Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 528: The Surprising Power of “Healthy Embarrassment” | Koshin Paley Ellison

Episode Date: November 30, 2022

We’ve all got parts of our personality or our past that we’re ashamed of. We might refer to these parts of ourselves as our demons, our baggage, or our secrets; no one is immune.So, how do you want to deal with this situation? Stay coiled in shame and denial? That only makes the demons stronger. An alternative, per my guest Koshin Paley Ellison, is to approach your stuff with “healthy embarrassment.” That allows you to work more skillfully with your baggage so that it doesn’t own you. And once you’re cooler with yourself, that can improve your relationships with other people, which is probably the most important variable for your happiness. And healthy embarrassment is just one of many extremely useful things we are going to talk about today.Koshin Paley Ellison is an author, Zen teacher, Jungian psychotherapist, and Certified Chaplaincy Educator. He is the co-founder of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, an amazing place which, among other things, trains people to be volunteers in hospice centers. Koshin is the author of a new book called Untangled: Walking the Eightfold Path to Clarity, Courage, and Compassion, which centers on a classic Buddhist list called The Eightfold Path, the Buddha’s recipe for enlightenment or, as Koshin puts it, “the most awesome combo platter.”In this episode we talk about:What is The Eightfold Path and how it fits into another Buddhist list, The Four Noble TruthsHow to use the list to do life betterThe danger of perfectionism in putting the list to use in your lifeHow to bridge the gap between what we say we care about and what we’re actually doing with our livesHow sitting with your pain can lead to freedomThe utility and pitfalls of gossipHow we can look at the idea of “killing” in many different ways, including how one can “kill a moment” or “the energy in a room”How the concept of “right effort” can help us find the balance between not doing enough and overworking ourselvesHow being uncomfortable is a sign of real engagement with our practiceAnd Koshin’s addition of the concept of “mystery” as another aspect of the eightfold pathFull Shownotes: www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/koshin-paley-ellison-528See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, my fellow suffering beings. We have all got our shit. The parts of our personality or our past that we're ashamed of. I'm talking here about our demons, our baggage, our secrets. Nobody is immune. So how do you want to deal with this situation?

You want to stay coiled in shame and denial? That approach only makes the demons stronger, and I speak from some experience here. An alternative, per my guess today, is to approach your stuff with what he calls healthy embarrassment. That allows you to work more skillfully with your baggage so that it doesn't owe you. And once you're cooler with yourself, that can improve your relationships with other people, which, as you've heard me yammer on about for years, is probably the most important

variable when it comes to your happiness. This dynamic, this approach, healthy embarrassment is actually just one of many extremely useful things we're going to talk about today with my guest, who also happens to be a close friend. Coshan Paley Ellison is an author, Zen teacher, young Ian psychotherapist, and certified Chaplaincy educator. He's the co-founder of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, which is an amazing place. Among other things, they train people to volunteer as hospice workers. My wife and I went through that training together during which time we became friends with Koshin and his husband, Chodo Campbell. Koshin is now the author of a new book called Untangled, which centers on a

classic Buddhist list called the Eightfold Path. To put it in lay terms, the Eightfold Path is the Buddha's recipe for enlightenment in eight steps, or as Cotion puts it, it's the most awesome combo platter. In this conversation, we talk about what the Eightfold Path is and how it fits into another Buddhist list, the Four Noble Truth truths, how to use this list to do life better. The danger, though, of perfectionism in putting this list to use in your life, how to bridge the gap between what we say we care about and what we actually do in our lives, how sitting with your pain counterintuitive as that may be can lead to freedom, the utility and also pitfalls of gossip, how we can look

at the idea of killing in many different ways, including how one can kill a moment or kill the energy in a room. How the concept of right effort can help us find the balance between not doing enough and overworking, which is a huge problem many of us deal with. How being uncomfortable is a sign of real engagement with your meditation practice, and Cotion's addition of the concept mystery as the ninth part of the eightfold path. That's his suggestion to the Buddha. All right, we'll get started with Cotion, Paley, Ellison right after this. 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%.com, all one word spelled out. Okay, on with the show. Only fans only bad, where the memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's to see you. Like us. So we're here to talk about your new book and the Eightfold Path, and your book is really structured around the Eightfold Path. So let me ask you a foundational question. What is the Eightfold Path? The Eightfold Path is part of these nobilities of these truths that Shakyamuni put a laid out after he left his home as he knew it and started seeking and trying lots of different things. I always think of like if it was a contemporary story, he would try a little yoga, try a little app and go on a retreat and go at all these different

things that he did until he realized eventually that he had to stop and learn how to actually be with his mind. So at a certain point on his path, he realized, okay, enough of the running around, which I feel like is really important in order to talk about the full path is to really talk about that comes from this orientation of enough already of the running around, of the distraction. And so he sat under this tree and faced what he feared, both his distractions and his fears and his fear of death, his fear of his own body changing. And eventually, the mythical story is that I'm one morning, he was sitting under the tree and put his hand down on the ground and said, oh, house builder thou art seen at last.

