Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Joseph Goldstein On: Impermanence, Impersonality, And How To Use Mindfulness To Be More Creative

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

One of my favorite episodes that we’ve recorded in a long while.Joseph Goldstein is a cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, both in Barre, Massachusetts. He is the author of Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening, A Heart Full of Peace, One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism, Insight Meditation and The Experience of Insight: A Simple and Direct Guide to Buddhist Meditation. Joseph has studied and practiced meditation since 1967 under the guidance of eminent teachers from India, Burma, and Tibet and he leads Insight Meditation retreats around the world.This year, IMS printed a collection of Joseph’s poetry, titled Dreamscapes of the Mind: Poems and Reflections. The book includes 21 poems and almost a dozen short verses.We have made copies available for a suggested donation of $12 to support IMS’s Retreat Center scholarship fund (shipping to U.S. addresses only).For a copy of Joseph’s book, visit give.dharma.org/JGpoetry In this episode we talk about:Impermanence, impersonality, and the vast spaciousness of the mindMortality How we can use mindfulness to be more creativeJoseph reads one of his favorite poems (and a couple others)Thoughts on how to approach deathWhat Joseph means by dreamscape of the mindDeep Dharma topics like Nirvana, rebirth, taking refuge and moreRelated Episodes:Joseph Goldstein + Mark Epstein On: How To Handle Unwanted Experiences, How Not To Waste Your Suffering & The Overlap Between Buddhism + TherapyI Just Did A 10-Day Silent Meditation Retreat With Joseph Goldstein. Here’s What I LearnedDr. Mark Epstein On: How To Transform Your Neuroses Into “Little Shmoos”Nirvana | Joseph GoldsteinSign up for Dan’s newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: https://meditatehappier.com/podcast/tph/joseph-goldstein-dreamscapesAdditional Resources:For a copy of Joseph’s book, visit give.dharma.org/JGpoetry See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How we doing? This truly is one of my favorite episodes that we've recorded in a long while. A few years ago, a really interesting thing happened to my great friend, the meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein. At age 75, seemingly out of nowhere, he started writing poetry. As he says, a channel opened up for him.

Just to say right here at the jump, if you're like me and you're not especially interested in poetry, don't worry. Yes, technically, this is a conversation about Joseph's poems. He just published a slim volume of poetry. But those poems are really a way to talk about the depth of Joseph's Dharma teachings. So really, this is a conversation about impermanence, impersonality, and the vast spaciousness of the mind.

And quite practically, it's also a conversation about how to think about mortality and how we can use mindfulness to be more creative. Also, obviously, if you love poetry, which many people do, then you're probably going to love this episode with no disclaimer required. Anyway, just before we dive in here, for those of you who don't know Joseph, he is the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society and the Barry Center for Buddhist Studies, both in Barry, Massachusetts, two amazing places I highly recommend.

Joseph is also the author of several books, including Mindfulness, One Dharma, and the Experience of Insight. His new book is called Dreamscapes of the Mind. That's the poetry book. It's available through the IMS website. And I will put a link in the show notes. Joseph Goldstein coming up right after this. Before we get to the show, I just want to mention

that the Dump It Here journal that my wife and I created and that sold out double quick, it's back in stock. Just go to danharris.com and click on shop to find it or go to shop.danharris.com. It's a really cool journal. It's pretty non-dogmatic. There are some instructions at the beginning. The rest of it is an open field for your scribbling.

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Something you possess is lost or stolen, and ultimately you triumph in finding it again. Listen to Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, Joseph. Hey, Dan. Good to be here. It's always fun to see you. Okay, so you started writing poetry at the age of 75. Why? What happened? Good question. So I was in Spain at the time, just in this small town just outside of Barcelona,

and listening to the poetry of Ocean Vuong, who was a young Vietnamese poet living in the States now, poet right in and really quite brilliant. I don't know exactly what happened, but somehow just in listening to the poetry and being in a quiet space, I was on vacation then, so I was really just absorbing the poetry in the quiet, and suddenly poems started coming out.

And really what made it so meaningful at the time this was happening, I was there with two friends, Elizabeth Cotrell and Gujana Gibson. And as I was sharing what was coming out, my first attempts at poetry, they were so overwhelmingly enthusiastic that it made me take it a little more seriously

than I think I would have if I had just been by myself. You know, because they were tremendously supportive and said, you know, this is great and you should do more of it. And so that was, that was really a help at that time because, you know, I probably would have just had a lot of doubts about it and let it go without that. So that was the beginning.

I'll just share one other little story which will probably feed into the rest of our conversation somewhat. So in that very first rush, you know, of starting to write, I also was quite naive as an aspiring poet, you know, because this was not my self-image or my sense of who I was. So in that time, in the flush of that first enthusiasm, I just had the idea that whatever came out, came out perfectly first time.

