Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 364: Getting Over Yourself | Joseph Goldstein

Episode Date: July 14, 2021

For the uninitiated, Joseph Goldstein is one of the cofounders of the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) alongside Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield. Since its founding, thousands of people from around the world have come to IMS to learn mindfulness from leaders in the field.  In this episode Joseph covers strategies for getting over yourself. Every year, Joseph does a three-month retreat by himself at his home in Massachusetts. This year, he emerged with a bunch of thoughts on what’s called “the three proliferating tendencies,” or three “prapancas,” to use the ancient Pali term.  These are three ways in which we perpetuate a sense of self -- not a healthy sense of self, but an unhealthy sense of self. You can think about the process of going deeper in meditation as a process of lightening up or getting less self-centered. Now, you’re about to get a master class in doing just that.  Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/joseph-goldstein-364 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 podcasts. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, today on the show, we've got some strategies for getting over yourself. Joseph Goldstein is a fan favorite on this show. He's also a personal favorite of mine,

given that he's been my meditation teacher for more than a decade. Every year, Joseph does a three-month retreat by himself at his home in Massachusetts. This year, he emerged with a bunch of thoughts on what are called the three proliferating tendencies or three propunchos to use the ancient poly term. These are three ways in which we perpetuate a sense of self, not a healthy sense of self, but an unhealthy sense of self like the Beatles sang about in that song, I mean mine. As Joseph has explained to me and to many others before, you can think about the process of going deeper in meditation as a process of lightening up or getting less self-centered. You're about to get a master class in doing just that. For the uninitiated, Joseph is one of

the co-founders of the Insight Meditation Society in Barry, Massachusetts. He was working at that time alongside two other meditation titans, Sharon Salzberg and Jack Cornfield. Since IMS was founded, thousands of people from around the world have come through to learn about mindfulness from many, many leaders in the field. I, in fact, just got back from a little retreat there myself. Joseph has been a teacher there since the place was founded in the 1970s and he continues to be the resident guiding teacher. He's also a founding teacher of our companion meditation app. He created our flagship courses,

teaching the basics of meditation as well as some advanced courses on compassion and stress. So if you want to learn directly from Joseph, and maybe even put into practice some of the insights he shares in this very interview, you can download the 10% happier app today, wherever you get your apps. Okay, here we go now with Joseph Goldstein. Hello, Joseph.

Hi, Dan. Thanks for coming back on the show. I haven't, luckily nothing I've done in the last whatever 12 months since you've been on the show has sufficiently alienated you to that you've banned me for life. Now, it's a pleasure to be here, Dan. So I had the pleasure of watching some talks that you had given recently where you were talking about what are known as the three proliferating factors.

I think I have that right. Am I using the terminology correctly? Yeah, prolate in tendencies. What do you mean by that? And then what are they? Okay. So first just out of general interest, I just want to mention the poly word for that proliferate in tendency.

Poly is the language of the ancient Buddhist texts, because it's one of those terms that comes up frequently even in our modern discourse on the teachings. So just to familiarize, you know, our listeners to that term, it's Papantja. And I like the poet because it's sort of is Anamata Pia. It sort of sounds like what it is Papantja. You know, It's just the mind proliferating and elaborating from the bare elements of our experience, from the building blocks of our experience, we then build whole worlds, and then get

enmeshed in one way or another in those worlds. And so there are three main tendencies, which lead us in that direction. It's very helpful to become aware of them, to distinguish between them, and to learn how to free ourselves from them. If not completely, at least to have more wisdom in relating to them when we see them arising. So that's basically what Papancho is proliferating tendencies of mind. It expands in quite a powerful way just the complexity of our lives, particularly with regard to how sufferings created and how we can become a little more free. When I've used the word historically, I must be using the Sanskrit version because I have often said proponsha. It sounds like that difference between poly and Sanskrit, which are very close.

I love the term proponsha or proponsha, however you want to pronounce it or spell it. And I've heard it translated as the imperialistic tendency of mind in the end that you, you take a data point from the present moment like you stubbed your toe and you colonize the future with this whole like, why am I always the guy who stubs his toe? You know, this is gonna hurt forever. And what you're talking about here, these three sort of runaway trains of Papacha that are really three of the main contributors to how we suffer as humans.

Yeah, I like your description of them. We need to stop being imperialists in our own minds to curb those tendencies. So let's go through the tendencies. Yeah, should we take them one at a time? The first one is craving. do that, just set the large of framework behind it all. It's expressed in one very succinct teaching of the Buddhas, which he actually gave to his son Mahula. So it has a kind of touching aspect to it that the Buddha is leading his own son, you know, on this path of liberation. leading his own son on this path of liberation. And there's a whole story behind it where the Buddha is telling him everything should be seen with perfect wisdom.

