Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 317: Non-Preachy Ethics | Jozen Tamori Gibson

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

We’re diving in on another Buddhist list today. One of the many things I like about the Buddha is that, as far as I can tell, he pretty much always aims his messages, even the hard-to-swallow ones, at the pleasure centers of the brain. Even when he’s talking about ethics, which could come off as preachy or overly abstemious. Today, we’re going to talk about the Five Precepts. The Precepts are kind of like the Buddhist version of the Ten Commandments. Except, as you will hear, there is, by design, an enormous amount of flexibility in how you can interpret and apply these precepts. And undergirding it all is, as mentioned, self-interest. The reason not to steal or lie or kill is that, in the end, it protects your mind. My guest is Jozen Tamori Gibson, who has trained in the Sotō Zen and Theravada traditions, is on the Teacher’s Council for New York Insight Meditation Center, and teaches in a variety of other settings, including the Insight Meditation Society. Jozen’s pronouns are they/them. Quick note before we dive in: Jozen lives on a busy street, so you will sometimes hear a little bit of background noise. Take a few minutes to help us out by answering a survey about your experience with this podcast! The team here is always looking for ways to improve, and we’d love to hear from all of you, but we’d particularly like to hear from those of you who listen to the podcast and do not use our companion app. Please visit www.tenpercent.com/survey to take the survey. Thank you. Where to find Jozen Tamori Gibson online: Website: https://www.dharma.org/teacher/jozen-tamori-gibson/ Social Media: •   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jozentamorigibson/?hl=e Book Mentioned: •   “Experience of Insight” Audiobook: https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Experience-of-Insight-Audiobook/1645470377 Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/jozen-tamori-gibson-317 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. 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. Hey gang, we're diving in on another Buddhist list today. One of the many things I like about the Buddha is that as far as I can tell, he pretty much always aimed his messages, even the hardest to swallow ones, at the pleasure centers of the brain, even when he's talking about ethics, which could come off as preachy or abstinuous. Today, we're going to talk about the five precepts. The precepts are kind of like the Buddhist version of the Ten Commandments, except as

you will hear. There is, by design, an enormous amount of flexibility in how you can interpret and apply these precepts. And, undergirding it all is, as mentioned earlier, self-interest. The reason not to steal or lie or kill is that, in the end, it protects your mind. My guest is Jozen Tamori Gibson, who has trained in the Soto Zen and Teravata traditions, is on the Teachers Council for the New York Insight Meditation Center, and teaches in a variety of other settings, including the Insight Meditation Society. Jozen's pronouns are they and them.

And a quick note before we dive in, Jo lives on a busy street. So you will sometimes hear a little bit of background noise, but it's not a big deal. Here we go now with Joseph and Timori Gibson. Joseph, nice to meet you virtually. Nice to meet you as well too, man. Thank you for having me. So I'm interested, you know, when you were chatting with folks from my team about what we should talk about in this podcast, you know, when you were chatting with folks from my team about what we should talk about in this podcast, you chose the precepts.

What are the precepts and why did you think that was important to discuss? First of all, that first question, what are the precepts is the question for me in this embodied type of way. So the precepts that I'm referring to are the typical five that we may take when we're on an insight of personal retreat, something that folks may be familiar if they set it, insight meditation society, for example. And so these five, I'll list them quickly. Asalaman Pali, I think, is important for me to honor the Pali language and the lineage in that way, coming from India and just really honoring the ancestors and the lineage that

land here to be in this conversation with us then. So there's the first panati-pata, wadamini-sikapadam samadhyamhi, which is roughly translated into, I undertake the training to refrain from destroying living beings. The second precept, Adinadana, wadamini-sikapadam samadadiyami, is I undertake the training to refrain from the narestas within that first word. And in this case, Adinadana, stealing or taking that which is not really given, I

are not take the training to refrain from stealing or taking that which is not really given. And Ka Me Su Me Chattara, Wadamini Sikha, Padam Samadhyammi, I undertake the training to refrain from sexual misconduct. Musa Wada, Wadamini Sikha, Padam Samadhyammi, I undertake the training to refrain from false speech. And then the fifth surah, meyara maja pa madattana, wehramani sika pa dham sama, diyami, I undertake the training to refrain from taking intoxicants, which cause carelessness and cloud the mind. And so these are guideposts for me.

They haven't been for my life, but they've been guideposts for me since the Buddha Dharma reintroduced themselves to me in this life. And everything that has been going on this past 2020, even before that, is this questioning not only of what are our global ethics, so these precepts, we think of Escila, these moral ethics, moral conduct. What are our global moral ethics? What are our local moral ethics in conduct? But what is my own? What are my own? How do I embody these?

