Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Improving Your Relationships - Buddhist Style | Martine Batchelor

Episode Date: August 18, 2021

This great deep-Dharma episode is all about using an ancient, fascinating, and readily-accessible Buddhist concept as a way to improve your interactions with other human beings. The concept in question is called vedana, or “feeling tone.” Our guest, Martine Batchelor, will explain. She was a Buddhist nun in Korea for ten years and is now a lecturer, spiritual counselor, and author of such books as “The Path of Compassion” and “Women in Korean Zen." Two brief notes: First, this episode is a re-run, which we’re doing a few times this summer in order to give the staff a breather, and also to resurface some of our older gems for our newer listeners. Second, this conversation includes some brief references to sensitive topics, including sexual activity and substance abuse. Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/martine-batchelor-repost 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, my fellow suffering beings. How we doing? Got a good show for you today. It's a great, deep Dharma episode.

It's all about using an ancient, fascinating, and really readily accessible Buddhist concept as a way to improve your interactions with other members of Homo sapiens. The concept in question here is called Vedina, or Feeling Tone. I'm going to leave it to my guest to explain what Vedina is all about because she actually knows what she's talking about. Her name is Martine Bachelor. She's a former Buddhist nun. She was a nun in Korea for 10 years.

She's now a lecturer, spiritual counselor, and author of such books as The Path of Compassion and Women in Korean Zen. This show, by the way, is a rerun, which we're doing a few times this summer in order to give the staff a bit of a breather, shout out to the TPH staff. They're incredible. And also, of course, to resurface some of our older gems for our newer listeners. One final little note before we do that, this conversation includes some brief references to a few sensitive topics, including sexual activity and substance abuse, just a little heads up there. Before we dive in, one exciting order of business. You may remember earlier this year,

we ran a big listener survey, thousands of you responded to a whole series of questions about your experiences listening to the show. Thank you for doing that, by the way. And we, in turn, listen to you. Turns out, one of the things you'd rather do without is the ads. Probably because we're right in the middle of talking about the pernicious impacts of mass media or the importance of self-compassion or how to achieve a blissful state of attention and focus and then some jarring voice elbows its way in trying to convince you to watch a boxing match or try a new diet or buy a car. Whatever, we heard you and that's why we're going to try something new. This show, the 10% happier podcast is now available, add free inside our companion meditation app, which is also

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1st. So go to 10%.com slash August for 30% off your subscription. That's 10% one word all spelled out. .com slash August. Okay, let's dive in now with Martin Bachelors. All right, Martin, thanks for doing this. Thank you for asking me. I think one of the things we're going to focus on today is a way to work with our

minds so that we can really become like individual vectors of positivity and helpfulness. So we're doing our little part to make it then the universe in this conversation. and a helpfulness. So we're doing our little part to make it then the universe in this conversation. Indeed. And to me, when the pandemic started, the COVID-19 has started, actually four things came to mind.

The first one was actually to see that the practice had really in a way prepared me for this, prepared me from this pandemic, like kind of bringing some stability, some ground, clarity, and that's what practice is about to help us when we have difficulty. At the same time, I decided this is a pandemic and I am not going to stress about anything. My motto will be, why stress? Take your time, take the time you can to do whatever is needed.

Because if you stress, then you're going to be harmful to yourself, harmful to others. The third thing was to think that appreciation, mudita, rejoicing in all the people who helped us to survive and to see what was still working, what were people still doing and also so grateful that all these people in no end dangerous themselves for our survival. And the first thing I took at the practice was how can I change my relationship? How can we use this opportunity to really see the other and try to see the other differently and our relationship to the other differently because we so used to go on automatic. I have that relationship

with this person, I have this history with this person, and that's where it is. And I thought, could we have a renewal in our relationship in this strange time? So I would say the pandemic in a way it's terrible, and at the same time, it can be an opportunity to really bring the practice to the situation and also to help ourselves and of course to help others. You said so much in there that's really deep. Let's pick up on the fourth of the pillars there, which is sort of using this as an opportunity to practice improving our relationships. Does that bring us to this notion of feeling tones or vedanas? Exactly. Exactly. Because I think we can only get a bit rated in relationship to perceive the other. And often to perceive the other, is this person giving me pleasant feeling tone,

or is this person giving me unpleasant feeling tone, or is this person giving me neutral feeling tone, and then thinking that the tonality is in the other person because we have the impression that it's all the person who gives it to me and that's why I became very interested in mindfulness of feeling tone because what is it? Mindfulness of feeling tone, feeling tone, Vedana, V-E-D-A-N-A in the ancient Pali language actually refer to the tonality upon contact through the senses. The simplest example is actually color, like wallpaper color.

If we look around us, there is green, blue, red, and if we see green, that gives us a certain tonality. If we see red, it gives us another tonality. If we see cream, it gives us another tonality. And so what is interesting is that colors, as far as I know, has not done anything to you. Green, has not jumped at you. Red, has not kind of giving you a nice present. But why is it that we see green, red, or cream, or yellow? And suddenly it's like, oh, we feel something. So Vedana tonalities, when kind of you have contact, then you are immediately you have this tonality

and what is very important is to see that the tonality is conditioned by the perception. And so this is kind of like what's called the five omnipresent mental factor. You have contact, tonality, perception, intention, and attention. And so today we could look mainly at the first three, which is contact, tonality, and perception, because that's really where buyers will come in. How perception and tonality really, in a way, influence each other.

