The One You Feed - Lama Surya Das

Episode Date: May 20, 2015

This week we talk to Lama Surya Das about looking beyond ourselvesLama Surya Das is one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers and scholars, one of the main interpreters of Tibetan Buddhism in the West, and a leading spokesperson for the emerging American Buddhism. The Dalai Lama affectionately calls him “The Western Lama.”Surya has spent over forty five years studying Zen, vipassana, yoga, and Tibetan Buddhism with the great masters of Asia, including the Dalai Lama’s own teachers, and has twice completed the traditional three-year meditation cloistered retreat at his teacher’s Tibetan monastery.Surya Das has been featured in numerous publications and major media, including ABC, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The Washington Post, One segment of the ABC-TV sitcom Dharma & Greg was based on his life (“Leonard’s Return”). Surya has appeared on Politically Correct with Bill Maher, and twice on The Colbert Report.Surya is the author of thirteen books, his latest is called Make Me One With Everything: Buddhist Meditations to Awaken from the Illusion of Separation. In This Interview Surya and I Discuss...The One You Feed parable.The Concept of Inter-Meditation.The Us vs.Them problem.Furthering a collective awakening versus only individual awakening.The process of gazing meditation. For more show notes visit our website Some of our most popular interviews that you might also enjoy:Dan HarrisMaria PopovaTodd Henry- author of Die EmptyRandy Scott HydeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Spiritual life is about every step on the path of life every day. That's where the rubber really meets the road, not just on Saturday, synagogue, Sunday in church, or Monday in Moscow Meditation Center. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.

We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden. And together our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what in the museum of failure and does your dog truly love you we have the answer go to really no really dot com and register to win five hundred dollars a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition

signed jason bobblehead the really no really podcast follow us on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts thanks for joining us. Our guest today is Lama Surya Das, one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers and scholars, one of the main interpreters of Tibetan Buddhism in the West, and a leading spokesperson for the emerging American Buddhism. The Dalai Lama affectionately calls him the Western Lama. Surya Das has been featured in numerous publications in major media, including ABC, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The Washington Post, and even one segment of the ABC sitcom Dharma and Greg, titled Leonard's Return, which was based on his life. Surya has appeared on Politically Correct with Bill Maher and twice on The Colbert Report. Surya is the author of 13 books and his

latest is called Make Me One With Everything, Buddhist Meditations to Awaken from the Illusion of Separation. Hey everybody, before we get started, just a couple quick announcements. The first, and this is exciting news, is that on May 20th here in Columbus, Ohio, we will be having the first ever One You Feed party get-together, shindig, call it what you will, at the Roosevelt Coffeehouse. It'll be open to the first 15 people who sign up at oneyoufeed.eventbrite.com. Eventbrite is spelled E-V-E-N-T-B-R-I-T-E. So OneYouFeed.Eventbrite.com. Sign up for the One You Feed party on May 20th at the Roosevelt Coffeehouse. The second thing that I wanted to say is that on our website now at OneYouFeed.net,

you can click and leave us a voice message. Over to the right, there'll be a little box, click on it, and you can record anything you want. Say hello, give us some feedback, tell us what you like, what you don't like, and suggest a topic for a mini episode if you want. And the final thing is I've had a couple people graduate out of the one-on-one coaching program.

It's been going great. If you are interested, I've got a couple spots that have reopened. You can send an email to eric at oneufeed.net. Thanks and enjoy the show. Hi, sir. You're welcome to the show. Thank you, Eric. Nice to be here. I am very excited to have you on your book, Awakening the Buddha Within. It was one of the early books I read on Buddhism. It's been a while now, probably shortly after it came out, and it was one of the books that really set me on a path of becoming very interested in Buddhism and getting more

serious about meditation. So I thank you for that, and I've read your new book and really enjoy it also. Thank you. I hope we all can awaken the buddhiness within and see the light of the divine in everyone, in each other and everything. So our podcast is called The One You Feed, and it's based on the parable of two wolves where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson, and he says, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second.

He looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, I like that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, I like that parable. Obviously, I'm on the spiritual path and a spiritual teacher, so I think we have some agency or some choice, and choice is very important in life, as is motivation and intention. So it's very important, as in the parable, whether we feed the good side, the higher side or the lower side of our nature, let's say our animalistic nature, or our more higher, divine, spiritual side of our nature. So that's very

important, and the parable makes it clear that it's a choice, and I think the grandparently wisdom passed down from ancient times is very important for us today in our increasingly fast-paced, sorry, in ahistorical times. out of touch with the timeless wisdom traditions that are so much pressing forward to what's new and the nanosecond and so on. So I'm all in favor of this kind of timeless yet timely wisdom. I think it's very good for today and tomorrow and for a better future. So your new book is called Make Me One With Everything, Buddhist Meditations to Awaken from the Illusion of Separation. And in it, you talk about a concept called intermeditation. Could you talk about what intermeditation is and maybe how that compares to what a lot of us have thought of as regular meditation, for lack of a better word? Well, my new book is all about what I've coined as intermeditation or co-meditation, taking off on the Zen master

Thich Nhat Hanh's term interbeing, about seeing through the illusion of separateness and recognizing our interconnectedness, our interwovenness, our interdependence, and our interbeing. And there's been too much about self-growth and turning inward and looking inward in the meditation field to balance our extreme extroversion and materialism. But I think today it's very important to recognize that none of us can do it alone. It takes a village, the same boat. We rise and fall, sink or swim together. And so I've been teaching more and more about this kind of intermeditation or becoming more permeable. Not just trying to meditate or pray or do yoga and get away from it all.

That's fine. A vacation is fine. But there are the other 50 weeks of the year to consider. So for that, being with things, being with with a hyphen rather than against it, trying to get away from it all, pushing it away. No. Into meditation or co-meditation is weighing being with things, breathing out and breathing in with things. Based on the Tibetan riding the breath meditation called Tonglen or Lojong, where we dissolve the separation between self and other, between outer and inner, riding the breath, merging with nature, merging with loved ones, eventually seeing

what's the difference between us and them, and even our enemies. So this is very much being with rather than against it, and emerging into, and so forth. And I'm very excited about this, because I think in today's world, the us and them problem is just so paramount and religion and extreme views and terrorism and so on. And we really need to find a way to go beyond this us and them dualism and just meditating, getting away from it all, going inward or seeking our own happiness is just not enough. I think we need to have a collective awakening, a shared spirituality. Spirituality for couples, collective spirituality, and so on.

That's what I'm working on now in the space, my teachings in life. So what is an example of an intermeditation that we could do? Can you give some examples of what this practice, and from reading the book, there's a bunch of different ones, but could you pick maybe a practice that we could give the listeners that is an example of intermeditation? Sure, I'd be glad to. For example, rather than just closing our eyes and trying to be quiet and stop thinking or get away from it all, maybe we could open our eyes and our ears and just look at another, maybe eye-gazing with a loved one or a pet and breathing together

and convergetating and mergetating to have fun with words and dissolving together, just being together and not trying to get anything out of us for ourselves. It could be a great co-meditation or intermeditation, and it has its basis in the conscious principles of spirituality for couples and finding a portal to oneness. And we can do this by riding the breath, breathing out and breathing in together, as well as by eye-gazing and becoming more permeable, softening up, letting down our defenses, seeing through our effectiveness, and eventually recognizing that we all want and need more or less the

same. So this facing each other, standing or sitting, however we want to do it, is a great way of intermeditating or co-meditating and being together in a sacred manner and integrating with every part of daily life. Not that we have to be alone or silent or get away from you all in a meditation room or country retreat to do it. Another way to do it is not just with people or with pets, but with nature. Like I like to do with water, meditating with water, co-meditating with the oceans or waterfalls or waves and listening to it, just dissolving with the sound or letting the sound of the wind or the waves wash everything away.

