel it. We often, many of us don't live our lives according to that truth. And there's plenty of research that supports that. So and it turns out that actually being mindful of our limited time in this body, in this form is really beneficial. The same way that other mindfulness practices are beneficial.

You know, there's sati, mindfulness, there's kaya-gatacity, mindfulness of the body as a practice. You know, there is jitana-pacati, there is mindfulness of the mind, which they journey and teaches that way a lot. There are different mindfulnesss and there's maran, maran-asati, maran-asati, maran-amara, the Lord of death, maran-asati, mindfulness of death. So maran- Sati has become

something that I practiced a lot during that time and I've continued to practice both as a formal practice on the cushion and also as an informal practice waking up in the morning like, ah, this could be the day that I die. What if this was the day that I die? When I get in the car, oh, I could have an accident. I could die right now. And for me, it's not morbid. It's just a way to like, oh, yeah, this is precious. This life is short. It's precious. It's, it's, it's not infinite. It's not an infinite resource that I can just waste my time. It's, there benefits and also now I've been teaching actually a seven-day Mara Nassati mindfulness of death retreat at Spirit Rock for the past few years

Which has been I would say the most profound the most profound of the retreats that I teach it's it's powerful really powerful. I remember last year, a gentleman was a doctor and during the retreat, having challenges, a true in facing death and just a lot was coming up for him and at the end of the retreat he stalked me and said, you know, how do you put a value on coming in with a mortal fear of death and leaving with peace? So if just one person is moved to have more peace about their death and mortality, and in the ways they will both affect them and affect people around them and the way they live their life, my work is done. Stay tuned more of our conversation is on the way after this.

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Let's talk about the benefits here. Before we actually, before we dive in, have we made clear enough how one can practice this so you just described this idea of this could be my last? Are there other mindfulness of death practices that we should know just as a foundational sort of table stakes here? Yeah, yeah. So, I would say the best and the primary practice is that this could be my last breath

and doing that consistently. And let me just say a couple more things about it because it's really worth saying a couple more things and that is doing it actually taking it on as a formal practice. What tends to happen is at first maybe, like, oh yeah, this is going to be my last breath. No, you kind of like the mind that ego is like, oh, not really. This is not my last breath. Come on.

And you kind of keep at it. And part of what's actually is happening has been termed by psychologists as get this terror management theory. I like that actually. It's pretty cool, isn't it? So there's this theory that the ego cannot fathom, cannot contemplate its own demise, its own death, and it is so painful, it is so challenging, say, the psychologist and TMT, term management theory, theory that or ego comes up with so many different ways

to push it away out of consciousness. No, it's not going to happen. No, no, no, no, it's just really hard to do. So, and also we engage in also lots of different activities. We check out, we go shopping, we drink alcohol, and many people do not very productive or supportive things in their lives in order to forget about their mortality.

So as one is doing this practice, term management theory, it's like, oh no, it's not really happening. No, oh no. So hanging in there, hanging in there, and finding ways, at some point, maybe imagining that this is what I do usually on retreat is like, okay, imagine a asteroid

is about to hit Earth and it can happen. You know, it's about to happen now. This is your last breath. Okay, say goodbye. In a way, actually, as I talk with you, I realize kind of conjuring up the image I had when I was 12 or 13 because I felt like the bomb was hitting and that was it. Say goodbye. This is it. This thing, this next one, we don't necessarily recommend doing it continuously, but sometimes people can hold their breath a little bit if it's not really registering that this could be their last breath. So finding different ways, discursive ways to really connect with the reality that this

could be your last breath. And if it's not your last breath, it's pretty similar to what your last breath might be. Anyway, and then what tends to happen is, if it really gets going, a sense of terror actually comes up, I'm gonna die. Wow, a sense of once mortality really registers, when this practice really gets juicy, gets going. And then at that point, to ground, to titrate, to really stabilize, and just really make peace,

and comfort, be comforted, make peace with, with, with dying. Like, yeah, I am going to die. Yes, it's, it's okay. And then there will be a sense of peace and then deeper layers. So more and more layers. So now when I do this practice, it's like, oh yeah, I've done this for so long. I'm completely comfortable with dying. And yet there are times that still it goes deeper to a level of, wow. There is this primal, not wanting to die.