This is not mine, this I am not, this is not myself. So not mine, not I, not myself. Everything should be seen in that light. And so the upon to the three proliferating tendencies are connected to the sense of mine, or belonging to me, or to I am this or that, or to the view of self. So that's the underlying framework for understanding the three proliferating tendencies. Not mine, not I, not myself. So the not mine is connected to craving, taking things to belong to me. So the a million examples of this, we do it all the time. So I'll just give one example from a meditative practice and I begin to see the freeing aspect of it. You know,

if we're doing walking meditation, for example, and we're being pretty mindful of the movement in the touch. It would be quite common to have, I'm not almost say a subliminal or a very faint overlay of a sense of leg. You know, we're walking leg or foot. So even if we're feeling the sensations of the movement in the touch, very commonly, a very quiet overlay would be that sense of, oh, leg, foot. But actually, we don't feel the foot. We don't feel the leg. There's no sensation called leg. We're feeling hardness when we're touching the ground or maybe movement. So leg is the concept. Once we already have that concept leg, very commonly, we would think of it as my leg. Right? So right there, we're getting involved in, this belongs to me. This is mine.

And when it's mine, we have all kinds of wanting, or cravings about it. I want whatever is mine to be this way or that way, or not to change, or all kinds of things come out of that belief that things belong to me. So this is a very simple example just in walking, but just imagine how many times this plays out in one's life. What's wrong with claiming my own leg as mine?

What's wrong with it is that it's not you're living in delusion. Once again, Dan. So, for example, if we really deeply embedded in that both view and sense of it being mine, then there are a couple of things. One is we're going to suffer when things happen to it that we don't want it to happen. Let's leave the example of the leg, but we can just take the whole body, taking the body to be mine, to be longing to me. Well, the more attached we are to that view, how do we feel as the body ages? As it gets sick, as it dies, that's

going to create a lot of suffering. Whereas if we see the body, you know, just the physical elements, which make up the body as being just an aspect of nature, it's non-personal. It's just these physical elements in, you know, certain configuration, fulfilling their functions, subject to the laws of impermanence and change. When we see it in that way, we were not claiming it to be mine. Then as it goes through the inevitable changes, this is not like, it happens to some people and not others, all of our bodies go through this process. Then we're really at ease.

We're in harmony with nature rather than creating a papancha, creating a mental proliferation, which adds to the basic experience of what's happening, this idea, this is mine. And you can see that when that's strong, then it leads to a lot of craving of how we would like the body to be. And just how much of our society is built on advertising things that appeal to our sense of what we would like our bodies to be like. Because we take it to be me, we take them to be self, we take it to be mine.

So it has a lot of consequences, you know, as we play out our lives. So craving is one of these Papacha slash Papacha. Let's just say Papacha. Let's use the poll. Okay, let's just do what Joseph says as usual. So There's no craving in that. So that's craving. The next is conceit. Yeah. So this is really interesting. First it's to understand that in the Buddhist terminology, conceit means something a little

different than our usual understanding of what it means in English. Because in English, generally we use that word to mean a very inflated sense of oneself, so one is conceded. The poly word for conceded is MANA, M-A-N-A. So in this Buddhist usage of that word, So, in this Buddhist usage of that word, and how it's been translated in English as concede, is much broader. Most basically, it refers to this deeply, deeply felt sense of I am. It's just the I amness, which manifests in a few different ways. It can manifest I am in comparison to other people. So I'm better than I'm worse than I'm equal to just some comparing function is all considered conceit. because even when it's in a negative

way, you know, oh, I'm not as good as that person, that's still revolving around that I am sense. So that's one way the conceit manifests in comparing. And it would be interesting to notice not only the obvious times when that's happening, you know, where it's really very, very clear in our minds, but my sense is that it happens a lot often under the radar, and it might be interesting just to notice when we're interacting with people, particularly people may be that we're, you know, don't know that well or perhaps a meeting for the first time, just to see if there's any undercurrent in that meeting of comparing, maybe comparing personality or comparing intelligence or comparing looks or whatever, you know, kind of going on in the background that I think is often unnoticed, but still exerting its influence on our minds.

So that's one aspect of conceit, just this comparing. And the other aspect is the I am over time. So when we're thinking of how I was in the past, or how I am in the future, in the present, or how I will be in the future, right? So that that also is an expression of conceit. So it's pretty pervasive. And it's a contraction, you know, as soon as we become identified with that proliferation in the mind, the eye-emning, it's not a pleasant state, it's not a quality of happiness. It just feels like this contraction of our being. I think there are many people listening to the show who are familiar with basic Buddhist concepts

who will completely understand what you're talking about, but there may be others who are said new to this and are thinking, what is this guy talking about? What do you mean mean I am as a cause of pain. Of course I am. I look in the mirror and I see me. So why is that a problem? So first in order to kind of come to some fuller understanding of all this, I think it's helpful to talk about the basic building blocks of our experience, because then the proliferation will become more apparent. So what are the basic building blocks of how we experience ourselves in the world? Well, it's quite a measuring because it comes down to some very simple things. And the Buddha talked about this. He gave one discourse, which he called the all. So he described the all, which is everything in six phrases. So just that's pretty amazing.