The Ridge Pole is shattered. Nevermore will you build a house of sorrow. So he saw that he was the one who was creating his own sorrow through his distraction, through his own craziness in his mind, and his aversion and resentments. And so he began teaching what is now called the four noble truths, and the evil path is the fourth of those. And the first one is that there is suffering in life that there are troubles. The second truth is that there are causes of that, which I think are the giants of greed and the giants of resentment and delusion, where I think that I'm alone or I think that I'm not you.

The third one is you can actually change. You can pivot and transform, even when you think that you can't. And then you laid out the fourth, which is the path itself, which is how do we tend to a life where there is suffering and how do we make our way out? So it's like a recipe for enlightenment. It is. It's pretty good and pretty clear, you clear. And I think that many people are saying, oh, what is it? What is it? And the thing about the full path is that it's an easy thing to say. It takes everything to do. It sounds good, it makes sense, it's logical, it's this great prescription to heal and to wake up, and yet it takes continuous practice to do it.

One of my favorite expressions about Buddhism is it's not something to believe in. It's something to do. In the Aful Path, it lays out the instructions. Yes, it's very, very clear, and you know, really begins with what's traditionally called right view, but I like to think of it as view as a place of practice because I feel like each of these are really our practices. So the right view tends to be, or at least how I'm understanding it today, is where we take a look at how we have created our suffering, how we've created our tangles, how we've done that, and taking responsibility for that, and having that sense of deep, healthy embarrassment

because many of us have a habit of going into shame. And I think that it's really important to have a humbling, healthy embarrassment to realizing how, while most of us know what we value and care about, we very rarely actually are behaving in those ways. It's all about bridging that gap between our values and what we're actually doing with our life. So maybe what you're saying is that right view or right perspective, which is the first of the eight folds in the path, right view is seeing that our minds are out of control

and that often we live in ways that are not aligned with what we profess to care about. And we don't need to go into a shame spiral about it, but we can cultivate some healthy embarrassment, which might provoke us to do better. Yes, for many years I was practicing, but really I was practicing when it was convenient for me. And like when there wasn't a friend saying, oh, let's have dinner or let's go to the movies

or there's something else happening. I found I would get very distracted around what I said was really important and what I said I was doing, which was really diving into practice. But what I was actually doing was going along with my habitual distraction. And it was really humbling. I remember the moment of just feeling my goodness. I am not changing. And I remember feeling quite frustrated with the practice, like that the practice was not working. And then I realized my own hubris and realized,

well, actually, it's you. And to remind me of that old poem from the Buddha, where he said, that I was the one who was building the house of sorrow. And I was up to me to change it. And so I remember on that day really making a vow to put practice as the priority and really decide that I would orient my life around practice as opposed to trying to fit practice in when it was convenient. You know, in Zen, they often say, practice it for 30 years and then evaluate because we often evaluate way too soon, right?

And we usually evaluate after like one minute, like, this is working, this isn't working. I like this. I don't like it. And I think that it was really much like that for where I was with my practice. There was a huge gap between what I said I cared about and what I was doing. And so 30 years felt a little long. So I thought, well, why don't I try for 10 years? And I'll make a vow to show up for practice and center practice in my life for 10 years and see what happens and evaluate then. And I have to say it was really challenging. Like it was so amazing, the endless distractions

and things that draw us away from what we care about, like something fun or interesting or it was raining or whatever and just learning to just notice that and having that kind of a QD of attention, the kind of a loving, a QD of attention and learning to just, okay, whatever that is and come back. And so that was really to me a transformative time in my life. I want to pick up on the difference between healthy embarrassment and shame because it's in my opinion and in my experience, extremely important.

Let's just go back to your story about realizing that you were not living up to the standards you set for yourself, which is that you told yourself and probably told a lot of other people that practice was a paramount importance to you. But like, actually, if somebody called and said, you wanna go see the born ultimatum, you were more likely to go do that. And you describe that, I think in a way that embodies this idea of healthy embarrassment.