So dealing, so getting to those layers. What would be like with somebody barging in the room right now, then AK-47 for you? Yeah, AK-47 is a scary thing in general. But I'm actually curious. I mean, so I would try to protect myself. So here's the thing, I'm so glad actually you bring that up because working with fear of death and mind wants of death doesn't mean that you don't want to live. That I would want to live. I would do everything I can to protect myself, to protect you from the bullets. Because I want to continue to live. This is pretty awesome. And yet, if I am going to die, if I get hit, like, ah, I'm curious, what's it going to be like? This mysterious experience that I have witnessed. Many of my loved ones go through and everybody succeeds. Nobody fails at dying. We all know how to do it. I'd be curious.

But yeah, that's a really, really interesting point that you're raising. And I think that came up for me actually, and, uplycly, as I mentioned, the straight of Magellan story, where I was in a boat and, was really, really bad weather. This La Zodiac was taking on water and it was practicing, it was practicing, it was calm, it was really calm. You know, this could be it. Okay. I'm going to just, if I get into the water, I'll have four minutes before hyperthermia sets in. I'm just going to relax. And there was something deep within me like actually, I'm going to try to keep myself warm. I'm just going to relax and there was something deep within me like actually I'm going to try to keep myself warm I'm not afraid of dying. There's no fear, but there is this desire. There's this deep wish to live So mind wants of death doesn't mean and it shouldn't mean that you you want to die

Does that make sense? There's a makes sense to me It's not it's not suicidal. It's about seeing how, as you used before, precious it is to be like. It should have the opposite effect of suicidality. It should make everything more vivid. Yeah. So, shall we talk about the benefits finally? We've been setting it up. Well, actually, yes. So I still didn't answer your previous question completely. You asked about a few practices. Yeah.

And this could be my last breath. I said a little more about that to fill it out with holding the breath, et cetera. Couple of other ones. One is one important one that I really should mention. It's challenging to mention, but I'll mention it anyway, is Corpse Contemplation, which is actually a or a charnel ground contemplation, which is a big part of Buddhist practice. So, and it's part of actually interestingly enough, it's in the

Satipatana Sutta, the four foundations of mindfulness Sutta, which is most of the secular mindfulness teachings have been drawn from, this teaching of the Buddha. Which is defined. So, this is the Sutta's or Sutras, depending on which language you want to use, Polly or Sanskrit, are the alleged to be the words of the Buddha, alleged because he said this stuff 2600 years ago, allegedly, and then it wasn't written down. It was kept orally and passed down that way, and then it was finally written down. So so there's some dispute or some suspicion that one could bring to this whole endeavor. Anyway, Saki Patana Suta is one of the Suta's

in which he laid out the four foundations, the four ways of developing mindfulness. And this idea of contemplating corpses where in back in those days you could find a corpse. It wasn't that hard. They would lay them out in so-called charnel grounds And you could sit there and eyes open meditate on the decomposition of the body Harder to do now. It is much hard. Yeah, exactly

My job though. I see quite a bit of death of a news reporter, and so I see you know, I've seen a lot and Over time of anything initially. I didn't really take it in, but over time, as I've become more of a practitioner, now I will use those opportunities, or even just skulls or bones, or even an animal that's been killed on the side of a road. I really will try to turn toward it a little bit more just as it's a healthy reminder. I think truly healthy reminder of my finitude, which is undeniable. Exactly.

Beautiful. I appreciate hearing how actually you don't turn away. You use these opportunities that arise in your work and your life in order to become closer to life being limited. This body being nature, this body will die, this body will go back into nature. It is of nature to die. And what we actually do on the retreat, Marna Sattiri, retreat at Spirit Rock is we have a PowerPoint of images of corpses at different stages of disintegration, which is the contemplation that is in the Sati Patanasuta,

in the first foundation, the first establishment, it's actually laid out, contemplated body in this stage, and then in this stage, and then in this stage and then in this stage and all the way to bone scattered here and there everywhere So contemplating and the reason for that is really not to arise More it's not morbid. It's not disgusting. It's just that this body is nature This it's it's no different than any any else any other It's no different than any else, any other natural trees they die. They go back into earth. So it's actually developing, in order to develop a very healthy relationship with the body

and what this body is. And the humility, we have such a sense of ownership about our bodies and also all kinds of potentially destructive relationships to it. So contemplating corpses, that's another practice that I would recommend if somebody's up for it. Another one is the five daily reflections to do in the morning. And the five daily reflections, they go, I am subject to aging. I have not, I have not gone beyond aging. I am subject to illness. I have not gone beyond illness. I am subject

to the effects of my own actions. And I'm not free of their effects. I am subject to death. I have not gone beyond death. And the last one that everything that I love and is dear to me will become separated of me, separated from me. So these five contemplations, two of which have to do with the death, to reminding ourselves every day, every morning, that I am of nature to die. I have not gone beyond dying. And that everything that we figure, we feel, it's ours. It's not really ours. We're just passing through this world. We're just using everything for a while. We're travelers. I love this song by Dito. My life is for rent. Our lives, our lives are for rent. We're renting this body. I mean, that's another way to see it.