Okay, so what is the all? What is the all? The eye, invisible objects, the ear and sound, the nose and smell, the tongue and taste, the body and sensations and the mind and mind objects, thoughts, emotions, images. So just these six things, sight sounds, smell, taste, touch and objects of mind. And the Buddha challenged people, does anybody experience anything outside of these six things?

So I find this quite amazing, you know, because very often we think our lives are so complicated and there's such confusion. But really, all that's ever happening is one of these six things. So in some way I see it as like our lives, everybody's lives. It's like a six piece chamber orchestra that's playing the music of our lives. So what makes the music either harmonious and beautiful or discordant on not the first five, you know, the

sight sounds mel taste or touch. There's no problem in any of them. Some are pleasant, some are unpleasant, but that's all fine. The complexity and the confusion and the suffering comes in our mental response to these six things, how we're relating to them. And the Buddha pointed out those ways of relating that cause suffering, and those ways of relating to these six very simple things in ways that create peace, create happiness for us. So the point in talking about I am, the conceit I am, is an important doorway into freeing ourselves from a lot of suffering.

freeing ourselves from a lot of suffering. So I just want to read something. Grasping and cherishing, that which does not exist, is the center of all our suffering. So we have created this sense of self, which is the last of the three Papanchas, the view of self. We've created this view of self and made it into something substantial in our view.

And then we cherish it, we hold on to it, and we do all kinds of things. But as it says, we're grasping and cherishing that which does not exist. Because all that really exists are those six things. Side smells taste sensation in different mind objects. Are we getting clearer or more confused? Let me just ask a question. Let me just channel the channel yourself. Yeah, the me of your or just to do a service to some listeners who may be new newer to this. Yes. Okay.

So if it's a six piece chamber orchestra and my sense of myself is, this is a beautiful phrase from my friend and colleague, the Buddhist teacher, Jay Michson, if my sense of self is born in that blur of these six aspects of the all, and to claim any of it as mine is, as I'm to quote another Buddhist teacher who I first heard of through you, if to claim any of it as mine is a misappropriation of public property and causes suffering. Where does that leave me? I mean, because I still, you know, you need to function in the world as me.

Yes. Okay. I think before addressing that specifically, and you may have to remind me again of the question after I finish this little digression. Okay. Okay. I'm getting old then. I think I just like to spend you know a minute or two talking about the view of self or what self means because everything we've been talking about really rests on that understanding or misunderstanding.

So the example I like to give in terms of explaining what non-self means. And this kind of understanding of non-self is absolutely central to the Buddha's teaching of liberation, of freedom, of greater happiness. So it's an essential point to begin to explore. It's not that easy to understand because it's counterintuitive, just as you said, what do you mean there's no self? Of course, here I am. And I need that to navigate in the world.

So the example that I'd like to give, especially in these last couple of years, is that of a river. So we all know what a river is, and it's this body of flowing water. And there are lots of rivers, and we give the rivers different names. But is there anything that is a river separate that process of water flowing in a particular channel. So river is not a thing in itself. It's just a word we use to designate that phenomena. Self is just like river. Self is a designation for this changing process of mind body elements.

Self is a designation for the all, which is in constant change, constant flow, just like the water that we call a river. In understanding non-self, it doesn't mean that something is there that suddenly disappears. And sometimes people, I think, have that that feel it, oh my God, if I really understand no self, you know, what's going to happen? I'll disappear in a puff of smoke or something. And of course, it's not that at all. It's simply understanding that the word self does not refer to any substantial in and of itself. It's just a designation for the flow of changing elements.

Okay, so once we understand that, then the I am, do you know in a river, do you know what an 80 is? The water is flowing downstream and then it kind of hits some obstacle and part of the water flows back and you can kind of go around and around and around. So if one is canoeing or rifting or something and you get caught in an 80, you just go around and around until something gets you out of it and you're back in the stream. Right. So the I am, the I am is the conceit is like an eddy in the stream in the flow of our experience. We're going along, going along, and then the mind of just the flow of the mixing metaphors here,

the flow of the river or the six piece chamber orchestra just playing the music, going along fine. But then we get caught up in some mental fabrication. And we get caught either in that comparing mind or lost in past, lost in future, or revolving around something that actually isn't there, revolving around this mental creation of IAM or self, which, as I just said, is really just a designation for the flow. Okay, so then I do remember your question. Okay, so we're not caught in this Papantra, you know, of mine or I am or a view of self, how do we actually navigate, being this river of changing a flow, how do we navigate

in a way that's skillful? And of course, all of the Buddhist teachings are really about that. He's offering us ways of living in this flow of impermanence, of constant change and movement, in this flow of impermanence, of constant change and movement, but in a way that brings about harmony, a way that brings about peace, which is really just another way of saying, how can we live in harmony with the nature of things, with nature? And so here's where another aspect of the teachings comes in, which is really important. I mean, this is fundamental. That our actions, whether it's physical actions, you know, our body or in speech or actions of our mind, that of all our actions have consequences.

So they're not happening in isolation. You know, they could say that there are ripple effects from everything we do. And the Buddha just pointed out what kinds of actions bring about suffering to ourselves and others, and what kinds of actions bring about peace for ourselves and others.