It's like it's embarrassing, but like in a healthy way, it's good to be embarrassed about that. Why and how is that different from shame, which is what many of us revert to in the face of the revelation of our own hypocrisy. Well, first of all, why love zen so much is that there's just this primacy on humor

and spontaneity and not getting caught in things. And I find in shame, it's almost like it becomes so personal as if there's something wrong with me personally. And to me, there's something about the practice and the more I practice, I feel that I have a sense of being in this great river of humanity and not kind of a sentimental way. And that's one of the reasons why I love the tradition so much, is because they full path started to be taught like almost 2,600 years ago. So people have been working with the same gunk for at least that long, probably much longer. There's something so freeing just to realize like, oh right, I'm having my experience of distraction

just as the last 88 generations have worked with their distractions. And so for me, it's just like, it's embarrassing. And I feel like the embarrassment is delightful and humbling. And to realize that we're all gonna fall down and get up, there's this expression that has been so important to me, me called fall down seven times, get up eight times. That's just part of the deal. We are going to make mistakes. And we have to, in some ways, have a new relationship to our mistakes. And so for me, moving from over-personalizing those mistakes as if it's like a mark on

myself as opposed to, all right, I'm a human being who makes mistakes. And how do I stay with that long enough to actually fully experience it so that I can actually be compassionate? Because then I can be like, all right, I bet you make mistakes too. So shame is paralytic. It further implants one's head up one's ass. It meshes you even deeper into the briar patch of self, whereas healthy embarrassment does the opposite. You're aerating your stuff. You're declenched enough to look at it with a sense of humor, and it inexorably leads to seeing that everybody else has their junk,

and maybe you can be helpful to them in compassion and understanding vis-a-vis them. Right. I mean, to me, the beauty of practice, the only reason, some ways, to practice is to be more intimate and serving and connected to the world. It's not for me. And I think when we get so caught up in our own self-consciousness and self-centeredness, it exacerbates the suffering. And I just remember a friend of ours who was this amazing maturity of this gorgeous restaurant and he was talking about how important embarrassment is and had the elegance of embarrassment

and that allows us to learn. And so for me, it's been really, really important. And also I was thinking about if we can stay with the embarrassment in a healthy way, which to me is just a spacious way, then we can actually kind of widen out our awareness. So it reminds me of when I was around 11 or 12, I started studying karate as a young kid. And since a white was the teacher and he used to have a sit and say is a sitting with our legs underneath ourselves And we would sit like that on the wood floor You know now often most meditations studios you have like a cushy chair

Maybe even a sofa or like nice cushions and there there was just a wood floor It was so painful And I remember him walking around really steadily around us and he said, you'll never be free until you can be still with your pain. And so like to me embarrassment is actually feeling the out just like, whoa, I really felt the gap there in myself. It's to allow that pain so that we can be a bit more free. And if we don't tend to that gap, we just keep suffering and keep kind of going into shame as often as it's called like a shame spiral. Well said. Let's move on to some of these other aspects of the eightfold path. The next one is right intent.

Yeah. So for me, right intent, I think of it as perspective. How are you having a correct perspective with what's happening? Because intent is, you know, as the famous adage says, you know, the road to hell is paid with good intentions. Again, it's like really having some rigor and looking at what we say we value. And how do we actually put some,

some little juice into that? So that's why I think that perspective is a place of practice or intent is a place of practice, but the place of practice is really between what our perspective is, what our intent is, and what we're actually doing. Because it's so easy just to say, like, oh, I have really good intentions

or I have a really good perspective and act like a jerk, you know? So like I think that it's really important. And for me, it's been so, yeah, keep using this word humbling, which is really interesting. I just feel lately just deep appreciation for the humbling reality of living to catch ourselves constantly in that space between things in what I say I value and what I'm doing.

I'm hearing a lot of similarity between right view and right intent. Are they very similar? I think that they are very similar. They're good friends, you could say. But I think that one is really about that kind of looking back and like looking at how we create our tangles and suffering and suras, as my grandmother would say, that's to me kind of what the first right view is and Intent is in the moment. How are you closing the gap between your intention and what you're doing?

So one is actually noticing like how you create traditionally is known as the wheel of suffering, how you create the wheel of suffering And one is actually okay okay, in the moment, how are you doing that? Yes, one is a little bit retrospective in a way and the other, the right intent is about, what is my intention now? Yeah, I think that in all of them, as you'll see, they're all so close, right?