We're renting these shoes. These, it's just everything that I'm wearing, I can now may watch. I'm just wearing it for a while. I'm, I'm not owning it. I'm a traveler. So nothing that you really own or you love is truly yours. It'll be separated of you. So these are some practices

and making up our own practices as you were saying. The news reports or whatever else that comes up during the day. I mean I'll give you another example. I have a four-year-old. We're taping this in San Francisco this episode and my wife and son came with me for this trip and I was in the pool with him this morning and you know having four-year-olds great but it's also incredibly boring if I'm going to be honest with you and sitting in the pool I'm a little cold we're doing the same thing over and over again is boring and that I think any parent will understand that that kicks in quite a bit of like oh my god, we can really do this again And yet also

You know where that my father is in ill health and You know, he probably had moments like this with me too and I looked up to my dad He was so easy to run the marathon he was so vital and and I'm just at a similar phase with this kid and what that that I was in with my dad when he was younger and healthier. And just keeping that in mind can revive the whole situation and get me out of the what's coming next mode for a few nanoseconds.

of the what's coming next, for a few nanoseconds. It's not permanent, but you can re-up it. Exactly. It's all you need. That reminder, being aware of it. Beautiful. So I think that's probably stepping ahead on some of the nine points that you're going to make. Let's get there.

We can be talking about it. Edge of your seat. Yet, okay, here we go. So I guess the first one really is that mindfulness of death has an amazing way of aligning our life with our values. And a couple of research studies, I want to actually report here, referred to here, one is there was a study done in 2004 by the Nobel Prize winner, Daniel Coniman, where they surveyed a group of women and compared how much satisfaction they got from their daily activities, and these are devolentary activities.

You would guess, right? Well, would you guess? You would guess that what you choose to do would align with the level of satisfaction you get out of them, right? That would be rational, right? Revoluntary. Revoluntary is not work. Okay.

Not so. So it turns out that the woman reported that they derived more satisfaction from prayer, worship, and meditation than watching television. But guess what? They spend on average five times longer watching television than engaging in any spiritual activity. It describes my life. So actually, it turns out it might actually

be even worse than that. That the factor of five might be an under-presentation. Another survey, it's called the American Time You Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that an average in American adult spends four times longer washing television than socializing and communicating, and 20 times longer on TV than religious and spiritual activity. So not five, but 20 times longer. Yes. So, um. That sounds right.

Yeah, isn't that interesting? So these are voluntary activities that we do. So the result, the solution, however, is not to make a resolution to say, OK, I'm going to stop wasting time. I'm just not going to do that. I mean, we've all made resolutions and how well did it work and for how long did it work? So in a way, resolutions are like carrot, like sticks. You're like, don't do that. Don't waste time.

Whereas actually what really works is to bring the scarcity and the preciousness of this the scarce resource which is timed to your consciousness to really really make it felt that time is short and guess what does that mind-trustable? Exactly, mindfulness of death. So if you realize that that time is short that is really one way to raise the scarcity of time to consciousness. Right. Because then you find yourself, your hand reaching for the remote, and maybe some percent of the time it kicks in.

Oh, yeah. This is not going to make me as happy as meditation or talking to my children or talking to my spouse May make me and given that I have limited number of hours on earth Maybe I'll make a different decision right now. Maybe exactly. What if I died tomorrow? I guess that would be another thing. What if what if I died tomorrow? Is this how I want to spend my last evening on earth? And again kind of being easy on it. You don't want to make it, you know, to stressful and kind of get anxiety from this mindfulness of death practice.

But just keeping death on your shoulder, as I think Carlos has, because the native says, keep death on your shoulder as a wise advisor. Keep death on your shoulder as a wise advisor. Keep death on your shoulder as a wise advisor. Does this make sense? Sam Harris has a great quote, something about, you know, like, watching a bad movie for the first time or bickering with your spouse. These things only make sense in light of eternity. So if we had eternity, these things would make sense, right? Doing these things. But we don't have eternity and we do things that absolutely do not make sense.