You should have. And now when I look back, of course, to those very early ones, they were far from perfect. But because of the support of my friends those very early ones, they were far from perfect. But because of the support of my friends and their enthusiasm, I kept writing. And then sometime later, maybe a year later, I connected with another friend who's quite a well-known and superb haiku poet,

Sylvia Forbes Ryan. And I started sharing my poems with her for some critical feedback, which was really helpful, you know, just to get some input into the craft of writing. And she said something which had a tremendous impact on May Anne, which over these last five years, I've really taken to heart in seeing the importance of it. It's a bit of a paraphrase of what she said, but she said, a major part of the art of writing poetry is revision. That really landed, as opposed to my first naive

assumption that it came out perfectly first time. And that has proved so much the case. And for me, very much part of the joy of the creative process, the revision just allows for the exploration of greater subtlety, a form of style, of content. So that has really incorporated that understanding into the writing since then. So those were kind of the beginning formative aspects

of work again, this whole second career, even though it's not actually quite a career. Not yet. Not yet. Your point about revision or rewriting lands for me as somebody who's written a couple of books and is attempting to write a third. And there's often a lot of gold in the initial inspiration,

but it may be covered in lots of mud. It reminds me of, you know, I've done so many retreats at IMS and you're not supposed to do this, but I have a journal there in case I have, you know, an inspiration for something I'm writing on. And I often think when I get out of retreat that this journal contains the best writing I've

ever done. And then sometimes it's pretty good and then sometimes it's like the scrawling of the Unibomber. And so I think learning to both trust and mistrust inspiration, the original birth of inspiration, is a big part of writing. Yeah, definitely, definitely. And also something I've been even struggling with recently and also in writing some of my Dormer books, it also is important to know when to stop revising.

Yes, yes. Because it could be an endless process. Always the last little tweak of this or that. Yeah, but it is really an important part of it all. So you actually wrote a poem about the beginning of your poetry career such as it is, and that poem is called The Muse. Could you read that to us and then maybe we'll talk about it on the back end?

Okay. the muse. Something happened in my 75th year. A channel opened to oceans of space where words sparkle in their sparse delight, calling, calling, calling. And that really does describe for me the beauty of this whole process, because it did feel like a channel open to space in which the words emerged sparkly. So it was just a beautiful experience of that and paying attention to that.

I always hesitate to use this phrase in a Buddhist context. Can you put some more meat on the bone in terms of when you say a channel opened to space, what does that mean specifically? Well, I mean we could get a sense of that and maybe some of the images, the poem, in terms of words sparkling in this, sparse the light. When we go out at night and look up at the night sky, you know, and I think for many people there is a sense or a kind of awe, you know, in feeling the immensity, the immensity of this face. And then with the stars sparkling. And

that's how it felt as these poems were coming. It's like my mind opened to that quality of, I'm a little hesitant to use the word boundless but it felt a little like that the mind opened to this kind of boundless space like awareness you know and in that awareness you know the word started coming and it was really beautiful and it And it was kind of the same feeling as going out at night or sleeping under the stars, you know, where we just opened to something so much bigger than ourselves. So that's really what the feeling was like. Well, it seems like there's an overlap between the experience of creativity or the muse visiting

and the experience of meditation in that both are these receptive modes. I think a big mistake people make in both creativity and meditation, and I say this as somebody who's made this mistake himself daily for 53 years, is to try to force it, to try to lean in, grit your teeth, militaristically try to get somewhere. But in creativity and meditation, and I'm curious if you think I'm onto something here, it really is a leaning back,

a receptivity where the magic happens. Yeah, I definitely think you're onto something, Dan. Because I think both in meditation and in the creative process, in this case, poetry, it's really a process of opening to our intuitions. You know, so I see it, I see both as a very intuitive process. And so trying to force anything is counterproductive. You know, because that really closes off that whole level of sensitivity to the intuitions

that may be arising or that we're sensitive to. So I think that's really important, the understanding and the exploration and the deepening appreciation of the intuitive quality, you could say of the heart, of the mind, because often we live so much in the conceptual world, and some of the poems are about that. So we're lost in our head a lot, we're lost in our thoughts a lot, we solidify things a lot. Whereas the receptive space, just as you say, it's settling back, it's opening to what emerges by itself, which is a very intuitive process. And for me, the beauty or the overlap between

And for me, the beauty or the overlap between meditation and writing is actually paying attention to those moments rather than overriding them. You know, it's like seeing myself in the busyness of the day, in the busyness of our daily lives. We don't often give ourselves the space just to hear that more intuitive level of our experience. And so this is where I think for me the poetry and the writing and Dharma practice really share a, say, a basic ground, you know, stillness of silence, of intuition. Do you think of art and creativity as, you know, we've talked about the overlap with the Dharma, but do you see art and creativity as part and parcel of the Dharma,

as a form of Dharma practice? I do. So I would say that it's the creative process rather than the output that is really an overlap. Because one could be in meditation for years and be in this space of stillness and silence and intuition and never write a poem. But in meditation, there is this sense of creativity in the sense of exploring our experience beneath the level of our conceptual framework. So I'll just give you a couple of examples, which I think are quite common for people,

for example, who have been on retreat. I know this happened to be many, many times, both from the early years up until now. When we're on retreat, as people know, we've been on one, everything gets slowed down. Our minds eventually get a little quieter. We're more open to sense impressions.

And so often on retreat, both externally, just seeing things in a whole new way. You know, suddenly seeing a tree tree kind of not as a tree, as color and form and the light going through the leaves and the shadows, you know, and almost feeling the movement of the branches, feeling it in one's own body. So there's a intimacy, you know, with our experience. So that has to do with the external sense impressions in the meditation when we go inward. In a way it's the same process because we're going from kind of a fixed notion of ourselves, of our bodies, being somewhat fixed or solid, and we're not often exploring kind of the fluid,

energetic nature of it all. So as meditation proceeds, commonly the common experience as it unfolds is we begin to experience the body as an energy field, not as my body being something solid. So that's a kind of new creative understanding of what the body is. And the same thing with emotions.