Let me see if I can restate some of that. Vade and I often refer to in English as feeling tone. The concept as I understand it is that if you look at the mind, we're constantly knowing We're constantly knowing various objects, taking insights, sounds, thoughts, physical sensations, etc., etc. And every time something arises in the mind, there are three ways to experience it. Is it pleasant? Is it unpleasant or is it neither? Meaning is it neutral? And this can seem incredibly technical,

if you look at everything that's coming up in your mind because there's so much that comes up in the mind, nanosecond, to nanosecond, but it has profound ramifications for how we live because we act if we're not mindful of the feeling tone of whatever we're experiencing, We just act it out. So we see green wallpaper, we don't like green, we yell at the painter or whoever painted the wall.

So many ramifications come out of an unseen feeling tone. Is anything that I've just said accurate? You see, what is interesting is that the Buddha says in one text there is 108 Vedanas. So actually it's not any sad, the first two are mental or physical and so we have to be careful to think that Vedana is just above the mind. Of course, it's above the mind. But actually, it's also something we feel in the body, very strange, that actually it affects our whole body-mind complex. And sometimes it will be more mental, sometimes it will be more physical actually. And at the same time, it qualifies

in front the effective tool. Which then of course is going to lead us to react in various ways. So you could say you have the, you see something, you hear something. And then it's pleasant or unpleasant as you pointed out. But then that generally gives us a feeling sensation, which becomes an emotion,

which then can become a disturbing emotion. And so from what we do, is that we became aware too late of actually the Vedana, when things have already gone overwhelming. And then we might act out in a harmful way to our self or to others. And so that's why, in a way, the idea with the mindfulness of feeling told is to see it earlier. And in nearly two seconds of how does it feel?

A God of Hell will go into the meaning of it. Oh, this is unpleasant. The person is unpleasant. What actually is unpleasant because within myself and in meeting the other person, something happened. Maybe they said something, maybe I did not do well. Well, for me, I assume, I think the one first thing to be careful about is what I said before, that we assume

that the pleasantness, unpleasantness, neutral is in the object. Like, let's say take mangoes. I like mango. And so I think mango by itself is pleasant. Then if somebody says to me, oh, I don't like mango, then I will tell them, but you know that a good one. And then I might force them to try one.

And then they said, okay, I'll try this one. And then they still say, I don't like it. Because the pleasantness is not in the mango, but it's in the person, in a way liking it. So it's kind of like, and this can be, that's what is so interesting with the tonality, is that it's constructed, it's conditioned, it's not in the person or in the object, but it's how society like, for example, is like when I used to live in England and they used to eat rhubarb every spring, rhubarb pie.

And I think rhubarb pie is terrible. Rhubarb is awful. It's so sour. And then I used to think, but what's the matter with them? Rhubarb is unpleasant, they like it. They must be something unpleasant about them. Until I learned unpleasant, they like it, they must be something of pleasure about them. Until I learn to like Rubarb. So the problem is not the thing kind of is pleasant and pleasant according to conditions. But we then stick things in the thing itself or in the person,

which is I think much more dangerous than in the thing. Saying, you know, the person is always like this, the person is always like that. Or our society decrees. These people are pleasant people, are good people, these people are unpleasant people, they're bad people. But nobody is good and bad all the time. What are the conditions?

Could the pernicious effects of being mindless of aidina work in another way as well? If I experience an unpleasant feeling tone because of something you say, and then I falsely assume that everything about you is negative. You know, impute some sort of essential unpleasantness to you as opposed to seeing that it's happening in my mind based on the causes and conditions in my life. It could be like that, but it couldn't it also just be something as simple as, I love my wife. I don't think she's essentially unpleasant in any way, but she might say something that

rubs me the wrong way. It gives me an unpleasant feeling tone. Because I'm not seeing this unpleasant feeling tone arising in me, I then snap back at her and all of a sudden we're in a fight. Exactly. And this is a very good point because you see what is also interesting in the text that the Buddha talks about what happens with change. Like it's very interesting to look at the changing nature of tonality and how we react to the changing nature of tonality. So would I first say there is underlying tendencies

with tonality themselves. If it's pleasant, I want more. If it's unpleasant, I don't want it. If it's neutral, I'm confused. But then, as long as it's pleasant, it's pleasant. But once it stops, it can become unpleasant. As long as it's unpleasant, it's unpleasant, but when it's thoughts, it can become pleasant. And with neutral, if you understand it, it can become pleasant.

If you don't understand it, it can become unpleasant. So, in a case with your wife, what is interesting is that at one level, there is this pleasant feeling told most of the time from her. So generally you feel comfortable because, oh yes, this is pleasant. But then she says something unpleasant, and he's like, wait a minute.

But you see, you might not see it straight away. So I'll just give an example why after that there is a strong reaction. Like I did something really pleasant and then I made a mistake and he's understood something and then he turned to unpleasant but because there was a call of the pleasant, then I did not see the unpleasant. And then I went upstairs in my flat, and then an hour later I was seeing something unpleasant to my husband who were not done anything. And I thought, wait a minute, what's going on? It's not done anything, but I am saying something unpleasant to him. And I realized it's just going upstairs because the pleasant stopped.