How do I support locally? And how does that branch out? What is that impact? What does that affect? And so these teachings have been very powerful for me since formally starting practice some 17 years ago now. They've been a beautiful challenge, a beautiful struggle. They've impacted relationships. They've impacted where I live, how I live, who I live with, where I eat, where I eat, what I listen to, what I share, there's so much

is all connected to with this investigation of the Self, the Self in our life. What is this eye that we have that's pointed to in our practice, right? Within this practice of not self or not the, so does this intersection and interplay and there's this dance and beautiful creativity and how do I honor that in this relative life in my conversation with you, Dan? Let me get out of the way, a question that I think may have popped up in some of the minds of

the listeners. Some people who listen to this show may say to themselves, you know, I'm interested in meditation in large part because I had a bad experience with organized religion and this reminds me of the commandments and it sounds like a bunch of rules I need to follow. So what does that have to do with my meditation practice? Exactly. That's a beautiful question. There's a teaching that the Buddha emphasized, which is a Hipposico. And a Hipposico is Investigation learning for yourself

Going through and investigating what this means for you And it's a reminder that these are not rules These are guides now Rules in a sense if you are a lay person. No If you are a monastic if you are living in a monastic. If you are a monastic, if you are living in a monastic way, there's a way in which this can be expressed as rules of living. But it's a way of living. You have the choice to recognize how this land for you, how this feels for you. So not commandments, offerings, suggestions, with this energy of a

heapsy go, come see for yourself, come investigate, which is also asking for this sense of what you said right before asking that question. Then let me get out the way. It wasn't you getting out the way. Well, let's get this question out the way in a sense. How can we recognize when we, this conditioning of ours, gets in a way of us just lending ourselves over to investigating where are the blockages, the hindrances? Yeah, and I, from time to time, you may hear some sound in the background, and that's because I live in a very densely populated area with a lot of beings doing being things. It's a beautiful way to practice.

And so, engaging, even with that, engaging with what arises, not being upset, understanding what's happening in the outside world, how it impacts what's going on inside. Yeah. I appreciate you describing it as a, for us, lay people, it's a guide rather than, you know, strict rules. I think maybe the best way to help us understand that would be to walk through each of the precepts. And then, and get us in, because you listed a vast array of areas impacted in your life

by these guides, by these precepts. So let's start with the first one, which is kind of the Buddhist version of thou shalt not kill, refrain from taking another life, how are we to understand that and does it go deeper than the obvious? I definitely believe it goes deeper than the obvious. I'll just say that my practice is coming from two, if we can be binary in this way, two lineages, the teravodins side, which is from primarily Ajahn Chah, Typhor's lineage, and also Mahasi's side, our lineage, and then the Sultozen lineage.

So I just name that because from time to time, you will come into play and I'm speaking about my understanding from these two different perspectives, which are all one. So overall, what I've been taught and what I've received and what I've come to understand from an embodied place, this is not something that I think about, but it's something that I feel. It's being felt in the belly and in a heart that these precepts are about non-harm. That's the overall theme, if you will, about these precepts. And so, yes, not killing. It's in the suitors, with the Buddha talks about

literally not taking a life in these steps of how that comes to be. From the thought process to the perception, to the act, the intention, all of that, one of those is breaking the precepts. Even the thought can be so-called breaking the preset. So that became interesting to me. I started to feel into how that plays out even in conversation when we're in conversation. Am I jockeying for a position to cut someone off in conversation? In a sense, killing their strain of thought and their offering in that way? So there's the very grotesque piece of it, which is killing a living being

and then there's the piece that we really made even take for granted of the lack of connection, the lack of community, the lack of relationship with how we limit or how we invade or dominate a conversation, right? Dominate a space. And this is near and dear to my heart being of a racialized body or racialized black body of also Japanese ancestry. And there's an ancestral familial understanding of not only not harm but honoring and resiliency and care in that way. That's taught, that's passed down. And it gets played out in how we eat and what we eat. But when I bring in my factors of this practice over the years, I've become vegan. And I'm vegan not so much for, I didn't go into it because of health reasons, but I feel healthier. My energy levels have shifted.

And there's something about this that I believe has to do with not just my lack of partaking in the meat industry, but it's that whole system in the energies and the intentions of how we mass produce and how we share food, the energies of the butcher that may not understand how to be connected with the animal in a way that is wholesome and a sharing of that energy that may not understand how to be connected with the animal in a way that is wholesome and a sharing of that energy that then gets passed through my ingestion of that food. We are all energy in that way. We are all sharing in that way and it's being passed now.