For the most part, we're so lost in the story of the emotion or the story that's creating it. And yet in meditation, we're less interested in the story and in that creative exploration of the energy of the emotion. You know, and that's a whole other level. So there's that kind of creative exploration that happens quite naturally in meditation. And I think it comes out of that same sensitivity to our experience that also inspires, for some, inspires the writing of poetry. Open to a different level of things. So are you saying that we could, because I think a lot of people, I know a lot of people,

here's another word that is tricky in a Buddhist context, but a lot of people want to be creative. That is a quality of mind that many of us are hoping to cultivate. And so are you saying that we could use meditation as a way to boost our creativity? Absolutely. Because even before the poetry, you know, when I was writing some Dharma books, I think that the creativity, at least in my experience, really comes out of the space of silence of heart and mind. If we're just filled with a lot of chatter, you know, or restlessness or agitation, as I say, at least in my experience, the muse does not visit. You know, my mind is too engaged.

But when I'm quiet, when I just have some quiet space and my mind stills, it's that creative intuition that happens by itself. It doesn't take effort. It just arises and we're in the space to pay attention to the fact that it has arisen. Because I think many people, just in the course of their lives, many people have intuitions about things or, you know, sudden inspirations from a new perception. But so often with we're so busy and rushing, we just override it. And we don't let it flower. The qualities in meditation, the silence, the stillness, the receptivity, the intimacy

with what's arising, it is an incredibly beautiful space. Another example is in a way it's more prosaic rather than a poetic example. But when I was writing my book Mindfulness, you know that big book, I'd be writing and very often I would just get stuck. I didn't know where the next paragraph should go, something like that. And whenever I felt stuck in the writing, I would go sit. I would just meditate and I would get into a meditative space. And it was so amazing to me that as soon as I quieted down and entered into that meditative space,

it became so clear what the next step in the writing should be. So I saw this very intimate connection between silence, silence of the heart, and creativity. It felt to me like that's the space out of which creativity expresses itself. And that's what was so inspiring to me like that's the space out of which creativity expresses itself. And that's what was so inspiring to me is to see this overlapping of the meditation experience and the creative experience, but they just share so much and, and then always support each other.

I mean, this seems like advice that anybody could operationalize in their life. Just, you know, when you feel stuck, whether it's on a creative endeavor or how to handle a difficult conversation or any big decision you got to make. Sit for a minute. Well, maybe more than a minute. Yeah, I use the phrase poetically. Something will come. It may not be the dish you ordered,

but something may come. Yes, absolutely. And it does come really intuitively. It doesn't so much come because we're trying to logically think it out. So it's a different process that's happening. Just staying with this overlap between the Dharma and creativity,

it's interesting, the way you're describing, and this is not uncommon, this is the way people talk about creativity, the muse visiting or a channel opening and words coming, sparkling like stars, it's all impersonal. You know, a channel has opened, an idea has come to people. You hear songwriters talk about this.

Like, they woke up with the idea, came to them in a dream. We can't claim any ownership of this, which of course is a central component of the Dharma, where this self that we walk around, we feel like we're this self, but if we examine it, there's not much there. Yeah, no, that's exactly my experience of things. And that's what makes it so delightful. It's really a joyful experience,

both in meditation and in writing, or any other, any other aspect of our lives in which we allow these intuitive understandings to emerge. Does no clinging arise for you? Because I might get great ideas or once in a decade, I'll get a great idea. But I feel after the initial burst of creativity, I pretty quickly claim it as my own.

Well, practice then. Well, you know, that is really not a problem if you just see that pattern in the mind as another impersonal pattern. So that's all. You just say, oh, look at the mind doing that. That's just another star sparkling in the sky. So you're okay.

That is the subtext to every question I ask you, am I okay? So let's do some more poems. Would you be up for reading A Distant Call? So just to let people know, this is a fairly new experience for me in reading my own poetry. Why at first, when I was first playing with all of this, and people would ask, oh, I'd like to hear it.

I would ask somebody else to read it. I was kind of too embarrassed. I've gotten over that part, but it's still a little bit of a new experience for me. Okay. A distant call. One night, alone in bed, I heard the whispered call of death. Distant enough for now, but still. Regrets and repose embraced as my heart quickened in the dark.

Okay. So having read this book several times, death comes up over and over. So maybe say a little bit about why you think that is. Well, probably because we're all going to die. And it's not something that we necessarily think about a lot, or really take in, or really understand that it's completely natural. The Buddha highlighted this so explicitly, whatever has the nature to arise will also pass away. And he talked a lot about reflecting on death.

So this particular poem arose, it was a particular moment that I think, as I say, one night alone in bed. I think that, you know, that space when we're alone at night, maybe lying down. And in some way, I think it's not uncommon, an uncommon experience for something that's loose in our minds and our hearts.

And we just, in a way, free to associate or just new things are coming up that normally are covered in the busyness of our lives. So I was lying there and for whatever reason kind of the thought of death arose, but it wasn't an intellectual thing at that point. It was almost like feeling feeling the immediacy of it, not in the sense that I thought it was going to happen in that moment, but

it's almost as if in some way my heart, my mind, changed a verse to the moment of death. So the feeling, the feeling, oh yeah, death is going to happen. That became a very visceral experience for me in those moments. And then what was interesting to me, as I was watching all of this and feeling it, I could see different regrets about my life arise. The ability to find some repose with all that arose. That's why regrets and repose embraced. I could see all of that and feel all of that in that moment.

As my heart quickened in the dark, it was that quickening from a connection to the experience of dying, even though it was, you know, at that point not actually happening, but it felt very real. This is a good example of what I meant by, when I said, very often just in the course of our lives,

we have different feelings or intuitions like this, but don't necessarily really pay attention to them and let them flower. So it was that experience, but it was in a space where I could just be with it, not override it, not be rushing on to the next thing, and really see what came out of being in that space. And that's what was beautiful about it for me.