It was replaced by the unpleasant. And then generally we spread it. So that's another thing that we do. We don't see it soon enough. And then because we feel unpleasant, then we have to share it to others. That's something we really easily do. But with the case with your wife, it was just a plain reaction. She says something unpleasant. I reply with something unpleasant. But what then is interesting, if we become of mindfulness, of tonality,

your wife says something and then you can stop and just observe. Oh, this is unpleasant. And then the question is, how long is this going to last? And to me, this is something I do a lot in meditation and daily life. Or I feel a different feeling tone, okay. The tonality has changed. And then how long is this new tonality going to last? And then you have three levels. If you don't do anything with it, it actually passes. Once, some time ago, I was with my husband in a car,

and we had difficulty kind of driving out of the parking lots, where a little tense, and then he says something unpleasant. And of course, my first reaction would be to say something unpleasant, too. But then I thought, no, I feel a little unpleasant in the body, in the heart. How long is this going to last?

So I just did not say anything back. And I just, we were thriving, we continued. And actually the tonality itself lasted only two red lights. And then it was really gone. Because I had not done anything with it. I had not said this is me, this is mine, and I have to kind of like in a way react immediately because that's what the Buddha says. The underlying tendency to unpleasant is to push away or to attack. So in a way we feel unpleasant. Either we're going to this is terrible,

this is terrible, this is a fool, fool me, fool me. Or we're going to, I am going to attack you because you attacked me, you hurt me. I'm going to hurt you back. And in a way, this is a beauty. One could say of kind of when we protest, but in a peaceful way, this is a beauty, one could say of when we protest, but in a peaceful way, peaceful demonstration. There is a lot of very difficult tonality, and then Gandhi says, I will be not causing harm. I will demonstrate, I will stand firm for something.

But I will not give back that anger, I will not give back that hatred, I will act more out of sense, of fairness, of justice. So that's what is interesting with amclism and feeling tone. What do you do? I mean, once I heard I was at a peace conference and lots of great people talking about peace, everybody was falling asleep, and then you have this fellow who comes on the little guy, and he said, I am angry. It was one of my heroes. I am angry. And it was like a pair. And it was the first person, long ago in the 1960s, or the first person really did something about homelessness

in France, and even become a member of parliament to do something about it. And so he had unpleasant feeling told, because tonality is human, it's a function, it's a survival mechanism, it's an evolution mechanism to feel upon content. So it was unpleasant for him that people suffered and went homeless. So it was angry at it because it was unfair

and it was harmful and he went to do something about it. So he acted upon the unpleasant feeling told, but in a creative way, in an insightful way. So the point is not that there is no tonality, but the point is do we creatively engage with the tonality or are we overwhelmed by the tonality? So let's talk about how we can start to practice this in our own lives. I would imagine, you'll correct me if I'm wrong here, that the beginning of this process is to get really intimately familiar with these feeling tones as they arise in meditation. So, we use that as our gym so that we can then apply it out in the real world. Yes indeed. Because I mean, it took me a long time to really actually see the feeling

too. Because I became aware of mindfulness, I practiced it, and then somebody gave a talk about it and I saw, yeah, feeling tall. And my first experience really was with cherries. Because I love cherries and the person talk about tonality, pleasant tonality. So I said, okay, I'm going to eat these cherries. Go there. I love cherries. And then see what happens.

So I eat the cherry. And then if you continue to chew, chew to chew that change the tonality change So I feel what we have to be aware is that it's easier in a way to sit onality in daily life because there will be more distinction Well if you sit in meditation and that's why I could not find tonality for so many years because what I was finding I was like looking for it, and it was neutral. A lot of the time when we sit in meditation,

the tonality will be fairly in the neutral range, we could say. Not much is happening, you just sit there. But then what you can do is it's in three different ways. If you pay attention to the breath, and you pay attention to the air coming in the nostril, coming out of the nostril, what you can see there is just kind of like a little bit of changing air, a little cooler, air, little warmer,

and it's fairly neutral, the breath. But if you look at sensation, you have to, we are looking at sensation. You have sensation in terms of contact. So you can feel the, the clothes on the body, you can feel the hand on the legs, you can feel the butt or con the cushion. And again, that's fairly neutral. Or you can go into sensations. And then you might have a sensation in the knee, or you might have a sensation in the shoulders. And then there you start to see more, you know, a definition you could say. The sensation could be a little relaxed and pleasant, or the sensation could

be a little tight and unpleasant. Then the place you can really see the mindfulness of red and I would say is with the sound. So again, if you sit in a silent place, then again it will be fairly neutral. But if you listen to sound, what I call listening to the music of life, then there it can become really interesting. In terms of you hear a sound and generally immediately, hmm, I like this. Like if you hear a little bird, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, hmm, and it's very pleasant.

But then what is interesting with that sound? So you hear the sound of the bird, then it stops. Does the tonality continues? Is there an echo? Or as soon as the sound stops, the tonality goes. That's something we can really look into. Another thing is if you're sitting there and then you hear kind of like a mechanical sound, a loud mechanical sound, then generally it can feel unpleasant.