So once we learn that, then that's the blueprint or the template for living in the world, not needing the sense of I amness, the solidification or contraction in order to live effectively and happily. And in fact, the free we are from that contraction, the happier we will be. How can I be held responsible for the consequences of my action if I don't exist? You think you're going to stun me? We could get into a little thing here, Dan. But just in the very way you ask the question, forgive me for saying this, but reflects the delusion of the question. Because how can I take responsibility for my actions if I don't exist?

So in the very first part of the question, you're already positing the eye. So if it really didn't exist, you wouldn't be positing it in the first place. But that having been said, I just had to just have to play with you a little bit. It's much more a question. The consequences of one's actions is it's that simply a conventional way of saying that the flow of our lives, the unfolding of our lives, the flow, is happening lawfully.

And so the present will condition in one way or another, what happens in the future. The sense of eye is not at all necessary to understand that actions have consequences. If there's the understanding that a certain action, and this is using the Buddhist teachings, For example, if it's based in greed or it's based in hatred, that the result of that action is going to be some kind of suffering down the road, either immediately, no, which we feel, or perhaps not, but down the road, it will be a seed for future suffering. So that's all there's no I, no sense of self-needed to understand that cause and effect relationship. And so if there is the desire for greater peace or happiness rather than a desire for suffering, we should pay attention to the causes behind those different results. And none of that has to do with an eye or a self. It's just the law of nature. You plant an apple seed, you're not going to get a pear tree. So what kind of seeds are we planting?

a paratory. So what kind of seeds are we planting? What kinds of seeds are being planted? We don't need the eye in there at all. And we're going to get to that, the use of the passive voice because you've got a very, what I found to be very powerful practice built around that. Just staying on this question of Just staying on this question of not self, one framing that's helped me, I think, understand this, begin to understand this is talking about things on a relative level. This is these are terms of art here, a relative level and an ultimate level. Can you explain those terms of art and do you think I'm on to something here in terms of this being a way that we can kind of grapple with the notion that we are more gerundial than now? That's good, Dan. I've never been called a gerund before. I've never been called a gerund before. So yeah, this understanding of, in some schools of Buddhism, it's called the two levels of truth, relative truth and more ultimate truth.

Another word that I like to use instead of relative is just conventional, conventional truth and we could say more ultimate truth. So on the conventional level, we use the term self and I and you and, you know, there's just this very ordinary way of understanding things. And for the purpose of communication, that's totally appropriate. You know, so I'm not at all suggesting that as we begin to explore for ourselves and maybe even have some experience of what non-self means, we don't give up conventional language.

We're very awkward to say, oh, this process of the mental physical elements is feeling hunger. I'm hungry. So it's to understand that it's totally fine and appropriate to use conventional language. The problem is that for most of us or most of the time we are seduced by that language into believing that that is the more ultimate reality. Language is really important in terms of conditioning how we experience things. And it's very, very common, as I just said, to be seduced by the conventional language of I in mind into believing that that has some substantial reality, as opposed to being just a convenience of communication.

Let me give you an example of how understanding the Papantha of conceit, of understanding that and how it's working and recognizing it, can free the mind from a lot of unnecessary suffering. So this just happened to me on a recent retreat, but it's very fresh in my mind. So I was on a self-retreat at home and doing a fair amount of sitting and walking, but not super intensively. I would be doing quite a lot, but at other times I would be doing a little reading or perhaps some writing projects. But on one afternoon, I just found myself frittering away

some time. I don't even know what I was doing now, but I wasn't doing anything very mindfully or constructively. And so when I recognized this, I began to get down on myself a little bit. to get down on myself a little bit. A little self-judgment came in here on retreat and this Buddhist meditation teacher, what are you doing just fridding away this time? I was definitely feeling some kind of suffering involved in that self-judgment, and for that short period of time, not feeling great about myself. And so I saw myself caught in this. But I'm familiar enough with all these teachings that at a certain point, for me at that time, it didn't take that long. I was, you know, maybe five or ten minutes of wallowing in the self-judgment. But then as often happens when I'm suffering a lot,

it peaks my interest. Is that what's going on here? Well, you know, why is my mind in this place of suffering? And I realized that it was just a situation of I am ing. You know, I'm so bad because I just wasted all this time. I, I, I. As soon as I recognized the mindset of conceit,

now that particular defilement of mind, rather than focusing on the story of, you know, spent all this time, it was really a waste, rather than focusing on the story of, you know, spent all this time, it was really a waste, which created that bad feeling. As soon as I recognized, oh, this is just conceited work. This time, just, what I am immediately in the recognition of that, the whole mindset.

Just let go. I was back in the present moment because I was recognizing the basic element that was causing the suffering. It wasn't the fact of ridding the time. That was just what it was. And it was, and obviously it wasn't some great sin, but still it was enough to create that feeling in myself. But as soon as I let go of the self-story, the IAM story through recognizing that, oh, yeah, this is just conceit-working. This is just this particular poncho. Psh.