It's being passed through. And so this is not so much about the not eating of the animals. It's how are we treating animals, plants, food, water, the whole of it? How are we sustaining? How are we adding to the resiliency of this earth of us as human beings, which are not separate from the earth, air, water, fire. You brought up veganism. I had a similar transition. It was a big reason why I stopped eating animal products, although I do occasionally have some ice cream. I stopped eating animal products, although I do occasionally have some ice cream. But, you know, there are many, I use this term somewhat lightly,

the devout Buddhists who do eat meat. I mean, the Dalai Lama comes to mind, our mutual teacher, Joseph Goldstein comes to mind. And I know one of the things that I've tried to tread very lightly with as a vegan is being, you know, I think some of my brothers and sisters in the vegan world can be a little judgmental. I know that for me before becoming a vegan,

when I heard the word vegan, I just thought of renunciation and self-righteousness. So I brought it up, the veganism thing, and I want, it might be triggering some people listening. So are we bad people or bad Buddhists or bad meditators if we, you know, have a stake once in a while? No, no, not at all. And this is points to our attitude, and I love when you kind of conflated renunciation and self-righteousness. Those are very different things to me. And so I think there's a way in which we need to center renunciation in our lives and feed

renunciation in our lives. We're going through this food pun and let go of this feeding of self-righteousness and being greater than equal to or less than in some way. We know our monastics go through these beautiful ceremonies of going on arms rounds, go out into the world with a beautiful bowl, if you will, and the community many times understand who they are, and they offer them their food from their homes to these monastics in honor of their practice and honor of the song of community. And so this is the way in which that energy, that intention to nourish and to give that generosity and that receiving, you receive what is given to you in that way. I remember when I entered into vegetarianism. So I was more pescatarian than anything. I went to my great aunt's house and my great aunt was known to have the best pork chops

and the best chitlins on the block. I'm not a fan of chitlins and I don't really want to describe what they are to our audience who don't know them, but you can look them up later. But they're meat products in this way and when I let her know that I was vegetarian, it hurt her. And she started to cry. And it allowed us to be in a conversation around what that meant for me and what that meant for her. And this was me learning more about me learning more about what type of energy and intention she was putting into her food when she was feeding me. I didn't live with her, but I was going to visit and we would, I would see her about maybe

once or twice a month, right? Then she was really offering a part of her in this way. And this was before the Buddha Dhamma was introduced to me in this life, but that was my first understanding of this expansion of this first precept. Yeah. The expansion being, even thinking you're doing the right thing with your dietary choices,

even that can have a negative impact on somebody else. So it's very complicated. It's very complicated. It is. And it lends itself to having a conversation. Again, not a self-righteous conversation. Not, I am doing this therefore, you not only need to do this, but I'm going to look down on you in order to do this. I pull out to really have a conversation of where you're coming from, where you live, what your situation is. And so this is leading into that word, that conversation, that dialogue, that sit down piece, which is as we know, challenging. It sounds like the spirit in which you approach the precepts overall is one of having an inner conversation about what does this mean about how you, Jozen, are going to live

your life in any given moment. Right. Right. Yeah. And you know, there's... So there's living life in every single moment. Everything, as we mentioned, is energy. And therefore, everything in some shape of form is a conversation in itself.

And how will we engage in that conversation? How we engage with ourselves when we first wake up in the morning. What is the next thing that we do? How present are we? This is where the mindfulness practice comes in, right? And knowing when we are lost in thoughts or we are lost in some activity and we're not so present, what do we do? We begin again. It's not something to place judgment upon or even to expect things to be different. Can we really honor things as they are, just as it is?

And from there, that's where the aeopostical comes in, the investigation. What is this? What's the conditioning of all of this within? Have I adopted this? Have I been taught this? Where's this landing in the body? We have our saati patana practice that helps with that.

We have our Brahma vahana practice that helps with that. We have our Brahma-Vihara practice that helps with that. These practices that help us to investigate our relationship with the precepts. Whether we are so called Buddhists or not, we are engaging with these precepts and with some shape of form. We are following them in some way, or we're not. And then there's the in between the spectrum. It's not binary. It's all fluid. Yeah. You said some nice words about renunciation before, I just want to pick up on that because the aforementioned Joseph Goldstein, he has a good rap on the word renunciation, which doesn't have positive implications in the West and English, but he likes to reframe it as non-addiction.

So you might renounce, I don't know, lying or alcohol, you could think of that as a sort of asceticism or self-denial or you could think about it as being actually in your interest because you're dropping an addiction. Is that where you were going with your sort of warm sentiment of ease of e-renunciation? Yeah, in some sense, yes. There's the non-clinging aspect. There's the letting go aspect. There's non-indiction, which again is asking us to be in relationship with those words, what those words even mean to us. Right? You just named a couple of things about

not being addicted or letting go about at all, right? Which is another preset that's in there. Our relationship with so-called intoxicants, so I don't wanna jump around. But the relationship with that is intoxicants that lead to heathecyst or cloud the mind. Many of us have relationships with medicine. We need some medicines in the body

and some of those medicines involve alcohol so we can not fully rid ourselves of alcohol. But our weven drinking alcohol on a level that allows us or access or takes us out of our bodies where we're then acting in the way where it's not our true nature, if you will. It's another nature, right? It's a zombie-like nature. So there's harm that comes from that from time to time.