And then if it continues, what happens to the tonality? Are you getting more and more upset about it, or does it become a little neutralized? Oh, then you can play with perception. So you can sit in meditation, then you hear a mechanical noise, and then you realize, oh, they're repairing the pipe, which first. they're repairing the pipe which first. And then actually, although the sun could be a little unpleasant, it could become pleasant due to the change in perception. Oh, they're repairing the road, graves. The water is going to work better. So, you know what is interesting is if there is not much happening,

then you'll be more in the neutral. But personally, I think the neutral can be also interesting in terms of what is our relationship to neither. When nothing is going on, a lot of the time will think of it as boring. This is boring, I am boring, My life is boring. This is terrible. So actually it's interesting. Nothing is going on. But we could have a strong reaction to nothing going on. Or you can have a different perception or nothing is going on. At least nothing bad is going on. Ah, at least nothing bad is going on. Much more of my conversation with Martin Bachelor, right after this.

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I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. I want to go back to perception, because I think that ties back to something you said at the beginning of our chat, which is very technical from a meditation standpoint, but I just want to assure listeners, this can be technical, but it scales up to very practical in your life. So we're talking about technical meditation techniques that then scale up to ways that really have an impact on your mind as you go through life and on your relationships,

which of course then continue to have knock on impacts on your mind. So you talked about Vedina, the feeling tone of things that come up while we're meditating, and then you talked about perception. And I think it all starts with something called contact. So I think you talked about this chain before of contact, Vedina perception. Do I have that right? Yeah, actually, but what you have to be careful, as I talk about it, it seems to be linear, first contact, then tonality, then perception, actually not.

It all happened at once. So at the same time, we have contact, we experience tonality, and we experience perception. So in a way, you can be mindful of there was a contact because sometimes we don't know why we feel, what we feel. And then you realize, oh, I heard somebody say that. You know, and I think this is what a lot of this is happening with microaggression.

People don't get it. Like, you know, a lot of black people, people of color in America keep saying, but microaggression and people say, why people say, I don't see the point, it's so minor. But actually, every time, every day, six time a year, you get this, which nobody else gets. The white people don't get people making remark. And each time you feel bad. So I think first we have to see, oh, I don't feel this because I am like that.

I feel this because again and again, I get this contact. I feel it's very important. I'm not feeling this out of the blue because I see something that is not there. No, no, no, you see something. You are contact with however tiny. I think that's one thing to really be aware of. Contact. Something happened. I heard something. I saw something. How was slowly towards? And if it's big, then it's more obvious, of course. Then at the same time, it gives you a tonality. And again and if it's big then it's more obvious of course. Then at the same time it gives you a tonality and again if it's a small tonality it might not be so obvious. If it's a bigger tonality it will become more obvious but we have an asymmetry in the sense that it's nearly take us plus five pleasant, like if you have a kind of a scale of zero to ten

pleasant, for pleasant it take us five plus five to say, oh yes, this is nice. And then I'm pleasant, it takes you minus one minus zero point five for you, ah, I don't want it. So actually 0.5. For you, ah, I don't want it. So actually, being mindful of tonality helps us to increase the pleasant tonality, to be aware of 0 to 5, not just plus 5. And then in term of unpleasant, again, it gives a greater range, minus 1, is not minus 5, is not minus ten, but if you get a lot of minus one then they can agglomerate and then they become minus five minus ten. So in a way the tonality we can see the range, that's what is interesting with tonality, the range of it. And then perception is kind of like shifted so much. Kind of, you know, if we see somebody and we accuse them of something and they said, I did not do it. Oh, okay, you did not do it. But if we take an over, that's what is interesting. If we take an over by they did this unpleasant thing,

they tell us they did not do it, but we take an over by the unpleasant and we still think they're unpleasant and they did it. That's what is very problematic. Can we just say, oh, it's not there. And it goes. But often it's really, it amplifies. Negative tonality really amplifies, especially with perception because of our association. We associate it with pain of the past and pain of the future,

because that's also something in the text, the Buddha talked about tonality from the past, tonality from the present, tonality from the future. That was all incredibly interesting. And just so that I make sure that I understand the terms correctly, contact in a technical meditative sense means just simply something has happened, something has ar, something has

arisen in the mind. Vedina or tonality is the feeling tone is it's either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. And the perception is just the mind's capacity to know what it is. You're flipping through the, I've heard it described, perception is like the mind is flipping through its past experiences to figure out. Oh, yeah, that's a fire engine. That's the sound of a bird. So it is simply just knowing what something is and we can be mindful of each of these as they happen in meditation,

which then of course has consequences for how we act in the world. Is all of that correct? Up to a point. Up to a point. Presently, I think, due to possibly to your training, you seem to watch a lot of emphasis on the mind, which is fair enough. But personally, I would say contact is not just about the mind.

Contact is really about the whole organism. So the body, mind, complex, being in contact, what we see, what we hear, what we feel in the body, all of that. I think it's very important to see that actually it's quite body. The contact for me is very bodily, but of course, it includes the mind

and the thought that arises in the mind. So personally, for me, contact is actually this organism in the world and how it is impacted by the world. Then the tonality, exactly what you said, perception, I would say, is a little more complicated than that. Because perception is what you describe is like basic, mini-making, mini-making machine.

Things make sense to me, so that's just consciousness. But perception actually can be biased. To me, perception is biased, is how you perceive. So in a way, it's not just conscious. Perception is like how you make sense of it, but how you make sense of it is going to be impacted in a way by your culture, socialization, education, things you live, things that happen to you.