So mindfulness of death really raises the scarcity of time and it will and supports us to to live aligned with our values, with our deepest values, caring for our relationships, people that really care about in the world, which could be everyone. So, so another benefit, a second benefit I would say is also to live without fear of death, for our own sake. And as I mentioned, that retreatant, and I've seen many retreatant on retreats and different people have talked to, and a common person doesn't want to talk about death. It's just scary. They don't want to consider death.

There's a sense of anxiety. Actually, when we are not afraid of dying, it frees up a lot of psychic energy so that we don't have to engage in these various term management theory activities of trying to push it aside and trying to numb ourselves to the pain, to the idea of not being here, which by the way, we're not going to be here to see what it's like for us not to be here, right? Yeah, but I get that, but I mean, I was just thinking about this. I've done a little bit

of mindfulness of death a little bit, not nearly as much as you and definitely not a seven day retreat, which actually I'm not thinking I probably should do, but I'm definitely scared of it. Not so much of being dead because I won't be here to be scared of that. But the process of dying is a little scary, more than a little scary, depending on how it goes or might go. But also just sad. You know, we're approaching 50 and it's obvious to me that this show is not going to go on forever.

It's just kind of a bummer. So I don't know. Maybe I'm not practicing well or enough, but that's the truth in my experience. Yeah. Well, it's a different way of seeing it. I mean, it's the truth of life anyway, right? It's the truth that we're not going to live forever.

But actually seeing it from the other direction is that death gives life meaning. And if we didn't die, the tedium of immortality is something that I had never considered. But there is this idea of tedium if you lived forever and had done everything and that son had seen everyone, you know, all the care people you cared about, calm and go. And it's just, and you did everything. There was, there would be a sense of tedium of living. In fact, there are these stories, hypothetical stories of, of people who are lying in a ditch and just they're not moving at all to do anything because they're immortal.

They have plenty of time to do anything they want to do. So why should they bother to do anything? So it just changes one's perspective about life. It is you know the time that you have for example with your child for a year old. He's not going to be for a year old forever. It's precious. You know it's precious. If he was four years old forever and you were his dad, you know, this pool seems like, Okay, I can do this later. Maybe maybe, right? There would not be this preciousness of this scarcity, scarce resource. Yeah, but that doesn't necessarily mitigate my fear. In fact, the thing with my son only heightens my fear in a bit in a way's sadness. I don't know if sadness is different than fear, but it feels somewhat linked. Yeah, so that's another aspect of it.

So another, I would say another benefit, actually with the death contemplation is, when we feel comfortable with our own death, with our life being limited, not only is it a gift to us, but another benefit is the gift for the people that we care about, that we love, because they take lessons from us.

We are teaching others from the way we are in the world. So I'll give a personal example. My mom passed away a couple of years ago, and she was not afraid of dying. She knew, she had dementia, and yet I knew she knew what was going on. It was a type of dementia that she had clarity but what was going on. It was clear she was saying goodbye to friends who were visiting and there was just a sense of complete peace and ease of letting go. I guess something about my mom is that I had knew all along she was an afraid of dying, because she had had a near death experience when she was young before I was born. And apparently she had an infection, she had a really, really high fever.

And she says they took her to the doctor and she heard the doctor say, you've brought me a corpse. she's already dead. And she said she was screaming, I am not dead. I'm still here. Again, whether you believe, one believes in near death experiences or not, this is what she was reporting in her experience. So I like to hold it all with a don't know mind, but her, she said that she still wanted to come back to life because she had a young child, my sister. And they plung her into cold water for her fever to come down and she comes back to life. And since then, she always said, you know, this is a machine.

You know, I'm not afraid of dying. I'm not afraid of dying. So coming back to this other story, I know that for her there was no fear of death. There was just the sense of ease. And for me, that was the biggest teaching that someone that I loved could give me experientially with the sense of peace and ease. It felt like she was holding my hand through the process. I was holding her hand through the process of supporting her great and calm space for her. And she was holding my hand through it. It's okay. It's really okay. So teaching our children and people that we love through the work that we do, because you know this, Stan, the work that we do with

mindfulness, we don't do the work for ourselves. We do it for everyone whose life comes in contact with us. When we're calmer, when we're happier, when we're more content, when we're less reactive, it's a gift to the world. When we're more loving, when we're doing metapractic, similarly with death contemplation, when we're doing metapractors, similarly with death contemplation. When we work through our own fear of death and we really make peace with our own mortality, it's a huge gift for people who love us. And also at that stage, we can be more present for other people, for loved ones who are passing at their deathbeds. If I hadn't done, I think all this practice with death contemplation.