The whole thing released. And so there's a very practical application of this. Everything we're talking about is not just about Buddhist theory or Buddhist philosophy. It's really about understanding how suffering is created in our lives and how we can be free on a very precise level in terms of understanding how a mind is working. Well, that leads us nicely to these practices that you've laid out that can help us get little tastes of the freedom you're talking about. I believe you've got three practices, at least from what I've heard in your recent public

utterances on this subject. Three practices that help us deal with the three proliferating factors of craving, conceit, and wrong view. And the first of these practices, you already kind of referenced, which is kind of using our language to kind of reverse engineer and insight into our molecules. And the linguistic change you're suggesting is the passive voice. Can you talk about that?

Yeah, just a little sidebar here. I just finished listening to a really interesting book called The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson and was all about the fairly recent discoveries of what's called CRISPR, which is basically tool for gene editing, you know, and actually editing DNA, which has tremendous implications for perhaps curing or preventing disease, and to be able to get in on just as you said on that cellular level, you know, and edit something that creates problems is now happening in biology. So I liked your... this is a kind of gene editing. You know, we're getting in there to see, okay, what's in the DNA of our understanding? And can we edit out those genes that create

suffer? So one way of editing, one little practice we can do, which could give a sense of that, One little practice we can do, which could give a sense of that, is an application of a linguistic framework of how we are describing the world to ourselves in language. Now mostly, we use language in the active voice. There's a subject, a verb, an object, so I'm walking to town, eating some food, or, you know, just a very simple basic grammatical construction of active voice, a subject performing in action. The passive voice does something very interesting, and that is the passive voice takes the subject out of it. So just as an example, in the active voice, we might say, I'm hearing a sound. I am. Right there. Right there, we've built in the I amness. We've built in the sense of self.

Just in our language, in our ordinary conventional language. To begin to play in the passive voice, we would say, a sound is being heard, or a sound is being known. And so the passive voice takes the subject, I, out of the equation. And I have found this to be an extremely valuable frame for meditation, for a whole variety of reasons. One is it puts us more in alignment with the actual state of affairs, right? We're not positing a designation, a conventional designation, to be an essential element of the experience, which is what we're usually doing just in our ordinary use of language. So we use the passive voice in framing on meditative experience and then all of our experience of things are being known. It's a way of really touching into the effortless nature of meditation. If there's an eye that is trying to do something, so then there's an efforting

involved for that eye. You know, and especially at the beginning of people's fact, this but even later on as well, that efforting quality, which is different than rousing energy that that's that's a different thing. I'm talking about a an unskilful efforting or forcing or expecting all those aruded in the eye As soon as we drop into the passive voice of things being known

We can really settle back we've taken the eye out of it, and new experiences are arising by themselves in each moment. There's no one there doing anything, there's not an eye there, the all, you know, those six things are just arising. One after another, a side of sound, a smell. And so a very simple meditative exercise, which I think would give people a real immediate sense of what this means, is just to spend five minutes, 10 minutes, not a long time, Just short period of time, either in

sitting or in going for a walk. This could be done in any time. Holding the question, just holding the frame of the question, moment after moment, what's being known? And then settling back and just recognizing what is being known moment after moment. Oh a sight, a sound, a sensation, a thought, a sound, sensation, thought, sound. So it's all happening by itself, it's all just flowing along by itself and things are being known if we have set that intention to pay attention in this way. We set that frame, what's being known, and then settle back it and see how effortless it is, and it also really highlights the impermanent nature. Because when we're settled back in that way and just aware of what's being known moment after moment, without an attempt to control it in any way, or even to

direct it, it's immediately obvious how things are just appearing and disappearing moment after moment. I don't know how much weight this will carry, but just to give it some an endorsement here, but I struggled so much in the early stages of my practice and to this day with over efforting and the intensity and duration of those struggles has been really reduced by using the passive voice. What is being known? Just asking myself that question and watch what happens. And it's not I am trying so hard to be all over my breath,

like a rabid dog. It's more like I'm feeling to breath and the breath is being felt. And there's nothing for me to do. It's already happening. And yes, maybe distraction comes up, but I see that and then go back to things being known on their own. It's incredibly helpful. And I know we've got a couple of other techniques to help us with the Papacha factors. And I want to take a quick break when we come back. We'll talk about those. Much more of my conversation with Joseph Goldstein right after this. Life is 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 here on Earth?

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Okay. The process known as Dan is back. Before we go on, something occurred to me in the break that I thought might be helpful to mention. When people are both first beginning the practices, but also sometimes well into the practice, it can sometimes feel a little discouraging as we watch our minds to see, what in the Buddhist terminology are called, the defilements or those unskilled patterns of mind

that just goes suffering in one way or another for ourselves or others. And I remember when I first began practicing India and I was seeing my mind with great clarity that I had seen before I started meditating. And I saw all these unskillful, of different manifestations of desire or wanting, agreed or aversion, you know, annoyance or whatever, whatever it may be. And I remember running to my teacher in Ninja J. I don't think I expressed it this way, but basically the sense was, I'm such a terrible person. Look at all these terrible things that are rising in my mind.