So it's not just about kind of in a way being conscious of something, but it's kind of like the consciousness will be conditioned by, you know, previous causes, and big causes and small causes. So, but yes, that's kind of the description, but a little wider, I would say. And there is an interesting idea in Buddhism, which is equanimity. And often, equanimity is seen as being equanimous, as being serene, as being calm. But actually, one of the idea of equanimity is actually treating people equally. And I think this is a great challenge to treat people equally because we're not going to treat equally if people give us a different

feeling to. I mean your wife, if she doesn't say something unpleasant, she gives you a pleasant feeling to, but a stranger, you might think, hmm, neutral. Some person you see on TV, you don't approve of, oh, immediately unpleasant. Sooner or later, we don't treat people equally because of the tonality they give us, equally because of the tonality they give us or because of the tonality society decided that they have. So I mean it's something to do that personally because somebody helped me then I'm going to kind of treat them differently, fair enough. I mean if somebody attacks you and it's of course of course you have to kind of you know not go back there of course. But it's interesting society deciding a group of people must be treated differently because they like this because they like that. That is interesting. In France, long ago, and it only stopped at the revolution, 1780, from the 1100 to 1780, you had a group of people who were untouchable in France. And to me,

I only discovered this recently. So for eight or ten years these people were discriminated against. They could not live in the town, they could not marry, they could not have a family day, etc., etc. They were really untouchable. And nobody knew why because it's so long ago, 1100, maybe the, I don't know the plague or whatever. And it's only a group of people decided for whatever reason these people we're going to treat them differently. And as soon as they treat a group of people differently, you do it on the function of tonality. It's tonality which these are people are unpleasant. The whole group is unpleasant, no matter what they do. Same with the untouchable in India.

They all am pure. No matter what they do, they all am pure. So you're born and you're already impure and you already give an unpleasant feeling to the pure one. This is so strange. But society creates tonality within the population. And then, of course, Twitter, Facebook, all these places are going to reinforce the tonality, which I think is extremely dangerous, because that's the way they were reinforcing tonality.

Same word about that. How does social media reinforce tonality. Same more about that. How does social media reinforce tonality? Well, because it's all about tonality. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, whatever you are, I mean, they so understand tonality without doing it. It's so

interesting. I mean, the advertisement interest rate also totally understand tonality. So I mean, the advertisement interest also totally understand tonality. So I mean, Facebook, in soluble, you like your dislike. Instagram, you like your dislike. I mean, it's just like, you know, what image give you pleasant feeling tone,

what image give you unpleasant feeling tone. So that's why it's so, lots of people get a lot out of watching canv video. They come back home, they have an unpleasant feeling tone, you see a few lovely cats, and you feel a pleasant feeling tone. So at that level I think it's very good for people. But at the same time if you want to reinforce unpleasant feeling tone you say lots of nasty thing about somebody who is not done anything.

I mean, you have so many kind of, I don't know how you call it, the false fact. So that, you know, if you say enough bad thing about somebody, even if they don't do it, let each one enforce the unpleasant tonality in terms of the story. Because in order for you to make yourself feel better, you need to have somebody who is unpleasant. I mean, if you are in any group, generally you have somebody where you go into direct the unpleasant bestow. I lived a long time in community and this is something I observed. That time to time, one would have problem with one person and then one would be like a radar looking for all the bad thing they did. Not seeing the good thing they did but just the bad

thing they did. So you look all the time for the bad thing they did. But when you had that problem with that person looking for all the bad thing they did you had no problem with anybody else. Because all your unpleasant tonality was fixated that way. And then when that went because everything is impermanent,, then suddenly you had little things unpleasant with other people. And it was not just targeted to one person. And as a society, you can target it to a group. And so you have lots of pleasant feeling tone, heightened.

Because everybody is saying, aren't we great? Aren't we great? They're so terrible over there. Aren't we great? Aren't we great? aren't we great? They're so terrible over there aren't we great, aren't we great? And I think unfortunately, Facebook and Twitter, they're really using that. People are really using it. To enable give our players and feeling tone about certain people,

and then place in feeling tone in terms of group strategy in a way. Let me go back to the practical application here. So we've talked about how one can explore and see and become more familiar with how feeling tones operate in the mind at a very micro level in meditation. And then we've talked a lot about, you're scaling that up to our day to day life. Can you say more about exactly how in our mind we can catch the feeling tones before we act on them blindly? Actually, I would say not so much in the mind, but actually in the body. For me, I think what I mean when I say the mind is all of it. In other words, I don't think I mean just like thinking.

I mean, when I say the mind, I think I mean the mind and body, but you can maybe tell me that I'm fooling myself. So what I mean in term of practice, like let's say, talk about practice and then how we scale it in daily life. So, in terms of practice, you're sitting meditation and you do the same thing you do, but you try to become aware of can I become aware of the tonality of this contact, contact with the breath, contact with the sensation, contact with the sun. And then you go out in daily life.

So, first, you have to be aware of that quality of our experience. Oh, yeah, there is a little difference. There is a little difference. So, what is interesting is to notice a difference in tonality, you could say, difference in mood. Then you go in daily life. And in daily life suddenly you feel, ah, it's like you have a little unpleasant tonality. I think you notice the unpleasant more than the pleasant. But personally, I think it's a good practice to also be aware of the pleasant. But let's look at the unpleasant. So, you're about your day and you feel relatively fine.