I don't know how calm or present I would have been with my mom's passing, accepting it completely, loving her, not letting family members force feed her when she didn't want to eat clearly. It was just respecting her, which has let her have a calm, peaceful passing. This is beautiful, this is graceful, respecting her wishes. So back in my mind, I'm thinking, well, I'm still scared of this and I think the answer you would give is practice. Yeah. She's nodding her head. Should we keep going through the benefits? We're going through them kind of in mixed ways, but I'll, you know, like he's a couple of

here, but I'll mention a couple of other ones. As that, I think another one I would say is, you know, mention maybe a little before, but a sense of gratitude arises. When death is not feared, it's not considered a mistake. It's not considered an injustice. But it's considered to be a natural part of the cycle of being human, this coming and going, then there's a sense of gratitude for having had the chance to live, for this consciousness, for having come together, for it's like a book. You know, you're grateful, a book is bound, the characters in the book are bound. characters in the book are bound. And I think it's Stephen Cave, says this, philosopher.

That the characters in the book are bound by the covers of the book. It doesn't extend, but as you read the book, it's aren't you grateful that the book was written and everything in it exists. It's an interesting philosophical argument. I won't go through, you know, I won't continue that line too far, but the sense of, again, it's, if it's not an injustice, if it doesn't feel like a mistake, a universal mistake, but it feels like the way things are, again, it frees up energies for more appreciation than gratitude of what is.

Instead of regretting money, wanting there to be more is the same. I guess it's the same idea with the practice of wanting. When you want more of something, you don't appreciate what you already have because you want that something else. Yeah, it describes most of my meals. You're not tasting the... What are you eating, Dan?

Whatever, you're not tasting the way you're eating right now because I'm planning my next bite. Yeah. So that's an interesting, interesting thought. So what if we thought, this is it? This is the meal. This is, you know, this bite is it. Maybe if, what if there's no bite after this?

Yeah. This is connected to, yes, many of the things that we've discussed. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And it's another mindfulness. And it's another saati practice. Right. Saati being the poly word for mindfulness. Yeah. Which also may be better translate as awareness of some scholars say, but that's another conversation. We'll leave that for another time, Dad. So, another couple of things, I guess we're just also touching into how mindfulness of death also sharpens our lived experience. It can really sharpen both both arising appreciation and sharpening the sense of experience, their raw experience,

similar to the other mindfulness practices that, you know, mindfulness of the body and mind from some mind. So this is another one. The few other advantages or few other benefits that I would say, one is, you know, the bigger picture of why we do these practices is towards awakening, translated from Pali Nibbana's awakening and lightenedment freedom, whatever, there are so many different contexts, so many different ways to think of it. Mara Nassate is also practicing for waking up for more freedom, for more ease in our lives, not just in the cushion, but in just in the way that we live our lives. Nothing phases us anymore. Nothing contracts us anymore. The feeling of us, the thought of us not being here anymore doesn't

phase us. It doesn't create a contraction. And in fact, it can lead to more awakening, more freedom in life through the practice of letting go, because Mara Nassati is a practicing of letting go, letting go, letting go, letting go, letting go. So letting go practice, it can lead to more ease and freedom in our wakefulness, in our daily life, not just in the moment of death, which is another way, actually, this practice can be beneficial. There are teachings, there is in one suta, teachings to Anata Pindika, so Anata Pindika was one of the supporters of the Buddha. On his deathbed, he receives these death practices on the deathbed about letting go, letting

go, letting go, very systematically. He is guided through letting go, letting go of this, letting go of that, letting go of sight, sound, consciousness, this, that. And at some point, actually, in this sutta, he's crying, he's weeping, and I think it's sorry, put Typhoon, remember correctly, says, why are you weeping? Are you in pain? Are you, says, no, I've never heard such beautiful teachings before, given to a layperson. This is so beautiful, so inspiring to let go, let go, let go. So these letting go practice in the moment of death can be liberating. Just the ultimate letting go instead of dying with a sense of fear. Like, ah, what's going to happen.