So it's kind of a very practical or doable nature mysticism, just washing everything away. And this is an example of co-meditation or intermeditation with nature. And you can pick which natural element works best for you. For me, it's water, but for some it might be fire, like bonfire gazing. Or it could be earth, like looking at a mountain or the Grand Canyon or just, you know, the garden. Whatever natural element can help transport one beyond one's self.

So the notion is being with rather than against things, as I said. Of course, this is a very hard opening thing, because when we realize others want and need the same as we do, to them and their loved ones and their land and their place, then we have a chance to more naturally treat others as we would ourselves be treated, and naturally follow the golden rule. And you say that inner meditation is the antithesis of navel-gazing and narcissism,

or the religion as escape, yoga as commodity, spirituality as a vacation. Yes, being with things rather than running away from them or trying to go in and just get away from them or have a little vacation, which is fine, but that doesn't go far enough to have a spiritual life. Spiritual life is about every step on the path of life every day. So that's where the rubber really meets the road, not just on Saturday in synagogue, Sunday in church, or Monday in mosque or meditation center. So I think that it's fine to have a yoga session or meditation session, let's say in the morning or, you know, or weekend or getaway, but there's six and a half other days of the week to consider. with them or interbeing with them is the way that we need today for our collective awakening and not just for navel gazing, for self-growth and being more self-conscious.

In our narcissistic society, we don't need more of that. But self-awareness is a whole different thing rather than self-consciousness or narcissism. And that's a fine line of discernment to learn how to make. Right. As I was reading it, I was thinking of, you know, at least meditation, as I've been taught, a lot of it is paying attention to what's happening inside me, my mind, my breath, my body. And it really sounds like a lot of what you're describing is pain, raising that level of awareness to things that are around me and outside of me. Is that a fair description?

Yes, of course. Any meditation or contemplative practice involves awareness, the cultivation of awareness, of attention, of focus, of presence of mind, of mindfulness, rather than mindlessness, as they say today. It's very popular mindfulness as a mind training with all kinds of benefits. So that begins, let's say, with yourself, with your breath, with your physical sensations here and now, but it needs to extend also to whoever you're with and whatever you're with as well, unless you're a lifeline contemplative or hermit who just meditates or prays alone all the time, which I would speculate most of us are not going to be, nor do we need to be. or co-meditation is really the way to go and to expand and deepen our contemplative experience.

Find portals to oneness everywhere with everyone and everything. Like in the book, of course, I give some classical co-meditations and some meditations like riding the breath, sky gazing, nature dissolving, and other things. Listening to music one note at a time and so on.

But also some more, let's say, creative or original takes on it, like momitation, considering like maybe you come home from work at night after the kitties are asleep and you go in their bedroom and you take a look at them and you just stand there or sit there and let it all happen. No need to meditate or pray. This is a fully angels of the air. Your heart opens. You just watch their little breaths rising and falling and just breathe with them and view them. Let all the preoccupations and stress of the day wash away. That's a marvelous natural meditation. It's not hard. You know, there's no struggle to concentrate, as people usually struggle with meditation.

They say, oh, I can't get rid of my thinking. Well, in that kind of natural situation, the heart opening feelings can transport you beyond your habitual self and thinking. I guarantee it. So I call that momitation. Another way to do it is meditating with the Dalai Lama or whoever your spiritual superhero or ideal is, or God, Buddha, Jesus, as an archetype, in person or in the abstract, and letting them, as it were, do it for you,

breathing with them, looking at them in person or picture or visualize the image, the icon, the archetype, holding it in mind, breathing with them in and out, and letting everything else go and everything dissolve and experience a great peace and nirvanic peace and harmony that's beyond self and other, beyond effort and effortlessness, beyond inside and outside, beyond separation or even union, and just being with a capital B. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth.

Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all.

Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com.