And they're all like the facets of a jewel. I think there's a reason why those analogies are often made is because they are like different facets of a jewel. So slowly turning it. It's the same thing it's talking about. It's talking about our values, it's talking about, you know, being a bench, it's talking about being like a real living person. Coming up, Cotion talks about what are known as the ethical branches of the eightfold path, right speech, right action and right livelihood. We talk about the utility and pitfalls of gossip and what it means to kill the energy in a room 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?

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. And that's why in each episode I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs

and sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times, but if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like if you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it?

Follow life is short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondering app. You mentioned ethics. The next three items on the list of eight are often lumped together as sort of the ethical batch. And they are right speech, right action and right livelihood. Let's start with right speech. We've done a lot on this show about mindful communication, skillful communication. Talking and listening, you're like the basic units of social interaction, when social interaction is so important

when it comes to human well-being. So I always find it so affirming that the Buddha put right speech, right there in the eightfold path, right there on the list of things you need to do to get enlightened. So can you just talk a little bit about what right speech is? Yeah, you know, so one of the things that I like to think about with right speech is speech is a place of practice that speech is how am I speaking to myself in my thoughts? First of all in my words and what are their impact. And so I think that very often we think about what we're just saying,

literally uttering, but I think it's really important to look at that whole range from how we're talking to ourselves. So to me, the speech begins with the story we're telling ourselves. And so I tell many stories in the book, so many of them are actually about Chodo and I. Chodo, your husband, just so people can get the context here. Yes.

So just the other day, I was actually going into the closet and getting something. I think the vacuum or something and Chodo said, you're so angry with me. And I said, what do you mean? He's like, you want to break up. I said, what do you mean? He's like, well, I can tell.

I said, well, maybe it's the story you're telling yourself. I'm actually just trying to get the vacuum. And he said, well, you had a face on. And so it was really interesting. And then we were both like, oh, wow, that was really interesting, you know? So like, how quickly we are looking at what's happening in the world, interpreting it with our speech and our mind, we see something and interpret it and say, oh, I know what's happening. It's kind of this clinging onto some sense of we know what's going on. And for me, that's such a critical part of right speech,

is to really look at how we are thinking, and what are those sentences. And I find in myself that those sentences are deeply repetitive, the patterns of what we think is happening in our world tends to keep replicating itself until we see it. And so right speech for me is also that really amazing space where we can say, oh, look at how I'm thinking. You start to learn how to say, oh, what is the story as opposed to over identifying it with the speech. The story I'm telling myself,

Brunei Brown came on the show and talked about those being just magic words because you can pretty much say anything after that. Like it doesn't compute to your interlocutor as an accusation. It's like, look, I know I'm crazy. Here's what my crazy brain is spitting out as a computation. Let's talk about it. It really is right speech, in my opinion, and in my experience. Yeah. And there are some basic instructions about speech. Is it kind? Is it helpful? Is it necessary? When I say something, is it really what needs to be said right now?

I was a meeting the other day, and I was pretty sure I needed to say something, is it really what needs to be said right now? I was a meeting the other day and I was pretty sure I needed to say something, but I realized that, you know what, this is not the time to say it. There's another time where just allow this person to discover something. So I often am telling myself, shut up, shut up, shut up. Just be quiet and allow that other person to actually have some space to discover. You know, it's a place of practice because it's sometimes we feel like we have to say everything. And we fill up too much space. Or some of us actually withhold the speech and need to practice

sharing more and speaking up and learning to take up some space. And so I think speech is a place of practice that's super interesting in terms of how we really learn how to be present in a different way with our language. Also there are categories of right speech and one is being truthful. Like before you speak, do you really ask yourself, is this really true? So like to me, this is great antidote for gossip, right? Is it really true? Do you actually know this that you're saying? And the other one is lying, you know, that it's really challenging. Like many of us try to cover up all different ways that we don't tell the truth. And how do we learn how to speak the truth? And the other one is

harsh speech. We can be so harsh. Sartre says, you know, that every word has consequences, every silence, too. And so even our silence can be a form of harsh speech when we don't speak up when something injust is happening, for example. Okay, let's talk about gossip, though, because you and I gossip sometimes, and I've had people come on this show and make a really good case for the evolutionary utility of gossip. For those of us who are trying to be good people,