And so it can lead to a lot of self-judgment or discouragement, you know, of how to practice. Why do I want to sit and see all this stuff? Well something really interesting happens, and it can happen either quick or slower depending how quickly one understands this. But we can get to a place in the practice where we're actually delighted to see all this stuff because we would rather see it than not see it. So for example, now, when I see a manifestation of conceit of I aming one way or another, I am delighted.

It's like, I see you, I caught you. You're not gonna seduce me anymore. So it's actually uplifting and encouraging and joyful, you know, to be seeing the workings of our mind with clarity and with mindfulness. I just wanted to put out to the listeners that even though we may be seeing things which, you know, of course, are problematic in one way or another, but the very seeing of them is enlightening. And it's a way that we get lighter and lighter and lighter.

Because as we see them, we are not so caught by them. If we don't see them, then they just run riot in our lives. I've heard you mentioned this before, and I've seen it play out in my own mind, and I really agree. It just got me thinking again just to get back to these challenging questions I was asking you before about the idea of the illusion of the self or the not self doctrine and Buddhism

that are there no aspects of the self that are useful. In other words, what if you catch the thought of, I Joseph, I'm going to reach out to a friend who's suffering. I Joseph, I'm going to write a book that might help a lot of people. I Joseph, I'm going to write a Dharma talk that might teach people important concepts that they could use to improve their own life. Is there no mana that is good mana? This goes back to something we were talking about earlier. Using that language conventionally is completely fine. That's how we communicate.

And I could very well say and have said many times, oh, I have this project I'm really excited about, I really want to get involved in it. All of that's fine. To use that kind of language just for ease of communication because this is how things are conventionally understood. No problem at all. We do do that. It's just to understand that even as we're using that language, we don't want to be caught by a seduced

in the belief or in our minds construct a substantial reality to what is in itself just a designation for part of the process. So the designation is helpful when we use it. But what happens is we take the word, we take the concept, the designation to be the reality itself. Instead of seeing, yeah, this is just a shorthand way of saying, an idea arose in the mind, energy came to act on it. We could describe the same thing without the use of that language, but it's just very awkward. So the use of the language is fine. The I am language, but we want to understand that it's just conventional. It doesn't really refer to anything in and of

itself. But mostly people don't make that second step. Mostly we'll lost in the world of concept and convention. And we haven't really understood the building blocks of experience. So it'd be, for example, in science, like just as we look at the physical world, take any simple physical object like a glass or anything. You know?

So conventionally, we think a glass exists. And for a lot of practical purposes, there's no problem with that. We use a glass. But if scientists got caught by that, they would never have been motivated to look, okay, what is it that we're actually calling glass? Right, and developing the tools to investigate that question. What is it that we mean by these designations? And then whole new worlds open up. Imagine the excitement of the first person to look through a microscope. And then nowadays, of course, it's even incredibly

more sophisticated than that. Whole new dimensions of reality open up when we're not imprisoned by our attachment to the concept glass, even though on a conventional level, it's a useful designation. So it's the same thing. you know, so we use it, but we don't want to be limited by that concept. And this is really what the Buddha's teaching is all about.

It's, okay, what's underneath it all? What are the basic elements of experience and how do they function? You use the word elements right there. We're in the middle of going through three little pieces of Joseph homework that we can all do to get under the hood here to go beyond these kind of limits that are pretty deep in our wiring in our DNA, these puphuncha factors. And so there's one of the practices is built around a Buddhist concept of the elements.

Tell us about that. Okay, so each of these topics could be our long dogs. So I'm going to try to kind of abbreviate it all. First, just need a little explanation of the Buddhist framework for understanding the elements. Because when we think of physical elements, we might think of our chemistry class, you know, in the periodic table of the different elements. The Buddha in that time, whether he actually knew all of that or not, of course I don't know, but in those times they used a very simple framework for describing the elements. So just a different designation for the physical elements.

And it was fairly common in ancient times to think of the elements in terms of Earth air, fire, water. That's how they would describe the elements. Now, obviously, there are certain limitations in that in terms of the understanding of chemistry, but they are very practical in terms of having a simple designation for how we experience different physical phenomena. So for example, the earth element is a designation for just the experience, the sensation of hardness, hardness of softness. So that's an immediate felt experience which we all have. So the Buddha just designated that as, oh, that's the earth element.

Or movement, right, would be the air element. Or warmth, the coolness would be the fire element. So that's what the terms earth air fire, what it referred to, right? And they're helpful because it's just a very simple shorthand for describing our physical experience, free of papancha, of desire and craving and conceit and wrong view. So this is the way that I was playing with it on retreat and it was really quite amazing to me. And again, it points to the power of language, whether it's spoken language or the language in our own minds.