So in some ways it seems like taking on, here's another tricky word in a Buddhist context, but taking on the identity of poet allowed you to pay attention to moments that even with decades of meditation under your belt, you might have bustled past. Okay, so this is an interesting point here. So given where I was,

it does point to a slight difference. And we talked about the overlap of poetry and meditation, but also a slight difference. And we talked about the overlap of poetry and meditation, but also a slight difference. So in that kind of poetic mind space, it was really paying attention to and feeling into what was arising. In a more classical, mindful, meditative space, I might have just noted it, you know, oh, thinking or feeling, and seeing how those just arose and passed away.

So what we do with it may depend on whether we're in a kind of formal meditative mode or a more poetic mode. Even though the underlying space of awareness is the same, how we're responding to that intuition or that perception may vary a bit. And this was definitely in my more poetic mode. You have to let it, to really let it flower. Okay, but in that poetic mode, you know, to let it, to really let it flower. OK, but in that poetic mode, is there also some flavor of clinging or striving? Because, OK, I'm going to memorialize this. I'm going to write this down.

That came later, maybe the next morning. In the moment, it was just the sensitivity to the experience. I didn't have any thought. Oh, this is going to be a poem. It was just a kind of somewhat unique new experience, because I was in that space and just feeling into it and letting it unfold. And there was great beauty to it and letting it unfold. And there was great beauty to it. But I wasn't thinking about, oh, this will be a poem.

It was like the next day or whenever. And then I reflected back on what had happened. So then it began to emerge. But without that sensitivity to the experience, nothing would have emerged in terms of creatively. So I want to make sure I'm understanding your point on this, on the difference between the poetic mind state and the mindful or classical meditative mindset. And you keep using this term sensitivity to experience. So if this experience, this kind of visceral sense of the reality of your own finitude,

if you had been in a classic or classical meditative state, you might have noted thinking, physical sensations, let it come and go and you're onto the next thing. In a poetic mind state, you're doing what instead? Okay, I'll just add one more thing to the meditative space, element of unfolding insight is seeing the impermanence of everything. And so our mind is kind of on that channel of seeing impermanence, of seeing things just arise and pass away. That's not, in my experience, that's not what's happening when I'm in a more poetic mind space where there's that same connection but it's not about seeing the impermanence. It's about letting the whole experience, I keep using the word to flower, to unfold. So the aim is not to just be seeing the momentariness

of things, it's letting whatever that feeling state or the emotion involved to really let it blossom. So we're feeling it fully. So at least for me, that's a slightly different intention. Did that help? I need to sit with that for a while. But let me go back to the poem, A Distant Call.

Your heart quickened. Do I take that to mean that in this moment of really taking in on a molecular level that you're gonna die, that it was scary for you, or just that it was an experience that was powerful that caused the heart rate to elevate? I think the latter. I don't remember particularly

that there was fear in that moment, but kind of a certain level of intensity. You know, not overwhelming. That's why I chose the word quickening. It wasn't disturbing, but I noticed, oh, yeah, this is something important. Or, you know, there was an impact from that experience. Yeah, and that's really what I meant by that.

It was not just in the same flow of every other experience. Yeah, and that's really what I meant by that. It was not just in the same flow of every other experience. And I think that was so because of the power of reflecting on death with that kind of visceral immediacy. Oh yes, this is going to happen to me. You know, there's something powerful about that, about that reflection. And it can call up a lot of different things. And for different people, it probably will.

You know, for some people, it might call up fear or might call up. I know many different kinds of emotions. Or maybe it calls up really a state of peace. And that's why I kind of like that juxtaposition of regret and repose in Britsing, because it had that quality of holding both. Do you think it's one of the fruits of the practice for you that this visceral experience of mortality did not call up overwhelming fear?

Um, I hope so. So that's probably part of it, but part of it also might be that I really didn't think it was happening right then. That's why I called it a distant call. happening right then. That's why I called it a distant call. You know, it's like, yeah, it was like a whisper, is that what it's just like? I heard the whispered call of death. So I think that mitigated whatever fear there may be there, it was not manifesting, it didn't call that up.

Because I didn't feel like I was on the precipice. And we'll have to just wait and see whether the meditation actually has borne that fruit. I'll let you know from the next side. May that be many years from now. Coming up, Joseph is going to read us some of his short poems. He's also going to talk about something that he says might get him in trouble with his

meditation colleagues. And then we're going to talk about how to approach death. Being an actual royal is never about finding your happy ending. But the worst part is, if they step out of line or fall in love with the wrong person, it changes the course of history. I'm Arisha Skidmore Williams. And I'm Brooke Zephrin. We've been telling the stories of the rich and famous on the hit wonder show, Even the Rich, and talking about the latest celebrity news on Rich and Daily. We're going all over the world on our new show, Even the Royals. We'll be diving head first into the lives

of the world's kings, queens, and all the wannabes in their orbit throughout history. Think succession meets the crown meets real life. We're going to pull back the gilded curtain and show how royal status might be bright and shiny, but it comes at the expense of, well, everything else, like your freedom, your privacy, and sometimes even your head.

Follow Even The Royals on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Even The Royals early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. At 24, I lost my narrative, or rather it was stolen from me. And the Monica Lewinsky that my friends and family knew was usurped by false narratives, callous jokes, and politics. I would define reclaiming as to take back what was yours.