maybe even good Buddhists, how do we think about gossip? I think that there are times to share with close friends. For me, it's a very different thing when you are with close friends and talking about people and trying to understand people or having a sense of humor is one thing. I think it also has to do with harm. And so I know other people who no matter where they go, they're kind of spilling the beans about all kinds of people that they don't know, and they're kind of doing that in almost every setting. So I think it's a time-degree condition in place and is it creating harm? So like, yeah, I feel like you and I are having fun. And so like we're also talking more freely, but I for me it actually has to do with the trust that I have with you. Like I don't have the sense that

you're going to be going out and then spreading that around. So I think that to me, it's really important having good friends who can hold it and how we are holding it. To me, that's the big difference because I think it really has to do with the levels of harm. For example, there was this person who was spreading all of this gossip about myself and you know, they were saying all of these terrible things about me, and I actually took them to tea, and I just said, I've been hearing all the things that you're saying about me.

And I'm curious about if that's your experience, and this person was telling tons of people about it. And I said, is that your actual experience of me, and do you know any of those things to actually be true? And he said, is that your actual experience of me and do you know any of those things to actually be true? And he said, no. So it was just a really interesting moment. Gossip, I think, yes, it can be a connecting thing, but it depends on where it is and how it's held.

It really has to do with harm. Yeah. I mean, I have to accept that I thought about this. I wasn't even planning to ask this question. It just came up in my mind when you were talking. I agree with you that, yeah, there is some utility from a bonding perspective and also in terms of how to navigate the world and handle other people

to talk a little bit of gossip with the intent of better understanding behavior that's confusing to you. Yeah, it can be fun to talk about that. It can be useful to talk about that. It can be useful to talk about that as long as you're not spreading harmful on truths about other people, especially when you're spreading it to people who you don't really know. Exactly. Okay, so in the interest of moving through the eightfold path here, the next one is right action and I've never quite understood what that meant because I mean action is such a broad term. Yeah, it is, it is. Action

is a broad term and so like that's why all of these, they really just kind of weave together or it fastest of the jewel. I think we have to just keep appreciating that. The Buddha actually gave six things to reflect on in terms of our actions. And so one of them is killing. He thought it was basically a pretty good idea to not intentionally take someone else's life, which seems, you know, reasonable. But I think that we can kill in many different ways. We can kill moments. For example, being kind of more extroverted and charismatic, I can take up a lot of space sometimes. And sometimes that can kill in a way, energy in a room. So action as a place of practice is like, okay, how do I attune to what's the right size of my

actions in this space, in this time. So how do we really look at how we're taking up space as a form of action? And how are we showing up? There's a habit of feeling that we want other people to take care of us. And so that instead of showing up ourselves, doing the action ourselves, we're kind of waiting for like this magical person to come and to take care of us. I think that's Pemma Jojderan talks about the, it's like the great babysitter, we're kind of fistic in that way. And so I think that the Buddhist instruction by right action is to really look at how even

our habitual ways of seeing ourselves in relationship to the world, for example, like I'm great or I'm the worst, is a way of killing the way we act because we're not really acting in this spontaneous related way to actually what's going on. We're like dragging in a trunk of crap from our lives, which we all have to deal with at some point. And really learning how to unpack that so that we can actually not kill everyone's experience and make everyone else relate to us in that same way that we've been dragging around our whole lives. One of my early, really important teachers, Robert Blyck calls it the big bag and he's like, our work is to put the bag down and pull out all the things that we are just carrying around that burden us. And for me, that's actually part of how to practice right action is actually to take responsibility

because if we don't, we kind of kill the possibility of acting in a spontaneous and lively way, definitely been true for me. So if we don't look at what's in our bag, it's kind of owning us, it keeps us in our head, or as I said before, it keeps our head up our ass as opposed to being open and available and spontaneous to whatever is arising right now. Totally, and it doesn't really allow us to actually be where we are.

And also, what it does, too, is that it makes everyone else relate to us in that way, as opposed to who we might actually be becoming. You tell a story about announcing how vegan you were for a while. Is that story I proposed if we're selling? You know, I was one of those vegan people where I was actually using veganism to be another way that I was kind of not belonging. And so, was so interesting, because of my background,

I just always felt like I didn't quite belong. And so then I became this like militant vegan person. So I was like, the kind of person you do, like wouldn't want to invite over. Because I would be like, oh, you can't, why are you eating that? And I was so judging. Look, so I was such an ass.