You know, as we're describing or interpreting to ourselves what we're experiencing, the words we use are going to condition how we experience it. So again, this is something that normally we're not paying attention to. We think, oh yeah, we're experiencing the truth of what's there. Not realizing that whatever language we've using to describe it is affecting how we're experiencing it. Okay, so all of that is background. I was just outside just doing walking meditation, and again,

this was not in a very slow pace. It was just kind of a normal pace of walking, but it could be done at any speed. And as I said before, when I was describing the mind and belonging to me, you know, in walking, even though I was, I was being mindful and I was feeling the I would say almost subliminal sense of I'm walking or my leg. It wasn't an explicit statement in my mind, but I could feel it's like a translucent veneer on the experience, hardly noticeable, but having just read this one particular discourse of the Buddha to his son, Rahulah, in which he was describing this very practice as a way of counteracting the Papantra of I mean mine. He said, practice seeing the physical experience in terms of the elements.

Okay, so I just read that. So in the walking, I just started, every time I would move, you know, move the leg, I was just very lightly, okay, I element. And then when I touched the ground, earth element, just that. That's all I just changed the language. But connecting those words to the experience, so it wasn't just kind of words going through my mind

unrelated to the walking. It's like really connecting the words to the experience. It was amazing what happened. Just such a simple thing, just simple change of language, language, moving or air element, earth element, it became so clear that the earth element or the air element didn't belong to me, that the belonging to me, like my leg or my foot completely fell away. It was just Earth element. It was just air element. It doesn't belong to anybody. And the whole sense of I am fell away. Even though we might say, you know, I'm walking, I am walking. Would we ever say, I am the heir element? No. Just the change of language removed that veneer of I mean mine. And it dropped the whole experience into simply being the elements being known. That's all

that was there. The eye disappeared, the eye-am disappeared, the mind disappeared, and even if it's just for a few moments at a time, right? So I suggest you know people are interested, they might try this and play with it. It doesn't have to be a big project. It can be take take five minutes or 10 minutes of walking and just play with this and see if any of what I've just said resonates with your own experience. But for me, it was so striking and so immediate to see how the application of the understanding of the elements was the antidote to I mean mine. This might be just a good chance to give the background story to the Buddhist teaching to his son, in which he described exactly what I just said, you know, to use the elements.

So they were going for arms round into a village, you know, to go collect food. And so the Buddha was walking ahead and Rahulah's son was walking behind him. And Rahulah was looking at the beautiful form of the Buddha, you know, who was said to embody physical perfection perfection as well as perfection of heart and mind. And Rahulah was kind of taking pride in the fact that he had a resemblance to the Buddha. He was his son. And of course, the Buddha through his power of mind knew what was in Rahulah's mind. his power of mine knew what was in Rahul's mind. So he stopped, he turned around, Rahul, and that's when he gave this teaching. Everything should be seen with perfect wisdom. This is not mine, this is not I, this is not myself.

So all the pride that Rahul was taking in his physical form, my body, looks like this and is in this beautiful. Now the Buddha is saying, see everything with perfect was a not mine, not myself. And then he went on to explain one way of accomplishing that is through this meditation on the elements. Because as I just said, when we do that, the IME mind just falls away. We're back just in the basic six elements of experience. That's all. It's just those six things being known moment after moment. So it's tremendously liberating and freeing.

And even if we're not living in that space all the time, I think it's very powerful, even if we have brief moments of it. Because that's like planting the seeds, you know, ongoing, flowing stream of a deeper understanding. And those seeds are really important. Because then we're not completely captured by the world of conventional and concept. You know, we're kind of poking holes in that. And they're powerful. That really begins the process of liberation. And the time that remains here, let me prod you to describe the third exercise, which, if I recall, has to do with seeing how quickly everything that comes up in our mind passes away.

We got through different stages in practice and even at any stage, you know, that we may be at. even at any stage that we may be at. Of course, one of the fundamental insights is that things arise and pass away. Things come into meeting and vanish. So this is not difficult, either to understand or to say. I think a good part of the time on minds are focused on what's arising. So each new arising experience

captures our attention, arising, arising, arising. But we could as well focus on the disappearing side of things, because they're of course they're doing both. But I think our minds have been very conditioned in general to always be captured by the newly arising object. But something very different happens when we start to focus on the disappearing aspect. Because when we're just focused on the arising aspect, that's very easy for us to get attached to, to have aversion to, to claim as being self. We do all kinds of things in relationship to seeing a new object arise. Something completely different happens when we're focusing on the disappearing. So how to do that in a way

that's really vivid. Again, one time I was just out for a walk, I was an ordinary walk, being as mindful as I could be. It wasn't like a slow meditative walk, it was just an ordinary walk. And the thought came to my mind, well, what happened to the step of five minutes ago? It's gone. It's gone. I mean, it's completely gone. Yeah, really gone. There was there was nothing of it left. And then I said, well, what about one minute ago? Gone. What about 30 seconds ago? Gone. What about one second ago? It's gone. And so I just brought my mind up second ago, it's gone. And so I just brought my mind up to the very lip of the flow of it's like, what over waterfall? You know, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone. So I brought my mind