And then, you suddenly within often the heart area or the belly area, you feel a little hum. And then generally, we are perception, minimating machine. Why do I feel this? Is it sadness, is it anger, if this is it that? And so in a way here, unless somebody is attacking you and then you have to really creatively engage fast, notice it, oh, there is a little difference. I feel something. How does it feel? And then, not you say, what's the contact? Is it somebody, somebody said, is it something I saw? And so in a way to see the shift,

that I think first to be aware is the shift. Or when you see somebody, I mean, if you want a good example in terms of being in the street, I mean, so interesting. You go in the street and basically, if you're a person who look at people, you see people and immediately, oh, I like that one. I don't like that one. I like their dress. I don't like their dress. So just to be aware that actually I look at different people. And actually because of the perception, I'm going to have different tonality, even though I don't know them. This is what is interesting in terms of the strangers. You don't know them. And you have that tonality. You hear somebody, I mean, you have a beautiful voice.

So people hear, you're, my land. But if somebody had a different voice, people might say, hmm, I don't like the voice. And because I don't like the voice, I'm not going to listen to them. I mean, this is interesting. What happened? What is it that makes us, you know,

we creatively engage or react, who makes us kind of appreciate or make us dismiss or make us push away. Of course, we have to be kind of aware of ourselves and kind of what is harmful, not harmful, but within that. Or an excellent place is, personally, I do a lot of meditation when I drive. You drive, what's the tonality?

Neutral, you think about something else. You're stuck in a traffic jam. What do you do? What do you do? What's the tonality when you are stuck in a traffic jam? Let's say you are with your wife and you are a traffic jam. Do you keep pleasant feeling torn or becauldid some pleasant? Then suddenly you start to be unpleasant to the person next to you. What happens? How do I transmit it? The unpleasant, all the pleasant.

This is what is interesting that we can also act on the pleasant. And we can make it conscious. Do I want to continue this to be unpleasant, but not as sniffed into in some way? Or when you look at all the shops, I mean the shop window, I mean, you do, you see something and it's like, the field is calling out to you. I want this. I don't know, I own 73 and a half. I want it. Or if you're in Times Square, I love Times Square.

When I am in New York, because you have all these big things, then you know, they kind of like, oh, everything is dumb, so that it creates a pleasant feeling so you want it and just to see that Mmm, I'm looking at this What's my tonality in connection to that? So in this exploration that you described so well Because what I'm hearing you say is,

you know, this is like an experiment you can run in your own mind and body. Let's go back to neutral, because I promised to talk about this earlier. I said I wanted to talk about this. I believe you've spoken about, and you may have hit it a little bit in this interview, that we have a tendency to overlook the neutral.

But there's a way actually to relate to it differently that can, we can make neutral a more positive experience and change sort of our baseline for being in the world. Can you say more about that? Yeah, to me, actually, I would look at... So there is a big kind of like a little discussion in terms of the Buddhist reference if neutral exists or does not exist, but even at the time of the Buddha, they were discussibious. So I don't think we need to go there, but we could see it as a useful concept. And so for me, I can see it as a useful concept in two ways. One, if we could see neutral more as a baseline.

So in a way, we go up, in pleasant, go down, in unpleasant, and then we come back to the baseline of neutral. So that in a way, we cannot feel all the time unpleasant, all the time pleasant, but a lot of the time we go into experience neutral because it's kind of like the way the system is resting and it cannot all be excited or all be suffering in a way. So for personally I see it as a a restful baseline for the organism. The second thing that can be useful in terms of the neutron is the fact that in a way, if you only say you depress and everything is really unpleasant

and you think, oh, I am like minus six unpleasant and I need to go back to plus five pleasant. Then it's going to be like, see my impossible task, but actually you only have to go back to neutral. And that could be possible. So I think it's kind of a little bit because we have a strange benchmark for pleasant as plus fine. I think it increased the range of pleasant and gave us more possibility in terms of unpleasant and pleasant, this neutral baseline. Just picking up on that, you can see why perhaps evolution would have created us to have a

hair trigger reaction to the negative so that we survive and to have a higher bar for the pleasant so that we're really motivated to look for food and other pleasant things that also help us survive. Does that make any sense? Totally, not I think tonality is evolution. This is where you survive, of course, totally, totally. And then with the neutron, so to see it more as a kind of a baseline, a resting place,

but also to see that in the text, the Buddha saw that you could have ordained returality, or you could have what you could call insightful tonality, calm and clear tonality. And then the reaction to the tool would be very different. So that in a way, if you had ordinary pleasant tonality, you would go into, I want more, I want to repeat it. If you have ordinary unpleasant tonality, or I can't stand it, I hate it, and then you would amplify it that way. If it's neutral, or you get get confused not knowing what to do.