And this went on for a long time and just like many people that I knew were just like, oh, enough already. If that's what you want to do, do that, but leave us alone. And I remember it was at this town in Mexico called Potsguero and this beautiful poet who lived in that town had a few of us over for dinner. And this beautiful meal that was like clearly made with lots of love and celebration. And I was looking at the food, which was like basically all meat. And I just remember I was about to say, I'm not going to eat this. I'm not going to do this. I just saw how my big bag was like there,

and I realized, you know what? This looks beautiful. Why don't you just shut up and enjoy it. And I did. And it actually was this incredible moment of change. You know, we're kind of charging ahead in our life with a certain ideology or belief and learning how to put that down is so relaxing, at least to my experience.

But is that a case for situational ethics? Like, I only practice what I believe sometimes? And did that contradict what you were talking about at the beginning around not having such a gap between your beliefs and your actions? It's a great question. I think that there are really important things to think about with factory farming, etc. that do cause a men's amount of harm. So, we're always responsible, but I think that what I was about to do with that table was what I normally did at most of those tables

was basically stand on top of the table and tell everyone they were assholes and which would have been awful. And I think that in some way I like bordered on being at least unkind. It's not that I'm pro or against veganism or vegetarianism or anything, but it's just that to me, the story is really more about the way I was doing things. Like, that's what made me a killer. I was like this killer vegan person that can kill energy in a room. You know, I was like so crazy. I'm with you, dude. I've been annoying about many things in my life. So I feel your pain. Okay, so what is right livelihood? Yeah, there are really interesting quotes where like, I don't know, like 70 to 80% of people who are spending time and there are jobs actually don't love what they're doing. And so for me,

I'm one level. There's this way of looking at it where we can think of it as work is a place of practice. And so how do you use whatever you're doing, which is in this case, it's all about what you do for work as a place where you can actually see your mind. So traditionally, it was really, I think the Buddha talked about like, no, you know, you can't be an arms dealer or sell alcohol or something like that. But to me, it's really about how do we find meaning? You know, how do you really engage your work? I keep going back to the same thing. I feel like a broken record here, but it's really about your values and what you're doing.

And so when I was doing monastic training, when you become a senior monk, it's something called chusso, and basically your job at that level is that you have to clean everybody's toilet, which is thought to be a senior position. So like the most senior people do the thing that nobody wants to do. I found it to be incredibly gross and interesting and Actually helpful. It's like to bring your mind and realize, oh, I'm making this clean and taking care of the community in like this super basic way. It's very kind. So how do you bring that kind of quality of mind

to your work? Our building has this porter, you know, the guy who takes out the trash. He's this amazing human being, Mani, his name. And the other day, all the trash was out on the sidewalk for the garbage people to come and collect it. And someone had gone through all the trash and it was all over the street. And so many, many bags of garbage were like all over everywhere. It was a huge mess.

And the middle of that mess was Mani. And I was like, good morning, manny. He's like, good morning, cushion. And it's like, how's it going? He's like, I've got a lot of work to do. I'm going to clean things up for everybody. I love seeing him every morning, because he embodies that spirit of doing the basic things with a sense of connectedness to other people. And so to me, right livelihood or work as a place of practice is this opportunity to actually connect to other people. You know, one of the things that we get to experience at the Zen Center is that I get to work and serve, whether it's in our education programs or Zen practice, because so many people support us.

And so like to me, it's this incredible awareness of our connectedness. And so throughout my day, I feel so supported and feel also the sense of gratitude, which informs what I get to do. I've talked to many different people, you know, business people or lawyers or hedge fund people or teachers or doctors or all these different people. And I find that people feel most connected when they realize what their work does. For example, when teacher was talking to, you know, they're teaching allowed them to have the summer's office so that they could spend time with their kids and they got to actually care for other people's kids and care for their own kids

and caring for other people's kids allowed them to care for their kids and provide for them and to have time and space for them. So, I find that the people who are most connected to what their work does have a much more vibrant sense of belonging like people like many. After the break, Cotion will explain the final aspects of the eightfold path, right effort, right attention and right concentration. He talks about finding the balance between not doing enough and over working. He'll talk about how right attention can help us be less lonely, how the eightfold path

will ultimately make us better meditators. And why he thinks the concept of mystery should be added as number nine on the list of eight. Keep it here. The last three items on the list of eight, I think are often sort of bucketed together as having to do in some way with meditation practice. They are right effort, right attention, and right concentration. Yes. Let's start with right effort because I think in meditation and in life, this is an area where many of us struggle. So can you just give us the basics on right effort? Yeah. So I just remember the story that always, for me, encapsulates it, zoomie ratio was talking to one of his students and my zoomie ratio started to cry and the student said what's happening in my zoomie

ratio, she said, oh, it's just so painful that so few people stay with their training. And that is just true. The effort is a continuous effort. Many of us kind of try things out. I'll give it a try. I'll give it a try. Give it a try. And we don't really. And it kind of goes back to that 10 or 30 years of doing something. We're kind of practicing. So right effort is this kind of capacity to realize this is the long long road. This is a lifetime road. This is what's possible if we stay on staying on. And I think that's just very rare. The other side of it where I was just taking so much on some years ago,