And if we have an interest in non-harm, if we have a capacity to engage with this in a non-harming way, then let's engage with that conversation. Let's engage with that practice and community. We're not alone in this. This is where the Sangha piece comes in. We're not alone. Sangha being the poly word for the sort of community of meditators. Well, you said you didn't want to jump around, but I'm going to give you permission to

jump around. I know that the precept around intoxicants is later, but we're already there. So let's jump to it. Let's do it. Same kind of question, and I'm asking this a little bit in my, you know, role as interviewer here. But does this precept around intoxicants mean we shouldn't drink? And how do we understand intoxicants mean we shouldn't drink, and how do we understand intoxicants? How do we define intoxicants?

Could sugar be an intoxicant? So can you say more about how you understand this? If we're following our dear teacher, Joseph, with understanding of an association as addiction piece for non-sing addiction. Yes, sugar for sure. As intoxicant, we can look at the ways in which sugar has been inundated and pressed upon us culturally. We have these sugar habits that many of us aren't even aware of.

It's relational to the individual as much as it is to the cultural so-called norms that we are navigating through. Some people need sugar at certain times in their life. We talk about folks who are working with forms of diabetes. They may need forms of sugar in order to support them. And so it's not so cut and dry, but it's really this is why that closing piece of that leads to cloudiness and heedlessness. So if you know that a particular product is not good for your constitution, not good for

your body, it good for your body. It has you acting in a particular way. And many times we don't recognize we are acting in a particular way, but it's our community, because our family, it's our friends, it's our song, who will let us know. Can we hear it? Can we receive it? Hopefully we can hear it the first time.

Sometimes it's the hundredth time. Hopefully, it's not never heard that leads to either harm or death in some way. So to put a fine point on it, if we like to have a glass of wine once in a while and it doesn't lead to harm to ourselves or others, it's not a quote unquote breaking of the precept. Not from what I understand for lay people. Now, if you take certain vows, monastic vows, this is where the precepts shift, who we're just talking about, for lay folks. So there are certain monastic vows

where no, you are not drinking any alcohol. There's a list of what you cannot take in, right? These lists of what you cannot engage with. And as we evolve as a culture and a society, there are new things that get added to it from my understanding. But in terms of how lay people interact with this fifth precept, it's really interesting because you can think of a whole broad spectrum of things as intoxicants in this way. I mean, maybe works and intoxicant.

You know, I know people, I don't want to name any names, but his initials are Dan Harris, who, you know, when you can get super stressed out around work and get high off of the attention or whatever. And who knows how, I mean, I have questions about how good is that for me, how good is it for the people around me. And so it really, this fifth precept, if understood in this sort of panoramic way in which you're describing it, if I'm hearing you correctly,

can bring you into a pretty deep investigation of how you're interacting with lots of substances and toxicants processes in your life. Let me turn it back to you for a moment than you mentioned. Go a little bit deeper into that exploration that you have with the intoxicant of work. What is that high?

I shouldn't have talked to all myself. What is the high? Yeah, there are lots of highs associated with work for me because the classic story that I've kind of dined out on for a long time is that I got addicted to covering combat as a young reporter not long after 9-11 and ended up in war zones all over the place. And it was intoxicating in that it was very exciting. And as somebody who was quite ambitious, it was advancing my career. And getting, you know, there's a sort of sea level fame associated with it as well. And then also as somebody who's idealistic,

there was a sense of, yeah, I'm doing something important here. And then that led to a kind of depression that was undiagnosed that then led to intoxicants of a much more easily understood variety, including cocaine, and then that led to a panic attack on national television. I'm older and at least marginally less stupid now, but nonetheless, there can be intoxicating to have this podcast grow in audience. It can be intoxicating when somebody says nice things about me on Twitter. It can be intoxicating when

I work really hard and finish a book which is I'm working out a book right now and it's not going to be finished anytime soon. But all of those things can run me down and also if I'm stuck in my head around them or stressed out about them, can make me unpleasant to the people in my orbit. Does any of that make sense? It makes perfect sense. That really does not appreciate you being open here. It's important for us to be able to understand how we are using our platforms. And so we have this practice, at least a practice that I've been taught every day,

reminding ourselves of our intention while also re-enquiring with the intention. The intention to go to work. The intention to work in the way that I'm working or where I am working, just checking in with that, it doesn't need to be a big thing in that way. But it's a conversation that is a reminder of our relationship. How am I using these platforms? And is that word using?