But if you have tonality because you've done the mindfulness which is more in a way wise, like tonality which is perceived, experiencing a wise way, then actually it would be what you call kind of something which would be more insightful. So it made the difference like it equates a lot neutrality with equanimity. And so it basically says you can have an equanimity which is about I don't care it doesn't bother me who cares. But for him that's not true equanimity. And he says you can have like insightful equanimity and actually equate it often with the luminous mind. So the luminous mind doesn't mean that the mind behind

is luminous, but when it becomes the quantum Earth and insightful, it becomes luminous. And so equate that when you experience tonality, if it's insightful, actually you're going to feel this, you could say, contented clarity. So, it does more to do, in a way, the neutrality has perceived as feeling grounded, feeling stable, anyway feeling calm and clear. I love this. It's a way, I mean, it's a really fundamental practice for hacking our habits, sort of not being so controlled by automaticity. And it has so many ramifications for, you know,

our own inner-weather moment to moment. And then then of course for how we are in the world and how we're treating other people. Personally, I would also connect it into ethics. Because in a way, if you look at ethics, if you look, for example, like the five-booty's preset, the first one is, do not care. Or you could say, do not cause harm. Why do we cause harm? Generally we cause harm, unless we are kind of a serial killer, which is something else or sadistic, which is something else, but if we are ordinary person, why do we harm? Often, like you said, with your wife, it's the same. I'm pleasant, then I'm going to retaliate. Something is unpleasant,

I'm going to get rid of it, I'm going to kill it. And so in a way, I mean mosquitoes, you get the bite, you kill the mosquito immediately. So in a way, when something is unpleasant, we want to get rid of it. And so this first precept is, okay, how can I be harmless? Which would mean how can I creatively engage with unpleasant tonality, especially given by the outside? But it's the same. You experience a very unpleasant tonality and actually you go into harm yourself.

So you know, it's kind of how can I experience unpleasant tonality that it be inside or outside, in a way that I can creatively engage. And then the second one is to not steal. Okay, do not take what is not given. Why would we take something? Because he gives us pleasant feeling to it. So, I want this. I want this for myself. So in a way, if we take something which is not given to us, it's generally because of a pleasant feeling to it.

And then we could question, okay, this thing is going to give me pleasant feeling to know but for how long? This is interesting. We think, oh, if we get this, then I'll be happy. Then I'm pleasant feeling to know. And then you steal it or you take advantage of somebody to get it, but how long does it last?

You know, there's nothing. I mean, that's what the Buddha said. Nothing can give you permanent satisfaction, but we could learn to be contented, contented possibly by a more simple life, so that we don't feel that we have to acquire things all the time, so that we have to acquire things all the time. So that we have to ratchet up the pleasant feeling tone. I think that's a thing about that one. Then you have the third one to be careful with our sexuality.

And it's the same. Often, with sexual pleasure, you kind of get lost in your own pleasure and don't think about the other person and might sometimes harm them. So can you think about your own pleasure without being lost in it, without taking advantage, but also thinking about the other person pleasure and also accepting it will not last. It will not last. Then you have lying. Lying is interesting. Why would we lie? Either you lie because of the unpleasant feeling tone. I can think about children.

They break something. You have the violence broken and they say, I did not do it. I did not do it. So you have an unpleasant feeling tone. Then you try to lie so that it goes, or you lie because it's pleasant. Some people like to lie because it gives us a pleasant personality. Oh, I did it. I did that when they're not, not of it. It's interesting lying. What's behind it? Sometimes it's because it's unpleasant, sometimes because it's pleasant for the person to long.

And then the fifth one, alcohol and drugs. Again, what do we take this thing? Often because it's pleasant, but a lot of the time, because we have unpleasant feeling too. Recently I read about a young woman who fell in love with alcohol when she was 15. A first glass of strong liquor gave her this amazing tonality. She felt lively, intelligent, fun when before, she was very shy and anxious. As though she fell in love, she said with alcohol. And then she drank and drank and drank,

but still had her life. And then age 30, she had to stop because she used to have terrible blackouts. But she said, she still fell in love in the same fact. She had such pleasant feeling to not the beginning. And she was kind of, we know we've emptying the same thing. But why? Because it replaced unpleasant tonality.

Or because the thing gives you pleasant tonality, but then it could be harmful to others. In a way, most of the time, we are good decent human beings. But then time to time, we're not. And then that's what I'm interested in. Why? What happened? And a lot of the time it has to do with tonality. Let me ask you a question that may seem like a non-sequitur, it may also seem like a gigantic question, but I'm curious to hear you talk about a question I've heard you pose publicly before, which is what is love? What is love? That's so interesting. What is love? Because that's one level love is a pleasant tonality. And actually the Buddha said pleasant tonality is very important. Especially if it's insightful and wise and compassionate. And so what

is interesting again with love, I think love is an important quality and it's so vital to love that it be your partner, your children, animals, the earth, the planet, people, because it gives us very healing tonality. But then the question is, what do we grasp at when we love? Do we grasp at the pleasant tonality we get when we are next to the person? So then we want to be with the person all the time because we think they give us a pleasant tonality. Or do we grasp at the idea of love? And actually we grasp here what I'm looking at is we grasp at the pleasant tonality, we're supposed to have with this person and again

because we think we need to have it all the time. But in a way, you cannot have the same pleasant tonality with a person all the time. Time to time you'll be on a bad mood, you'll be stressed, you'll have difficulty. So then, if you are stressed with difficulty, then you're not going to experience the same pleasant feeling told, which you equate with love. So then, when you don't have that pleasant feeling told, don't it mean you don't love the person, or that they don't love you? Or is it that the way love is something which is not just based on tonality here, but is