Next, I don't want to go. I don't want to leave you. I'm like, ah, letting go, letting go into peace, into ease, into happiness, into joy, into just jumping for joy. Like, wow, this mystery, fascinating, wild, letting go into it. And the moment of death actually can be a moment of liberation into Nebana, into freedom, both in this tradition and also in other traditions too. It's considered, especially in the Tibetan tradition, it's considered a significant

moment of letting go. So you can think of both the death contemplation practice as just as not just practice for daily life, who waking up to your life to live it really fully with purpose, with alignment to your values, with gratitude, with with freshness, with intensity, with presence, with a lot more presence, being available for people that you love to hold their suffering and their passing, their death with more ease because you're not disturbed by your own. So not only so many benefits in the way you actually show up in the world, but also for the moment of death that you die without fear, both for your own sake, so that you get to enjoy the process, this mystery that nobody has come back to really tell us what happens

exactly. And also for the sake of your loved ones, so in that moment they can hold your hand and you can hold their hand and there's a sense of peace. And as I say that, I'm reminded again, my mom's passing through, it was the feeling of peace and grace and everyone who came into the apartment at the threshold, all the hospice nurses and staff. There was just a sense of peace and ease in the room that was co-creative from her sense of peace and ease

and not being afraid. And also me being a supporter on her journey, creating a sense of peace like Okanus. It's not a mistake that she is dying. It's supposed this is what's supposed to happen right now. It's part of the natural lawful unfolding of things. So I think that's, yeah, those are some benefits, I would say, of this unusual, perhaps unusual or radical, I think in our society might be considered a radical practice. Yes. Do we think we hit all the nine? I think we did. Good enough.

All right. The last question from me. Please. This is a big one. Okay. But I'm not wondering whether we should do it, but let's do it. You brought it up before past lives practice. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha preamble about this. So this is so having practice with Pākṣāyada. And to say also I practice with them twice. So, sat three month retreat twice with them, so I practice with them in total of six months.

He teaches Abhidāma, translated to be the higher teachings, as well as which are written in the Visuddhimaga, and in the Visuddhimaga, the path of purification, butakosa, that we mentioned earlier. So, after the mind gets very malleable, there are different practices to be done. So, before actually even getting into the Pasana, which is seeing the three characteristics of impermanence, not self and unsatisfactoriness of all phenomena. So in the middle part, so after John is before Vipassana, what he does, the part he's in the Svissuti Maga-style practice,

basically with mind-based, does the part that he's in the Svissuti Maga-style practice. Basically, with mind being so concentrated from the genres, the mind is being prepared. We're collecting requisites. We're collecting, we're seeing all the different natures of realities so that in the next phase we see the three characteristics of them. So basically we're collecting everything that's possible in the field of experience through, in all the experience of hearing and seeing and tasting and touching and thinking both in this dimension and potentially what has come before and what might come after. So that when we're going to see the three characteristics, the impermanence, the

not self and unsatisfactorance of everything, we're going to say it for everything. Does that give a sense? So that there's nothing left in this fear of experience. I say, oh yeah, myself is there, hidden there. So that phase is actually even more rigorous. Is the most rigorous part of the practice, I would say, seeing so part of that practice, their instruction specifically given to the meditator when they get to later part of that practice, to go back moment by moment by moment, mind moment by mind moment and to say,

when the mind is so, I don't use the word concentrate, it's so unified and just the way of seeing and the access to way of seeing things is so differently and the way of seeing time and space, it's, it gets very interesting in ways that is not quite accessible to normal, normal state of consciousness. I remember there were instructions that were written, for example, the practicing within was getting another PhD seriously. The instructions were written pages and pages and pages and pages, so I would read them, practice them, I would read some more, I would practice them, I would like, and I was on a tight deadline, every 24 hours there was an intense intense practice. And sometimes I would read

the instructions, they would make no sense to me, but then the instruction was to get into the fourth jhana, and then you're supposed to come out of the fourth jhana, and then do the practice, and then turn your mind to these practices, because then the mind is really sharp. So I would read them, not understand them, like, okay, whatever, I would, you know, the mind would get into fourth genre and then come out and then I would read them and I'm like, oh yeah, that makes sense. Of course. And then I would practice them, like, oh yeah, this there here, okay, fine. Seeing reality in a very different way that was not accessible before. So all of this just to build up to, so one of the practices was to go back moment by moment

by moment to the moment of birth and to the moments before that. So, and I did all of these practices, but remember everything that happened in your life up until the moment of birth. There are ways to do that. It's very interesting. Yeah, so, so. You just remember like what you had for breakfast everything that happens in your life up until the moment of birth? There are ways to do that. It's very interesting.