Am I using it on behalf of non-har. Again, the precepts being the guideposts. Am I using it in order to feed some piece of me that it could be the self. Again, we talked about Anata, not self, but am I using it to feed myself? These likes and these clicks and these hearts? So I want to be seen in a particular way by someone right And these platforms know this we had this beautiful document and just came out social dilemma, I think is the name of it. Where's the compilation of these

reminders for more than a decade of the addictive nature of not only social media, but technology itself, in a ways in which these companies know the human psyche and know how we engage with these platforms, these gadgets, because they themselves are human. They know how we all function. So they just feed that addictive piece. Those parts of our brain, I want to get to, Eddie, you've had some neuroscientists and some very smart people on this platform who talk about these elements of the brain. So I encourage the audience to go back and listen to those parts, right?

But these very addictive dopamine pieces of our minds that just get fed and fed and fed in so many different ways. For me, and this is where I have to go into the vows that I've taken in this life, that's connected to my Soto Zen path and the Bodhisattva path, which have these precepts and then some more where I not only am investigating these addictive pieces and these conditionings within myself, but doing so on behalf of others. We have this very unattainable outreach plan, this vision, we say we are going to help save all beings. That's a good idea.

I'm down for it, I think vows for that. Then I'm just going to start with this corner that I'm on. I'm going to cut it down just a little bit. And to do it in a way again, that is not about me uplifting myself or being in a higher rank because the Buddha talks about not comparing because the Buddha talks about not comparing in the practice. No one is above, no one is below, no one is even equal to. But this emphasis on, may we be free, may we be liberated from these forms of addiction, from these hindrances that block us from being in true relationship, hold some non-harming relationship

with each other, let alone ourselves. I love that you mentioned social media as an intoxicant because it certainly can be. I'm not a luddite, but I do think that's just another area that's rich for sort of our exploration. What's our relationship to it? How are we, as you said, using it?

You've talked quite a bit about or referenced a few times the Buddhist notion of selflessness on not self. This can be a very tricky concept for people. I myself understand it only episodically. When you refer to selflessness within the construct or context of the precepts, what do you mean in the most sort of down to earth way? The ways in which I may insist my way of thinking into a certain situation, or insist my values or my morals in a situation, or project them onto someone,

insist things may be a certain way. It's a form of dominance, if you will, we're trying to dominate in some way, shape of form, be the one and only center. So it's okay and we need to center ourselves very often, especially when it comes to care and self-care and folks who give so much to others, it's not. I'm talking about that type of center, but being the true center of attention, not listening. Within the practice of listening, the listening practice is to understand the energy of it is not to respond, but it's to understand.

And so how can I in every situation listen in order to understand and from there, appropriately, respond? appropriately respond as opposed to centering response first where I'm not listening and I'm in my own body, my own head, not even in my body in that point, in my own head about what I'm going to say next no matter what this person is saying to me. And this is not even a verbal thing. This is a physical language. We have verbal language. We have physical cues, how can we really pay attention and pick up on all of it and to do so with some spaciousness and patience, get to know one another over time, get to know this situation over time, not rushing,

not trying to get to the next best thing. Now, trying to get to the next best thing, then that could be a very subtle way of feeding the addiction. Let's keep on going, let's keep on moving a form of entertainment. Can we really be entertained in a way where we're connected versus I'm going to use you to entertain me and you are going to make me feel good. No, thank you. I want to share a quote with you, a dear author who I love and follow who is also a Buddhist practitioner.

This is Bell Hooks, which many people know. So this piece that is a precept to me, this is the overarching piece of non-harm. Bell Hooks has this quote where she says, knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape, knowing how to be solitary essential to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape. In the languaging around this, it's so beautiful, because as we said before, we are not alone, feeling as if we are

believing that we're alone as a form of confusion. It's very different than loneliness. I understand loneliness very well. We can feel as if we're the lone person on a particular journey, when I able to connect with the whole of these of the nature and how we are engaging in life when we are feeling alone in some sense, discerning the difference between loneliness and alone. I had really understanding, and this is again, this is what I love about that quote, is that I think there's an intentional usage of that word alone in correspondence with solitary as well, in that first part of the sentence, where learning how to be solitary, which is this internal investigation, learning the difference between loneliness and alone,

which gives us this, hopefully, more language, deeper language, of the felt sense, how we are feeling, what is true here? What is it that we actually need? What is it that we can ask of someone, of a situation, of a system of constructs? What is it that we can name?