something we cultivate together. And so in a way to be love is like two parallel lines. You have to cultivate outside of the line with other friends and different things like that and you have to cultivate inside the line. So it's not just a feeling. Because often weate if I feel this feeling I love the person. And often I feel if I feel of intense pleasant feeling tone I love this person. Or if I feel a pleasant feeling tone this person loves me enough. That's an interesting one too. And then in a way no it is warm feeling, but it's kind of complex, it's appreciating,

sharing, growing together. There's so many things in love, so many things in it. But one thing which is also important with love is that we love each other. the most important we love is that we love each other. In a way, if we don't love each other, this is what is problematic. So in a way, you start with yourself. If you don't love yourself, you start with an unpleasant feeling tone. But if you love yourself,

then it's very easy to have a pleasant feeling tone because you are with yourself. And then in a way, loving someone else is an addition to that. And then you can bring more people in your law. In this beautiful kind of love, pleasant feeling to which is based on calm, clarity, friendliness, appreciation. Still working on it. Let me ask you one other question, and I think this is related. Marissa, the producer who helped prepare me to do this interview,

identified a nice poem that you wrote called the little lazy guide to awakening. And the first lines are Enlightenment, question mark. The light is already on. What do you mean by that? Well, I think this is something in the school I was trained on, which is a Zen school, a Sun school in Korea. And for them, we are already enlightened. We are already awakened.

And I think what it means, in our creative potential, is always there. Our creative potential for wisdom, for compassion, for love, for understanding, is always there. We have it. We have that possibility. At the same time, it's not permanent in the fact that it will always manifest. So that, yeah, an item, awakening, wisdom, compassion is possible any moment. But at the same time, over time, we have built up a lot of automatic reaction. I think actually our automatic reaction was more in childhood in order to protect ourselves, and also some influence from society, from culture. I think that when we become adult, in a way to see,

why do I need to do this? why do I need to do this? Oh, why do I need to do that? And so personally, I see the meditation, the practice of meditation, the practice of anchoring, of looking deeply, as in a way the dissolving of those harmful survival mechanisms, those habits, mental habits, physical habits, relationship habits, emotional habits, who kind of know it limit us. And then in a way to slowly, slowly disobey those so that we can come back to our creative functioning. And in a way, the function is there. We are this creative functioning organism.

But over time, there have been a lot of kind of a little fixed habits. And then it's kind of really practicing to dissolve this habit so that our creative potential can emerge, can manifest. And one way to really experience is doing what I call meditative listening. So you listen to somebody. And generally, how do we listen? Often, we wait for the person to stop so we can say something much more interesting. Or we look in the right direction, but we don't hear them. So when they say, what do you think we have no idea what they said? Or we over in the right direction, but we don't hear them. So when they say, what do you think?

We have no idea what they said. Or we overreact and amplify, which is not helpful. But if we really listen to the person, really listen to what they say, totally 100%. Then at the moment they stop and they turn to us, then a lot of the time, we say something so creative, so clear, so compassionate, so relevant, we've never thought before.

So where does this come from? He comes from meeting another person with that calmness, that clarity, that friendliness, that stability, that balance, and then within us, lots of creativity can come in. This seems like the work of a lifetime, both this getting out of your own way. this getting out of your own way. And I hear a paradox in there of, on the one hand, the capacity, the light is already on always,

so that's there and we can access it in any moment, using perhaps mindfulness of Vedina or other Buddhist techniques or other techniques that are even not Buddhist, and we can get better at the skill of accessing it in any moment. Exactly. I think you totally get it. That in a way, at one level, it's what we call the sudden and gradual. In the sound practice, you have in a way the idea of sudden awakening, which is always a possibility, and at the same time of gradual practice, because

the certain awakening is not immediately going to stop the habits. So at time, you have really this moment, great wisdom, great compassion, and then at the same time, you have to work on yourself, you have to cultivate it. So in a way, we can a little bit at the crossroad or what I would call the depth dimension and then the width dimension. Say that again, the depth dimension. So the depth dimension, so in a way, the depth dimension, I would say, is generally a little bit limited in terms of conditions.

So you know, when you might practice, so you might reflect, and it's kind of like the conditional little limited, like on retreat, for example, on a day of practice when you meditate, and then you silence, you focus, and so in with the conditional limited, and then you can go into the depths of the practice. But at the same time, you have to cultivate in the width of the practice, which is your daily

life, your relationship, the way you use resources, the way you treat people in your office, etc., etc. So it seems to me we always had that crossroad of the depth dimension, the sometimes people think, oh, just a depth, just a depth. I want to have amazing meditation experiences, but then those are deal with the habits. So you need the depth with the width. And so I think we are the crossroad in that level, in our practice at any given moment.

I think that is a great and inspiring place to leave it. This has been to no surprise at all to me an incredibly rewarding chat and I really appreciate your time. Thank you very much. A pleasure to discuss with you. Thank you. Thanks again to Martin. Great to see her. This show is made by Samuel Johns, DJ Cashmere, Kim Baikama, Maria Wartell, and Jen Poehant with Audio Engineering from Ultraviolet Audio. We also got special help on this episode from Donnell Wetterburn. Thank you, Donnell. As always, a big shout out to my ABC News comrades where I'm Kessler and Josh Kohan. We'll see you all on Friday for a bonus. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪

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