Yeah. So, you just remember what you had for breakfast on your seventh birthday? Not exactly. It doesn't exactly work that way, but to say the access to memories becomes a lot more sharper than otherwise available in a non-concentrate in mind. So as a scientist, you know, and also as a devoted practitioner to Pauk-Saya-Dah, I mean, I love this man. I'm not devotional being a nerd and big as scientist.

Devotion has never been big for me, but it's very something very special about this teacher. Really, really special. My other mentor, teacher, friend Guy Armstrong, home you met yesterday, he says that we recorded an episode with Guy yesterday. I love him saying that of all the meditation masters that guy has met, Paul Oxieto has been the most Buddha-like, with a sense of meta and love and just their specialness. There's something special about this being. So you would tell me to do this, okay, I would do my best to see how I could accommodate and with a dono mind. So what I'm sharing with you about the quote unquote past life's practice, I still hold as a dono mind.

I'm not saying that it happened. I'm not saying that it didn't happen. I don't know. And in so many ways, I don't care. But what really came out of the practice, that's what I care about. And that's what I like to share with you. Okay. And so what came up was experiencing firsthand, whether true or false, again, I don't care, don't know mine, but the sense of experiencing life, first hand, as different beings, as

different human beings, who lived and died and had hopes and sorrows, and feeling their pain, first hand as my own, feeling their joys, first hand as my own, again and again and again, and seeing the comings and goings of this life, comings and goings again and again, the tedium of many lives, the human life, again and again and again. And the effect of the practice was feeling lack of separation from others. I could have been born as you, Dan. You could have been born as me. It is, it's so random in so many ways.

We don't choose our parents. We don't choose our genes. We're still figuring out who we are, who this self is. That's making all these decisions and has these per-delections and fears and loves and sorrows, et cetera. It's the sense of separation and feeling a sense of compassion, a sense of lack of separation for me. Just it's completely changed through our practice. So as a scientist, I don't care whether I've lived before,

whether I've not lived before. That's not the point of the practice, really. And who I was this, I was that, I was a queen, I was a this, I was a pauper, who cares? It's really what the practice produces in this life, in the way that we show up and in the way that we relate to others. You've been very patient with all of my questions.

It's been really fascinating to say with you two little questions before I go, well, maybe not. But one is, is there something that I should have asked, but didn't, or do you feel like we got through everything you had on your mind to say today? Oh, I'll say one more thing, actually. The beginning question, like where you asked about my background and being a computer scientist and a nerd, I would say one more thing. I never intended or wanted to be a Buddhist teacher. I think that's one

thing I share because it's in the narrative, it's come up. So as I was sitting with my teacher, Pox, I had both times, I would go to the practice meetings with him and he would point his finger to me, you must teach, you must teach Dhamma, you must teach Dhamma at the university. The thought bubble was, what me teaching Buddhism, teaching Dhamma, are you kidding me? No way, I'm a nerd, I teach computer science. So I would say,

Bante, dear sir, venerable sir, I teach computer science, except because he would be unkind or rude to say, oh no, I'm never going to teach. So and he planted a seed of that just flowered and kept changing my life in in interesting ways. If people want to learn more about you, are there places on the internet they can go to read or hear more from you?

Yeah, I do have a website and it is Nikki Margafori. Margafori is hard to spell. We'll put the link in the show note. Okay, NikkiMargafori.com and I have lots of audio recordings of my past talks that have been recorded at Spirit Rock and IMC and other places and videos and and schedule of teachings and blah blah blah. What a pleasure. Thank you very much. Thank you. It's such a pleasure to meet you, Dad, and have this conversation with you. Really lovely.

Thanks again to Nikki. Just a quick item of business here for if you're really interested which I suspect many of you are in the issues she was discussing if you want to hear more about the John's episode number 10 of this show we talked to Lee Brazington where he talks a lot about the John's and then if you're all if you want to learn more about Pao Ox Cydah, Nikki's teacher there is a website that we've added to the show notes where you can learn more about him. All right, let's do some voicemails. Here's number one.

Hi, Dan. My name is Spencer, and I have two questions for you. First of all, thank you so much for your podcast. It makes me feel not crazy for liking meditation as much as I do. My first question is, I've been meditating for every day for like a month and a half, and I really like it. I think I might, when thinking about starting with a teacher, and I have my eye on a couple of teachers in my area, I was wondering, is there like a minimum effective dosage for sitting with someone like once a week or once every other week. And then my second question is I was also thinking about going on some type of a retreat.