So that we are not going into those places when not engaging with people and using them as a means of escape of what is really asking to be known and named internally for us. We run away many times of what is being revealed. This is what I love about this movement of the Buddha Dharma of mindfulness is that there are more and more places for folks to be in community while engaging in a solitary way with themselves internally investigating not only what is going on but what is true for them in that moment and being guided, being guided by teachers, facilitators, mentors, community. I love that quote. I took it and this may be the result of the fact that I'm writing about

the relationship between self-love and loving other people. So I took it to that place. I've been thinking a little bit about, and these thoughts are original. They're all stolen from other people, including the Buddha, but the kind of double helix or mutually reinforcing nature of self-love and loving other people. And when I heard that bell,

hooks quote from you, is the first time I've heard it, I really like it. I remember something that a soon-to-be-ex girlfriend said to me in my 20s when we were like having a conversation about breaking up. And she said something the effective, if you can't be with yourself, you can't be with anybody else. And so that's what came to mind for me when I heard that quote. Does that, any of what I just said, land for you? Of course. I mean, if it lands for you, Dan, it lands for me when I heard that quote. Does that, any of what I just said land for you? Of course. I mean, if it lands for you, Dan, it lands for me. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Right, if we get something out of it that is a reminder, some investigation, and then self love, yes. And I'll take it even further where Angelie Davis, who's also a practitioner, reminds us about radical, self-love, radical, self-care, radical being the root of it all and this understanding of the Buddha Dharma, bringing us to the roots of our self-care, of our self-love. Yes, so self-care, self-love, love yourself in order to be with someone else.

Yes. Because ultimately, and I mean that, ultimately, it's all the same thing. That's right. Much more of my conversation with Jozen Tamori Gibson right after this. Like the short, and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What does happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time, pure on earth?

And what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is Short with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions, like, what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you. But I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others.

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Alright, we're back with Joe Zen tomorrow. It gives in one quick thing before we dive back into the conversation. We would deeply appreciate it. I would deeply appreciate it. If you took a few minutes to help us out by answering a survey about your experience with this podcast, the team here is always looking for ways to improve and we'd love to hear from all of you. But we would especially like to hear from those of you who listen to the podcast and do not use our companion app.

But we also want to hear from anybody. So there's a special emphasis on that population, but anybody who listens and has the time, we'd love to hear from you. Please go to 10%.com forward slash survey. That's 10%.com forward slash survey. The link will be in the show notes. Thank you. Well, let's go back to Joseph. So we've covered precepts one and five in our remaining time. Let's go through two, three, four. Remind the second one has to do with not stealing, not

taking what is not freely offered if I recall correctly. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Is it as simple as like just don't, you know, shoplift or what else can we apply it to? It's that and it's in honor of what you said earlier about this has all been written before. This has all been said before. It's not mine. Honoring lineage, honoring ancestry. You know, I was trying to come up with the math around this. How much of this so-called me, this Jozen, is actually being shared out right now, for example. And I can maybe bring it down to a .01% in some way. So 99.999 is ancestors, lineage elders, siblings that is being shared through this vessel. And then I'm interpreting it. Just as you interpreted that bell hooks quote, your interpretation of it and landed for you in a very beautiful way, I resonate with it. But yet that quote landed for me just slightly different when I received it. This is how the

Buddha Dharma, the abundance of the Buddha Dharma as a reminder of the abundance of this earth. The abundance that we have inherited and yet it is not ours. Not self. And so we honor in this way. I've mentioned this quote before, but I heard Joseph once quote a monk whose name I can't remember as describing when you identify with your emotions like anger or something like that, when you claim it as yours, it's a misappropriation of public property. I love that misappropriation, appropriation, colonization, so much that we can get into it then.

And there's an energy that lends itself to reclamation, to reclaiming, not only what is true, but as always, been true, what has always been true is that we are a part of honoring a lineage and an end to the end of the history in this moment that is being born in a life that is then nourishing what is to come and what is to be. May we name it as such. As reminding us of the ways in which our own bodies and hearts have been misappropriated, our own bodies and hearts have been conditioned, have been colonized in some way. How do we create space where we can truly reclaim what is true here? Again, this is something

that I'm able to do later on in life. I've been more readily and more easily with this freedom that I feel inside coming out more as a geninoconforming, non-binary being. This has been a gift that I've re-given back to myself that was gifted to me from the very beginning, this understanding. So let me see if I understand that. I'll try to restate it, and hopefully I'll be somewhere in the neighborhood of accuracy. We're talking about the second precept, which sort of narrowly understood is, don't take something that's not yours. And that's actually important.