Something you possess is lost or stolen, and ultimately you triumph in finding it again. So I think listeners can expect me to be chatting with folks, both recognizable and unrecognizable names, about the way that people have navigated roads to triumph. My hope is that people will finish an episode of Reclaiming and feel like they filled their tank up. They connected with the people that I'm talking to and leave with maybe some nuggets that help them feel a little more hopeful.

Follow Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Reclaiming early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. The Happier Meditation app has a new course. It's called Even Now Love, a prescription for connection. It is taught by Joseph Goldstein and others, and it invites you to pause, breathe, and choose love, even in life's messiest moments. With tools to strengthen connection,

rethink relationships as a lab for love, and build self-compassion, it's a useful way to approach the new year with clarity and care. You can download the Happier Meditation app and check out Even Now Love today. Let's do another poem, Lazy Day at 76. Yeah. I have many favorites, but this is important,

because the experience was so, well, maybe the poem will express the experience hopefully. Lazy Day at 76. Morning coffee and a first glimpse into the unknown day. Waiting for that pulse of life to push through the pale joy of sitting, doing nothing. Going for a walk is almost too much on this day of questionable ease. Is it simply resting up to save the world or the faint glimmer of decline? I'll decide tomorrow if I awaken in the morning light.

Even admitting I can just, it brings me back to that morning. Yeah, I had the morning coffee, I was just sitting on my porch and just didn't want to move. I was just there. There was no impulse to engage with the day. And I say the pale joy of sitting doing nothing, it wasn't exuberant, it wasn't exciting, it was just, oh, I'm just sitting. I feel like I could just sit there forever.

And then kind of the reflection, you know, what does this mean? Is it just resting up, you resting up to go out and save the world? Or the faint limer of decline when I won't be able to get up? So this is kind of what I mean. This for me was an example of the beauty of poetry and writing and being in that space. So I could have had that same experience and really not appreciated it or not seeing the nuances of it. Yeah, I'm feeling a little tired, I'll just sit here. We're just kind of bored. But when we're being sensitive to the whole experience,

it's very rich. Oh, this is an interesting experience. Just sitting quietly, doing nothing, not wanting to do anything. Well, what's that? And so that's kind of the exploration that I think that comes when we don't simply just don't pass over what could be a very common experience.

And so here's where I see the potential of poetry expressing and also revealing a great beauty in very ordinary things, in very ordinary experiences. But we have to drop beneath the level of our usual mode of perception. It's like, yeah, it's just dropping into a more sensitized space.

I think this is what I was driving at before when I was saying that, you know, you had been cultivating the capacity to wake up since your early 20s in meditation. And it, from what I can tell, is reasonably finely honed. And then at age 75, you start writing poetry and there's a new level that opens up to you of the savoring of the moment. I think, am I pointing in the right direction

as I say all of these words? Well, you just hit upon a key point, which is, and I might get into trouble with some of my meditative colleagues for what I'm about to say, but I don't see meditation, I would not use the word savoring the moment in meditation. It's aware of the moment, but it's more, it's more impersonal. The impersonality of it really stands up, which of course is a

profound realization in itself from a meditative perspective. The savoring of these experiences for me is the flavor of poetry. You know, where it's the same experience but we're relating to it in a somewhat different way. We're really letting it emerge, you know, in its fullness and with a certain quality of reflecting or appreciating that moment. So I see in this sense kind of the creative process. It doesn't have to be, of course, poetry. It could be writing, music, or there are a lot of creative endeavors.

But I just see it as being a source of great beauty in our lives that we normally overlook. So to me, it's a doorway to that. And that's a beautiful thing in one's life. And, you know, just in thinking about seeding and everything we're talking about, one artist came to mind very, very vividly in terms of the sensitivity that opened to a whole new way of seeing, you know, and I was thinking of Van Goa, you know, and the starry night. You know, and I was thinking of Van Gogh, you know, and the starry night.

His vision, his experience of the night was so spectacular. You know, and it just illustrates beautifully the incredible sensitivity, you know, just to new ways of seeing things, of perceiving things things or expressing things. And I think that's what's so, I was going to say, seductive, but I don't mean that in a bad way, seductive about art. And art meaning all creative expression.

It just opens us to a new world of seeing things or feeling things in a new way. And while there is an overlap with the meditative lens on reality, there are some meaningful distinctions that might come down to this word savoring. Yeah, I think that's how I mean you said that word really struck a chord in me as being a good indication maybe of the difference. But not, it doesn't imply that there's a difference in exploring new realms. Because in meditation, we also go through a process. But it's, I would say it's more, maybe we'll call it more impersonal or,

but, or more scientific maybe, you know. It's that exploration of all of our experience on levels underneath our usual way of perceiving the world. I was just thinking about this in terms of dharma practice and meditation and understanding the nature of reality. I was recently listening to a book. It was the history of quantum mechanics. And I'm not a scientist. I'm not actually very science-minded,

but I found it fascinating because it was just the exploration of an unbelievably, radically new understanding of the nature of things. We think we understand the world. Classical science understands it kind of in the way we normally do. Quantum physics, quantum reality, the very little I understand it and know about it is mind-blowing. Things are not what they seem to be on that level. So that's more, I think of that meditative exploration. So it can equally open us to whole new levels

of perception and understanding, but it's in a different way. I love that. Let's do some more poetry. The next one on my list here, although you could always change my list, is Rebirth. Yes, so this one is interesting because it's also about death,

but from a very different perspective than a distant cult. So, Rebirth. The birth canal of death propels us forward. Is it love that beckons, or the grappling hook of hope, pulling, pulling towards the first crying breath? So just a little background to it. This whole image came to me. I was teaching a retreat, and there was one meditator, really middle-aged,

who was in the last stages of cancer and was dying. You know, she was in that process. And when we were talking, we were talking a lot about her experience and what she was going through and how she was feeling. And then from the Buddhist, based on the Buddhist cosmology, which does not believe that death is the end of things, and that death comes rebirth,

I began to, it was almost a visualization, but not exactly, but as an image of death being the birth canal for reversing. So instead of the dying process kind of leading us to an end, it's actually leading us to a beginning. And then I started reflecting, okay, we're in the birth canal of death, propelling us forward, and then what is it that's propelled? So that's the question that came to mind, what's the force that's propelling? And so is it love that's propelling us forward? Or is it the grappling hook of hope?