And I was worried because in time of time I have low back pain associated with sitting without support. So I was wondering have you seen any accommodations made on retreats for people with low back pain and if so, what do those look like? All right, thanks very much, bye. Awesome. So two questions there.

One, about the minimum effect of dose with sitting with a teacher. I think that's highly individual. That's really, I think something you're gonna have to feel out for yourself. I do work with a teacher myself. Joseph Goldstein has been on the show. I try to go on retreat with him once a year.

We see each other a couple times during the year, but it's sort of episodic. We just did an event together in New York City and we did an event before that in April and around both of those. We got a lot of FaceTime and we also get on the phone every couple of months to talk about my practice. But that we've just kind of fallen into a rhythm there that works for me.

And if I think if I wanted more time with them, I could certainly ask all of which to say, I think you should feel it out for yourself. I don't think there's any need for to be overly prescriptive there. But good on you for tackling this issue because I think having a teacher being in the room with somebody who's got a lot of cushion time can make a big difference. Second question about lower back pain. I'm with you. I'm a fellow sufferer and yes, the two places where I've sat meditation retreats

which are insight meditation society and then on the West Coast spirit rock IMS is in Massachusetts. In fact, I just got back from IMS. I was sat there for nine days. It was actually it kind of dropped in as a guest in the middle of they every year They do a three-month retreat, which is I just blows my mind that there is such a thing that like a hundred people, they break it up into two, six week chunks, but some percentage of the people do both six weeks chunks, six week chunks. And so they're there for three months. So they, it blows my mind that they hand over their cell phones

for that significant period of time. And they're not, you know, just looking around the room. I didn't know any of them, because nobody was talking, but they look like just regular people. They didn't, you know, and they were all, there were some young people, there were some middle-aged people, there were some older people, it was a real mix. And just having come back from there, I noticed there are people sitting in all sorts of

physicians, there are folks who are on the ground with a few cushions and sitting the way which you would imagine people sit with, you know, in the traditional posture of legs, cross, et cetera, et cetera. I saw, like me, many people sitting in chairs. And then there are a few people who are actually lying down during the meditation sessions. So, and then occasionally you'll see somebody just get up and stand either because whatever physical pain they've got is too intense or because they're too tired. I'm just guessing those are the two reasons why I would stand. So, you know, it just goes back to the

fact that, as has been mentioned on the show before, there are really, classically, four positions in which the Buddha talked about meditating, sitting, standing, lying down, or walking. So, yeah, and I, there are all sorts of, there's all sorts of paraphernalia at the, you know, at the retreat centers I've been to where cushions and blankets and something called back jacks where you can give yourself support if you want to sit on the floor. So I wouldn't worry too much about it if you've got lower back pain that I think they got you covered.

We're only doing one voicemail this week because there are two questions in there. But if you want to leave us a voicemail going forward, there's a number in the show notes, give us a call, and either I will answer it or even better, we'll get an actual meditation teacher to answer the questions. It's one of our favorite features of the show. Before we go, just want to thank everybody who's involved in putting the show together, Ryan Kessler, Samuel Jones, Grace Livingston, Lauren Hartzog, Tiffany O'Mohundro. We've got a new person working the boards. Today, her name is Dana.

And thanks, as always, to our podcast insiders, whose input we get on a weekly basis and comes to me, and it's extremely helpful, sometimes humbling, but that's good. And in closing, this is normally the part of the show where I say I'll see you next Wednesday with a new episode. But for once, actually, it's going to be see next Thursday because Wednesday next Wednesday of course is Christmas

So we're gonna post our next episode the day after Christmas and I should say it's the beginning of a series special series We're doing we don't have done a lot of series on the show But this is a special series we're doing around healthy habits because we're it's new years and everybody's making resolutions Etc etc etc. We're gonna tackle all sorts of habits from exercise to sleep, to meditation, to food, and diet. In fact, actually, this woman we're bringing on is kind of like the anti-diet maven and has really opened my eyes to the lots of the pathologies we have around eating. And so we're going to start off with Kelly McGonagall who's going to talk about habit formation generally and also

specifically around exercise and you know I can't tell you how much value I've derived from conducting these interviews and hearing about habit formation through the lens of sort of mindfulness insanity while also wanting to you know be healthier. It's made a big difference for me, so I'm excited to see how it lands for you guys. So, I will see you next Thursday. Merry Christmas. Hey, 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. you