We shouldn't steal, not only because it harms other people, but it doesn't feel good if you're paying attention to harm other people. But you can go deeper with it, like don't steal other people's ideas, don't claim notions that are ancient and abiding as yours, your original ideas, and then even deeper, don't even claim your emotions as yours, because that can be the source of an enormous amount of suffering. If you view your anger as just anger, not,

Josephine's bespoke form of rage and dance, you know, like special sauce rage. Then you can, you're taking a lot of the fuel out of it. And then you said finally that you can see how our minds have been colonized. That ideas, biases can be injected into us by the culture. I think about my friend, Sebenei Salassi, often quotes, I'm going to mangle the quote, but Christian and Mertiae believe who said, you think you're thinking your thoughts, but you're actually thinking the culture's thoughts. And that was exactly the quote that came out from it. I'm glad that there's Subanay said that,

because it's so, so real. Because that's the belief, that's the confusion. And we double down on it, triple down on it. We claim those thoughts as ours. We claim them. We do. We even claim other people's identities. This is where I was going when I was talking about my own identity and being able to come out in a way. But doing so, that also honors the lineage and the agency of those who put themselves out there first and foremost,

that created some space and some language for me to do so. I do a civil rights movement to the LGBT movement. I do all these movements as giving us face, heart, language. That's not only evolving humanity, but returning us to this radical root of our love, our non-harm, our compassion. Let's do the third and fourth precepts. I've forgotten what they are, so can you remind us? For sure. So we have the third refaining from sexual misconduct and then refaining from false speech, three and four. Let's stay with three for a second. How do you incorporate refraining from sexual misconduct in your life?

How do you interpret this? Well, the physical incorporation has been me being absent for some years, that engaging in sexual activity at all. But this is my own personal interplay with a deep rooted need, if you will, to ordain and become a monastic with this understanding that that's probably not going to be the reality of this life. And so how am I embodying these precepts in everyday life as a lay person? How am I going to ordain for myself, honor myself in this way. And even before abstaining, and this is a practice of that bell hooks quote, again, not using someone sexually as a means of escape. Can I be with someone in a way that I'm really with them? We are really together We understand what our likes and dislikes are

We understand what it is that I Maybe doing that this person may not be down with it may not feel good Even if you meet someone and you in the one night stand, you know, I hesitate to say this during a pandemic, I'm not encouraging this in any way. But to really have the conversation that's around consent, to really have the conversation and sometimes I know people say, oh, that's a's a turn off is going to be a buzzkill. But there's a way in which you can really take a moment, engage with one another. Are we cool?

Like really say the words, is this something that you want? Can we be here together and just go with it, go with that flow of non-hararm as you are engaging with one another. And finally, refraining from harmful speech or the way it's often phrased in the eightfold path is right speech. We could do several episodes on right speech. There's so much here. right speech. There's so much here. But could you say a little bit about how you understand this precept in your life? Mm-hmm. And this precept to me is a reminder to honor this interplay of speaking once truth, but doing so in a way where you're also not dominating the situation, being open to receiving feedback, being open to giving feedback,

what may be so-called right speech for me, may be false speech for someone else. Can I be open to understand that in hearing that? There's been a lot of false speech that has been spewed from a lot of different angles over the years and decades and centuries that for some people it was spewing them. It felt like it was right and there was a lot of, to me, this lot of confusion and hatred, bigotry, systemic oppression with those speeches, which lead to action. And so with this again, we even would think of these as in a three-part series, if you will, you have the view, you have an intention, and then you have the action.

And so that's how I practice with these in this way. Even if there's an action and I wasn't so present with the action, can I reflect with what my intentions were before making that action? And even going deeper than that, man, I understand the viewpoint with which the perspective, with which that fueled that intention. It's an impracticing and a reverse, what are my views? And how are those fueling my intentions and how are those fueling my actions? And may my actions be non-harming.

my words, be non-harming and being open to receiving feedback to being communication, to learn, to evolve. It's not about me. Over the last couple of years I've been working with these Buddhist communication coaches, their names are Dan, Clermann, and Moodita Nisker. Google them if you're looking for somebody to do this work with there, because they're extraordinary. And I found what they've taught me about how to communicate clearly, but also in a way that does not activate

the amygdala of my interlocutor if I'm applying the skills correctly. And this actually is a larger point about all these precepts that might be a good notion to close on here. On one level, it is about sort of behaving ethically in the world. On the other hand, and this gets back to this sort of oneness of self-love and other love. And the other hand, it is a kind of self-compassion to refrain from unwise speech because it causes so much turmoil and tumult and churn in my own mind when I'm being an idiot, which I have a strong propensity toward that.