Hope could be desire for something, or different energies could be propelling us forward in this birth canal of death. But for me personally, and I'm not sure, but I think it may have helped reframe the whole experience for this person a little bit anyway. Instead of it being a potentially fearful experience, the dying process, you know, is there a way of understanding it as really a process of a new beginning, you know, that's

leading us onward to a new beginning. I think if we were able to have that frame, it would change perhaps how we feel about the whole process. From a classical Buddhist standpoint though, isn't what keeps us on the wheel of rebirth, of the cycle of dying and being standpoint though isn't what keeps us on the wheel of rebirth of the cycle of dying and being reborn isn't what keeps us on that wheel thirst or clinging or desire? Yes. So ultimately in the Theravada classical teaching, early Buddhism, that's really giving an emphasis to that. But for example, in some of the Mahayana and Tibetan traditions, they acknowledge that as being, you know, the force of craving is the cause of rebirth. however with a certain level of meditative accomplishment, compassion could be the force that's driving it.

And these great masters, as they describe it, come back to birth again and again out of compassion for the suffering of beings and with the intent to serve, to be of benefit. So it's depending on the Buddhist tradition, right, it'll have one predominant flavor or another. And so we, I think it's helpful to consider both of them, just to understand both, both frameworks. So as we, each one of us, contemplate our own mortality, if we're open to the idea of reincarnation, and I don't have any evidence for it personally, but if we're open to it, can we think of it as an act of love where we would come back to be useful? where we would come back to be useful. Yeah, I think that is very much part of, for example, the Tibetan tradition.

But that also takes a lot of practice and accomplishment to be able to enter into that particular stream. I mean, this gets into rather a complex discussion of the Buddhist cosmology and all the different planes of existence and the potential for rebirth in, you know, different of these planes. So from one understanding, and this is what the historical Buddha taught, that the real freedom is escaping from the whole cycle of rebirth. It's helpful, I think, to have some kind of understanding of the various teachings in different traditions

for people interested in this, and people, you know, have some, at least, openness to the idea of rebirth, which, in my mind, is really central to the Buddhist teaching. So I don't see this as a cultural phenomena, you know, of ancient India, I see it as quite integral to everything the Buddha taught. And that's true in all the Buddhist traditions. So if we're somewhat at least open to the possibility of it, then it's an interesting exploration to see, yeah, what's motivating us, what's really within our potential, what's...

There's a lot, it's just a very rich field to explore. I just wanted to put out that there's a wide range of approaches to this. Yeah, I mean, as sometimes happens, I'm actually asking the question on a much dumber level than you're answering it. And what I just meant is that whatever your view on the competing schools of Buddhist metaphysics

or what it takes to attain X or Y, we're all gonna die. And most of us listening, we're not meditative adepts. And I just think it's an interesting reframe right back to this middle-aged person who was in the throes of late stage cancer to think about approaching death from the standpoint of love, meaning I don't know what's gonna happen on the other side,

but I go into this with a determination that if I do come back in some version, my job is to be useful. Yeah, no, I think that kind of aspiration is worth cultivating. I mean, that's a beautiful aspiration. It's a beautiful aspiration, and I think it's a, well, from speaking personally, it seems like a beautiful aspiration. It's a beautiful aspiration. And I think it's a, well, from speaking personally,

it seems like a comforting aspiration because when I contemplate death, it does provoke a lot of fear. I think I'm not alone in this. And so what's the opposite of fear? I think it's love. Yes. And I think that really a valuable way

of thinking of it and experiencing it. And there is a very strong case to be made, which we won't do this evening, because it could be another event for the hardcore. There can be a very strong case for the teaching of liberating this whole process, this mind-bodied process, from the endless cycle of rebirths. So I actually don't want to privilege one or the other. There are just two different perspectives that are expressed in different Buddhist traditions, and for myself personally, I find them equally compelling.

This from the guy who wrote a book called One Dharma. So yeah, I can see how you hold that position. Coming up, Joseph reads some more poems and we talk about topics like Nirvana or Ivana, rebirth, taking refuge, and more. -♪ Hey, everyone. It's your girl Kiki Palmer. Did you know I host a podcast called Baby?

This is Kiki Palmer, and you're not going to believe the conversations I've had. Like, is OnlyFans only bad? How has dating changed in the digital age? What's the deal with Disney adults? I've talked to John Stamos, the VP, Kamala Harris, to Jordan Peele, Raven Simone, and yes, the one and only Jamila Jamil.

And just wait until you hear our conversation. We talk Twitter drama, bad dates, and then some. How the hell do you actually get sexy? Like, what the hell does that mean? Like, I know how to be funny. I know how to be like, you know what I'm saying? Like I don't really know how to be like, I'm not robbing fucking Givens.

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Follow baby this is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Let's see if we can sneak in a few more poems here. How about Ode to Nonbeing? Okay, so this is the one that really takes a deep dive.