right to that point of things just disappearing, disappearing, disappearing, disappearing. And it was quite amazing. It's like being in that experience of things disappearing, it's impossible to hold on. The thing is gone by the time we could even hold on to it. And so the mind has let go of any kind of grasping or attachment or even wanting, right? Things that just continually disappearing. And so we get into a kind of free flow, just a free flow of experience without getting caught up in any of the eddies

that I mentioned, you know, of getting caught in some kind of attachment or reaction to the present moment experience and then circling around that and then building up all the papancha about it. No, it's just gone, gone, gone, gone. And the felt experience of that is so liberating and interestingly enough, and I, this I don't really quite understand yet, it's somehow being in that space activated what in the Buddhist terminology is called the heart center. You know, there are different energy centers in the body, you know, and each one has its own kind of manifestation. So I think we all have a

just an intuitive sense of what the heart center means, you know, the felt sense of an open heart. Interestingly enough, that's what was activated when I was just in that place of the continual disappearing, falling away, falling away, with its consequent lack of any clinging to anything. So I think all of that contributed to that feeling of the heart space of it. It was a very free space, even though in just hearing the words it might feel, I don't know, or if people here just are falling away, falling away, falling away, you know, there's no there's no stability, it might feel a little frightful. That was not the experience of it at that time. There's one image that might be helpful also in

understanding how we experience this greater awareness of things disappearing, of falling away, because we can have different relationships to that, you know, or different felt experiences of that at different times. Somebody once told me of this example, it's somebody free-falling out of a plane. So, you know, people do this kind of for sport, but this is not in a sports situation. So just imagine somebody falling out of a plane one way or another, the circumstances are not really germane to the example. Then perhaps is the first experience of exhilaration, just the exhilaration of free-fall.

This is very much like the first experience of things arising and passing quickly. You know, as we continue in our meditation practice and it deepens at a certain point, the mind really goes from emphasizing the content of what's arising. You know, this is this, this, this, this, to the process, meaning the process of change. And so instead of the emphasis being on the what, it really becomes an emphasis on how it's happening. Things arising and passing, arising and passing. And that perception get very refined. So we see this process of change very quickly.

So that's the sense of exhilaration. Then going back to the image of the free fall, then maybe the person realizes they don't have a parachute. They're in this free fall and there's no parachute. And then they get really frightened. There's now maybe a little fear or even terror arises, There's now maybe a little fear or even terror arises, and they're falling, falling, you know, afraid of that. And so the equivalent of that in the meditative process would be after the exhilaration of seeing things arise and pass, you know, so quickly, and then the mind begins to focus on just the disappearing, the rapid disappearance of everything.

So then there's the felt sense of, there's just no security in a place. There's nothing to hold on to. And so that can be a challenging time in meditation. You know, I've going through that feeling of it. But then, getting going back to the example of the free fall, so first there's the exhilaration, then there's the fear, but then at a certain point the person realizes there's no ground.

And so then they relax into an equanimity that simply is enjoying the whole experience, you know, a fall of change or flow. So this is quite similar to what happens in meditation, because after that, kind of disturbing period of time when we are highlighting the fact of the insecurity or there's nothing to hold on to with a continual disappearance. At a certain point, we realize there's no ground, which is another way of saying or analogous to the understanding of selflessness. This is

just a natural process going on, and we fall into a place of tremendous equanimity. And the equanimity is so profound, and it's a very exquisite kind of happiness that comes. We really come to a place of peace. And at that point in practice, it's said, even for those people who are still on the path, but that place of equanimity is said to resemble the mind of a fully enlightened being. It's just a being that's not holding on to anything and is resting in the peace of that, the peace of non-clinging, the peace of non-grasping

at that which is continually changing. So in the exercise that I mentioned of just going for a walk and maybe for a short period of time, just staying at that disappearing age of things, seeing things continually fall away, I think is very unlikely that you'll be experiencing the unsettling aspect of seeing this process of change. My sense is that you'll really begin to understand the liberating aspect of it. This has been great. I really appreciate this and I really love the three homework assignments because these are things all of us can do. So thank you Joseph, really appreciate it. Yeah, you're very welcome. As you know, I love talking about this stuff. See you next time, Dan. Yes, I'll see you next time. I like that because I'd implies there will be a next time. I didn't do anything too bad this time. No, this is delightful.

Thanks again to Joseph, always love talking to him. As you can tell, I very deeply appreciate him coming back on the show. As a note of reference, the topics covered here today were covered in deeper detail within two Dharma talks that Joseph gave on a retreat and online retreat. Those talks are linked within the show notes and are accessible via the IMS website. Highly recommend you check those out. And if you're interested in learning directly from Joseph, he is co-leading another online retreat, via Spirit Rock Meditation Retreat Center.

And that's coming up this very weekend. Registration closes tomorrow, July 15th. We'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. The show is made by Samuel Johns, DJ Kashmir, Kim Baikamom, Maria Wartell, and Jen Poent. We get our audio engineering from the good folks over at Ultraviolet Audio,

and then closing. And as always, a big shout out to my ABC News colleagues, Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohan, we'll see you all on Friday for a bonus. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ 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 1-3-plus

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