I was the head of a retreat and a five-week retreat and I was working with the teacher and I was doing the registration and doing the liturgy training and doing like a million different things and sitting nine hours a day. And I could barely walk almost when I finished the retreat. And somehow I was able to finish the retreat and it was a very powerful retreat. But the moment the retreat ended, I felt really, really sick and I had to go to bed. I was so weak and so wiped out. And I went to my primary care physician and did some tests and he's like, you know, it's wrong with you. And I was like, what?

And he said, you're exhausted. So there was kind of like little nobility and just like driving yourself into the ground. So I think we often misunderstand what right effort is about. Sometimes we're like, right effort means like, go for a kamikaze. We have to be careful. But I think it's how do you learn how to actually also look at where are you making it more difficult? And do you need to. It's really important to actually get really clear about where you are and what you need to do.

And so here we go again, but how are you tending that gap to bring it together? And actually the reality is, it's going to be hard. It's going to be uncomfortable and it's going to be hard. It's going to be uncomfortable and it's going to be challenging. And so if we're really practicing, we're going to meet what's hard. We're going to meet what's uncomfortable. And if we're not, we're actually not in some ways really practicing. So the right effort is really key in those moments to really focus and to realize,

are we really engaged? Are we really practicing? Are we really not stepping away from what we say we want to do? So here we go again with the value of being really clear and really courageous when things get hard. And I think that's why we need teachers and we need good companions on the road, because you can't do this alone as far as I know.

So right effort and actually learning how to attune right effort, where it's not too much or not too little, but really the right amount is essential. Yeah, the Buddha used the classic analogy of a loot. We don't play loots anymore. We think of a guitar, the strings of a guitar, they need to be tuned, not too tight, not too loose. It takes a long time to do that titration in your meditation and in pretty much every other aspect of your life. So it's sometimes described as like walking into a dark room and trying to find the middle. You got to bump into the far wall, bump into the near wall, and eventually you'll get there. So just picking up on a theme you've already established

of this being hard. Yeah. Second to last on the list of eight is right attention, which I think is sometimes translated as right mindfulness. How do you think about right attention or right mindfulness? Well, to me, attention is everything in some ways. I remember my family who was a wonderful poet, Marie Howe, and she wrote this incredible poem called The Spell. And so I think about attention in this way, where in the poem, her daughter's in the backseat, and the daughter says, how is your day? And she says, I was fine.

And her daughter says, oh, what do you do? She's like, you know, I had a sandwich, I'd answer emails, etc, etc. And the daughter keeps asking, tell me the whole story, Mom. And each time the daughter asks the question, she goes deeper. And so like she's paying closer and closer attention to what's actually happening. And the other story that keeps coming into my mind, you know, I love this story so much for my dad where he was in the food co-op where he lives in Syracuse. And he saw this guy that he sees, you know, all the time and the guy says, oh, how are you? And he said, I'm fine. How are you? And he said, do you really want to know? And my dad said, yeah, I do really want to know. And the guy then starts sharing some great difficulties

in his life. And I think it was like this really beautiful moment. And it was just a few minutes. And then they embrace these people would never really spoken to each other. But to me it's like that kind of attention is what's always possible. Now, I always think about that we're like the this pandemic of loneliness and how do we learn how to step forward and actually care for people. So to me, it's paying attention. And I think that we often don't remember to pay attention. What is the difference between attention or mindfulness and the final entry in the eightfold path of right concentration?