Being judgmental, speaking in a way that's overly dogmatic, saying too much at one time without making sure that it's landing for my conversation partner, not listening, being in my own head and planning what I'm going to say next, as opposed to actually paying attention to what's being said, all these skills I've spent the lifetime honing. Actually, it just kind of gets to, as I was mentioned before, a larger point about these precepts, which is, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong here, but what I hear as a through line as you talk about these precepts is enlightened self-interest, that they can come off as rules, and we can get legalistic

about them if we want, but actually what I'm hearing you recommend is to think about them with interest, with investigation, to hold them pretty lightly, to not be dogmatic about them, because you're exploring ways to not harm other people, which of course in the end is to your benefit, because the way we're wired as social beings is that when we harm other people, we're causing ourselves harm. Does any of that make any sense? I said a lot there. You did, but it makes sense in that to me is also part of the investigation.

Everything that you just said. The key thing I was trying to draw out there was that there is, we can think of precepts as rules or we can think of them as ways to help us lead a happier life. And in that sense, it's enlightened self-interest. Yes. So I pause. I pause only because this part that you said you can correct me if I'm wrong. That's well pausing because it's not about wrong and wrong and right in this way.

But it's us being a conversation in a dialogue. And I like, I, again, what you're sharing with me and how it's landing for you and how you're expressing it. It lands for me. And it's some place that I love for you to explore. And I love to see how and feel how that evolves for you. Because we are taking care of others, yes, but we have to take care of ourselves first. This is a selfless nature of centering, centering yourself, centering yourself on behalf of.

That's an attention right there. When I said you can correct me if I'm wrong, I didn't mean whether I was wrong about, well, I didn't mean only that whether I was wrong about, you know, factually about the precepts. But I meant more whether I was mistating your understanding of the precepts. And I was hearing and maybe I'm just going in this direction because I'm so naturally self-interested. But I was hearing this theme of, yeah,

in the end, you should do this not only because it's the right thing to do, but you should investigate these Buddhist ethical precepts because it will lead to a calmer mind for you. And those are both related. Yes. Completely agree. The calmer mind's being the true mind heart body, the one of it. The calmness of the heart, when we speak something falsely and it resonates and it hurts in the heart, I'm also fascinated with folks who don't have that resonance, that vibration in the body when they hurt someone. I would like to know what that's about. And I've built myself up to be in capacity to have that conversation.

Again, putting myself out there to have those conversations on behalf of folks who are not able to engage in those conversations with someone that is out there causing harm, with a system or something that is causing harm. But I am working on myself in a way that puts a protective field, if you will, this meta-protective field of Brahma vahars as a form of protection around this mind-heart body as I engage in very harmful situations and doing that on behalf of all of us, including the people who are causing harm.

May they to be redeemed. There's a place for us all. And I also know when this is not the time for this person, or it's not the time for me to engage with them. And that's all good. Okay. Well, it's been a pleasure to engage with you, and I really appreciate you taking the time to do it.

In closing, if people wanna get more exposure to you, is there a website? I know you've done, you're doing a lot of work with IMS that people might be interested in. Can you, you may not be comfortable doing this, but can you plug yourself a little bit? Sure. I'll plug the vessel of the offerings. So there's IMS and we just started a 30-day challenge. That's an honor of Joseph Goldstein's Reissue of Experience of Insight Book,

which I very humbly provided the audio for, the audio book for that, for our dear teacher. I'm also on the Teachers Council for New York Insight Meditation Center in New York City, and offer there. And for the month of February through March for six weeks to the Vice-Cetos Mountain Retreat Center. I'm engaging with three dear teachers on CELA, these precepts in everyday life. So we'll have a six-week workshop on how we are

engaging with these practices. And that's with Aaron Treet, Victoria Carrey, and Brian Lassage, through Vice-Cito's Sumata Re-Treet Center. Like I said, a huge pleasure to get to know you a little bit, and I look forward to continuing the relationship in the years to come. Same here Dan, thank you for having me, thank you to your team. A lot of great people. No, it's just me. What are you talking about? Not so, Dan. All right, right, right, right. Thank you again. Appreciate it. Thank you. Big thanks once again to Joe Zen. Thank you as well to everybody who works so hard

to make this show reality. Samuel Johns is our senior producer, DJ Cashmere. As our producer, Jules Dodson is our AP, our sound designer is Matt Boynton from Ultraviolet Audio, Maria Wartel is our production coordinator. We get a ton of really helpful input from our TPH colleagues, such as Ben Rubin, Nate Toby, Jen Poient, Liz Levin.

I should also mention Ray Hausman, Wazein on occasion with very helpful notes as well. Thank you, Ray. Also, a big thank you to my ABC News comrades, Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohan. We'll see you all on Friday for a special bonus episode with two of our favorite meditation teachers. This is a really good one and unusual bonus. We'll see you all on Friday for a special bonus episode with two of our favorite meditation teachers. This is a really good one. An unusual bonus. We'll see you all on Friday for that.

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