I'm not actually sure how successful this poem is. This is the one that is very meaningful to me, but I'm not quite sure if it works as a poem. So that's a disclaimer. Okay. Ode to nonbeing. I just need to explain the title a bit. It came from a book of the teachings of Chuang Tzu as translated or related by Thomas Merton.

And they were all in kind of poetic form. And this was from a poem, Starlight in Search of Nonbeing. And so the whole conceit is starlight goes looking for nonbeing. And it looks and looks and looks all over the universe and can't find it. So this little line right under the title is a quote from that poem,

the last one. If now on top of this non-being is, who can comprehend it? So it's like the reality that non-being is its own reality. Okay, so that's what the poem tries to explore a little bit. What matrix keeps us wandering in the dreamscape of the mind. What if the matrix is beingness itself? Castles of sand at water's edge, where aging children play. And Shiva laughs as breaking waves turn castles into caves.

In zero all the numbers of the world are freed. Who will brave this embrace of peace, that mysterious absence, terrifying at first and then release. Well, so this harkens back for me to our many discussions, and I'll put some links in the, for podcast listeners, I'll put some links in the show notes of Nibbana or Nirvana, which is often referred to as the unconditioned, everything in our normal life is conditioned by an ocean of prior causes and conditions.

But there's the Buddhist promises that there is this unconditioned, this island, this state of non-being, the unborn. And so it seems to me that that's what you're pointing at here to the extent that I don't even understand what any of that means. Yeah, yeah. No, that's it exactly. And that's why I snuck in and again, even in reading it, I'm not sure, I'm not sure it's that clear. But in the little standard, in zero, all the numbers of the world are freed. So if we think of all experience as being the numbers of the world, in zero, they're freed. One times zero is zero, a hundred times zero is zero,

a thousand times zero is zero, you know. So zero can represent the reality of non-being. Zero is not a thing, yet it's a powerful number. We tend to have a negative take on absence, right? With zero is absence of numbers. And yet the Buddha was pointing to this unconditioned reality. It's like zero. No phenomenon is arising within it. And yet it is its own reality that can be experienced. So again, this goes into really the depths of the Buddhist teachings and

obviously very hard to extract us in a few verses, but that was my attempt at it. Well, I like it. And I think I heard, but you'll correct me, a reference to what we were talking about earlier, which is what is driving us through this round of birth and rebirth, and it seems like what you're saying is there's a reference to beingness itself is what is pushing us through this cycle of... Yes. We are very attached to beingness.

And that's why I kind of, again, I don't know how well it worked as a poem, but that's why I use the images. Castles of sand at water's edge, where aging children play. That's us, aging children playing sandcastles. And Shiva laughs. Shiva is the Hindu god of destruction. Shiva laughs as breaking waves turn castles into caves. It's like the breaking waves just destroy the sand castles. And yet we're all aging children fascinated by the sand castles.

So that's what's behind some of these images. And we're fascinated. We don't want to give up our sandcastles, even as the breaking page destroys them over and over again. Yeah, it's like that line from the Mahabharata, the Hindu classic, you know, what's the most wondrous thing in the world that we can be surrounded by aging illness and death and think it somehow doesn't apply to us. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. So there's a phrase in that poem that is the title of the book, so therefore must have some real weight and importance to you, dreamscape of the mind.

Maybe it's worth saying a few words about what you mean by that. Yeah, so this goes back a little bit. It may not be an exact analogy, but it goes back to what I was talking about with regard to our normal perception of the world and then the quantum reality, which has no bearing. I mean, it's like a totally different reality.

But our normal reality, it's like I imagine from what would be the equivalent of the quantum level of understanding, everything that's arising in our ordinary life is like a dream. There's an apparent perception of things and beings and, you know, our conventional world, but from another perspective, it's all just appearances, impersonal, impermanent, insubstantial appearances arising in the mind. It's like a raincoat, right? It has no substance. And so that's why I think of the mind as a dreamscape,

you know, where everything's arising and it appears so real, and we take it to be so real, and yet it's all so empty and insubstantial and ephemeral, and we get so caught by what we take to be so real and solid and fixed. So would a rough analogy be, you know, like this chair I'm sitting in? Feels very real to me, but ultimately it's a dream because if you take a high powered microscope to it, it's mostly empty space with spinning subatomic

particles. Yeah, exactly. So you know, there's one Tibetan teaching which, you know, you're very familiar with in talking about the reality or non-reality of the self. You know, of course, in Buddhism, so much about selflessness and non-self, and the Tibetan teacher just had a wonderful expression. He said, yes, the self is real, but it's not really real. So I think that expresses, you know, so the chair is real on its level, on the level of conventional perception and experience.

But on another level, it's not real at all. In fact, the whole idea of chair disappears. And that's what's so, for me, so completely intriguing about the meditative exploration, because we begin to experience for ourselves these different levels, you know, and we get a little somewhat unhooked from our attachment to the conventional reality.

And it doesn't mean we don't engage with it or respond appropriately. We still do all that. Yes, the self is real, but it's not really real. And the meditation really opens the possibility of our experiencing the not really real aspect of it all. Yeah, to me, it's like that T.S. Eliot line, another poet. Not as good as Joseph Goldstein, but another poet. To care and not to care.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That expresses it well. He's not bad. Oh, T.S. Eliot. All right, let's do another poem. This one's called A Fall. Okay. A Fall. Okay. A fall.