Yeah, so for me, right concentration is really about seated meditation. And, you know, I don't know if this is a traditional way of understanding it or not, but very often people start with meditation, or like, I'll try that out, but for me, like, there's so much work to do before or during and after. But I think that seeded meditation is the place of practice, so that's the place of concentration, but it's really hard to do. If we have not looked at all of the weird shit in our back, if we've even done the work of really unpacking some of the things that get in our way, and it's so interesting how this is at the end

of the full path, it's like then you can settle down. It's kind of like back traditionally, even the asanas of yoga were designed. So you do all of that so that you can settle down. It's kind of like back traditionally even the asanas of yoga were designed, so you do all of that so that you can sit. So learning how to be connected to your whole self first and then sit down. I think about the last however long I've been practicing, which is a period of time, but really it was my consistent work in all of the other eightfold path and also the first three truths of the four noble truths of really looking at my own suffering and really looking at how I'm causing my own suffering and really learning how to change. I think that all of them lead to what I've experienced in myself.

I feel like the beauty of the Eiffel Path is creating all the conditions and attending to the conditions that are going to allow your sitting, your meditation to be very held in context. And I think that very often we want to kind of just jump into the sitting without doing the work that's needed. And so I think the Buddha's quite brilliant to put this here at the end, putting it literally at that, to really teach us that, oh right, have to attend to this. And it's a double helix. It's a mutually reinforcing this. And it's a double helix. It's a mutually reinforcing dynamic because you do all the work higher up on the list. And that helps you sit. But then the sitting also helps you with the work.

It's like the most awesome combo planner. The whole thing. Yeah. To me, I've been doing all of it all at the same time. And I think that's what's so beautiful. The beauty of a life of practicing and not being good at it is like, do you start to notice all these changes throughout your life? And you start to see how life and you and practice changes. And people who say, like, oh, practice is boring or whatever that is, it's like, how is that even possible? It's so dynamic to see, as you're saying, how they flow into each other and inform each other that we're never done. So actually, I, in my book, I added a ninth fold, which is mystery, because I wanted to get across what you were actually just saying, which is that we're never done, and that they all flow into each other. And so that

April path is also not linear. We always have the capacity to engage it on so many different levels. What's interesting to me, and I think counterintuitively inspiring, is knowing you as I do, you know, you're a Zen monk and you're a mess. I mean, in a good way. And you're embarrassed about lots of shit and in a healthy way. And so you're not trying to model some unattainable perfection. What you're trying to model is marginal improvement that compounds in a really powerful way over time. Yeah, to me, it's all about liveliness and service and love and vitality for the time that we have in connection. There's a chant that you and Shoto often lead, and at the end, the closing exhortation is don't squander your life. Yeah, perfection is not so important. I've never met a

dying person who's like, I'm so glad I tried to control everything and was trying to so perfect yet to meet someone like that. There was a song by this band. The band was called the Silver Jews. David Berman, who himself was Jewish, no longer with us for tragic reasons, but very funny, they're a mortent humor. He was the lead singer.

He had a line. There's something like in 1985, I was hospitalized for approaching perfection. It's really true. It would be hard work. Well, it's just so sad, you know, because it's actually, if you look at the beauty of nature, or you look at the beauty of nature or you look at the beauty of anybody, it's not about our perfection. It's about, you know, what inspires us, at least inspires me is how someone walks into

a room and just how they embody themselves and how they're open and curious and connected and courageous and loving and funny. Gotta be funny. We agree on that. Before I let you go, can you please shamelessly plug your new book and any other stuff that you're putting out into the world that people might want to access? Yes, so the new book is called Untangled, walking the Eightfold Path to clarity, courage, and compassion. And our Zen Center, and New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, twice a year we have these 90-day commit to sit. So these practice periods with all these teachers. And so it's a great opportunity to practice and that and many other things that we offer the world, like our Contemplative Medicine Fellowship,

are available at ZenCare.org. Just to say a few words about the Zen Center, I'm a supporter. My wife's a supporter were both been involved in the programs. They have a program called Foundations in Contemplative Care, which essentially teaches you how to be a hospice volunteer or a hospital volunteer.

My wife and I completed that because she's a doctor, she didn't actually go do the volunteer work, but I did for many years in a hospice and it was an incredible experience for me. They also have, as a coach and reference day, fellowship and contemplative medicine. So if you're a physician and you're looking for continuing medical education,

they have a course that my wife is also involved with. You can get information about all of this if you go to ZenCare.org and I highly recommend these programs. Thank you so much. Thank you. Congratulations on the new book. Everybody should go read it. And I look forward to seeing you in IRL at some point soon. Totally. It's a joy to be with you, Dan. Thanks again to Cotion. Thanks as well to everybody who worked so hard on this show. 10% It's a joy to be with you, Dan. scoring and mixing by Peter Bonaventure of Ultraviolet Audio. We'll see you all on Friday for a bonus meditation.

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