A high forest stream, a slip, a fall, a twisted knee, and summer plans asunder. Why? Because anything can happen anytime. A night awake grumbling, and in the morning peace. Why? Because anything can happen anytime opens the heart to life, to death. So this came out when I was teaching a retreat

out in New Mexico in Wilderness Ranch. Did a hike on the last day of the river, you know, walking, jumping over stones, slipped, twisted my knee, made it back, gave a talk that night. Thought I shouldn't sit cross-legged, but I did. Those were the days when I still could. At the end of the talk, I could not stand. I had to be carried back to my room, which was very embarrassing. And so that was, so all night I was grumbling because I had a lot of summer plans, teaching.

But then somewhere in the middle of the night, this phrase came to me, anything can happen anytime. And what was surprising to me about it was that instead of it calling up kind of paranoia, you know, oh my God, anything can happen anytime, you know, and create a fearful state, it actually had the opposite. By acknowledging the truth of it, yeah, anything can happen any time. As I said, it opens the heart to life, to death. It's just when we acknowledge it, when we see, yes, that's the truth of things, we just come to a place of acceptance, you know,

and it changed everything in terms of my attitude about what happened and going forward. And as you know, and many others, it's a phrase I use a lot in teaching, anything can happen anytime because it's true in life, it's true in meditation, anything can happen at any time. And it's really a question of whether we really embrace that or not, or fight against it. Like many of your phrases, that comes up in my mind not infrequently. I had an experience the other day. I haven't even told my wife about this because she would be horrified. But I was just driving along,

coming from the city up to our house, and just driving along. It was a Sunday morning, not much happening. And I look up, I think I went to press fast forward on a podcast or something. And I looked up and there was a mattress in the road that had fallen off of a truck. And I just instinctively veered around it. But if there had been somebody next to me, I would have hit them.

Because I wasn't looking at the dash long. So it all just had happened really quickly. Anything can happen at any time. Yeah. And rather than being a source of paranoia, although I mean, I'm a source of paranoia, although I mean, I'm still prone to paranoia, but for me, if I take it in, I think in the right way,

it's more like, it's vitalizing. It's, let's not take shit for granted. I mean, this is all, it may seem solid, but it's not. And it really is kind of this wisdom aspect in accepting, recognizing and accepting the truth of impermanence. You know, impermanence doesn't only happen, you know, on a macro scale. It's happening on a micro scale as well. But we even though we know that conceptually, we often on that. We haven't embraced the truth of it very often. I think we have time for one more.

How do you feel about the sages say? OK. The sages say. The sirens song, the sirens from Greek mythology, the sirens song, be more than you are, be everything you're not. The sages say, be less, not more, because all that we're not lightens the burden, the lighting without hope, our desiring hearts. I've been thinking about this a lot because I am such a product of capitalism and I'm

a businessman, I'm a, I guess, an influencer. You know, I'm constantly trying to be more, grow my business, grow my followers, all of this stuff. And I really see the suffering in that. And so I find it very interesting, this notion of being less, but I also find it terrifying from these vantage point of like paying my mortgage.

Well, this is an interesting point. So there are two aspects here. Be less, not more, because all that we're not lightens the person. That's the definition of how it's like. As one teacher said of another who was doing a really challenging project and being out in the world and doing good things.

And this other teacher said, I'm glad they're doing it. So I don't have to. It's being taken care of. So all the way not lightens the burden and delighting without hope our desire and hearts. So it's acknowledging that there are these desires in our lives for all of these things. But if we can delight in them and even doing them, engaging, but without hope,

which really means without attachment, engaging, but without hope, which really means without attachment. Then we're accomplishing the engagement with the world, but from a place of being less, not more. We're not establishing or strengthening our sense of self by what we accomplish. By being less, we're letting go of that self aggrandizement. So then we can still engage, but without attachment, without clinging. And so we're still in the space of being less, even as we're engaging and doing all the things, for example, that you're doing.

You know, so if you could be doing everything and really, really be refining the motivation, you know, is it for the aggrandizement of some self-image or is doing the very same things image, or is doing the very same things out of a feeling of service, which I think it largely is. You know, and I appreciate that about everything we're doing. So the being less really has to do with the attitude rather than the activity, because we can engage fully from a very selfless place. Hmm. And the being less is really about selflessness.

Hmm. And maybe it goes back to caring and not caring by that hack poet, T.S. Eliot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll send him this poem. Yeah.

Joseph, thank you for your poetry. Thanks for all of your work. Thanks for making time to do this tonight. Really appreciate it. This was great. And thank you. Oh, I'm sorry, Joseph. I interrupted you.

Yeah, you should be sorry because I was about to praise you. You're a great interlocutor. Is that the word? So it's always a pleasure having this conversation through the day, so thank you. Thank you, thank you, right back at you. Thanks again to Joseph, always great to have him on the show, in fact, I've had him on the show many times

and I will drop some links in the show notes to his previous appearances here. Don't forget to check out his new book, Dreamscapes of the Mind, Poems and Reflections. If you want to get a copy, you can go to the IMS website, give.dharma.org slash JG Poetry. If you don't have a pen, I put a link in the show notes. You can get it for a suggested donation of 12 bucks,

which will support IMS's Retreat Center Scholarship Fund. IMS is an incredible place. I personally give quite a bit of money to IMS and support it in any way I can because I've gotten so much out of them. So whether you're interested in the book or not, I really highly recommend you check out their offerings. And if you're so inclined and you've got some extra cash

to support them, especially the scholarship fund, which helps a lot of people access these teachings. One last thing to say about the book, they only can ship to US addresses for now. So if you're overseas, my apologies, but you should still check out IMS. And I also want to thank everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer.

DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. If you like 10% happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.