And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You have some short quotes in the book that I think are really interesting that I'd like to maybe read you one or a couple of them and ask you to expound on them a little bit. The one I want to start with, you say,

I think you have to love first and see second. Yes. It's interesting that you asked me about that because the publisher interviewed me for a webcast, and that was one of the two or three she picked out also. And I am so intent upon moving this discussion from the head to the heart. Mindfulness is fine, but our education system and our mentality is already so damn mental in our scientistic postmodern reality. And I myself, being a New York intellectual and motor mind, I am so moved to make the journey from head to heart and even deeper through the body and the earth and the whole. That's why the inscription in the beginning of the book is, from a tantric or non-dualistic oneness scripture of Tibet, tantric text that says,

the whole world is my body, all beings my heart-mind. So consciousness or awareness or sentience is preeminent in being, but the body is still part of it. Body and soul, inseparable, just like in mind-body medicine, which is coming on strong today. And I think it's very important. So making the journey from the head to the heart. So opening the heart first, and then awakening and illumining the mind. We're already over-educated. We know so much, but we understand so little. That's the problem. We need more wisdom and discernment, not just

intellectual knowledge. So the wisdom of the heart is very, very important. So that's what I'm talking about there, not just being more mindful and thinking of mindfulness and meditation as a mental discipline. It all sounds like from the eyebrows up. What about the rest of our body? Not to mention the collective, the family, the group, all the animals and beings and nature itself. And is doing some of the inner meditation practices the way to make that journey from the head to the heart? I believe that inner meditation and co-meditation

takes us beyond us and them and body and mind and all of these separations and helps us see deeper into the inextricable oneness or the spectrum, the arc that completes the whole. Just like you and me together makes the we. Right. And so forth. each of us is very important, but all of us together are probably more important in the long run, not to mention our Earth, the species, and the survival of all of us. So again, back to I to we. Right. You say, and I love this quote because it's something that we talk about on this show a lot,

but it's, fools seek from afar Afar, The Wise Find Truth Beneath Their Feet. Yes, well, of course, everything I say is going to be about it's right here and now and not to postpone it. I think you're going to do this when you retire or next summer or on the weekend because it's now or never as always.

And if we don't do it now, you know, it never happens. If we're not here now, we won't be there then. We're still going to be postponing and putting it off. Because that's a habit. That's the nature of karma and conditioned habit. So, the path is right beneath our feet.

Even Christian tradition says, although it doesn't always emphasize, heaven on earth, heaven is right here, not just later after we die. And Buddhism and other non-dual traditions certainly emphasize that. Nirvana right here within some sorrow, or the light right here within the shadows, not elsewhere, not just after we die, not in some foreign holy land that we can fantasize and idealize about, but here and now. If God ain't here, she's nowhere. And if she's here, she's everywhere.

That's my way of thinking. So I'm encouraging backyard Buddhism or universal dharma, spirituality, lodge, occupying the spirit, not just leaving it to the 1% to do that, to Dalai Lama's or if Lama Suri does to that matter, but to occupy the spirit ourselves and make a better world for ourselves and our loved ones.

I mean, look what's going on in the world. What's the alternative? We need each other. Even the Dalai Lama, who's a monk, and one might think very monos or solitary, said, we need each other to become enlightened. He doesn't say everybody can do it themselves. We need each other to become enlightened. That's a quote of Mahayana Buddhism from the Dalai Lama, from the Universal Vehicle. Think about collective betterment. To create a good, biggest number, not just me being happy or peaceful temporarily.

You talk about the middle way in the book a couple different times, and I'm interested in sharing a little bit more about what the middle way means to you. It's a concept that I have found very useful in my life, and different people interpret it slightly differently. I'd be interested in hearing your take on that. Well, it depends what you're thinking about. Like, as a Buddhist, I think about Buddha never called his teachings Buddhism, he called it the Middle Way, beyond extremes, such as materialism or nihilism, or all or nothing, or austerity on one hand, or indulgence. So that was his Middle Way, violence, moderation. Another way of looking at it, I think, is it's a real touchstone for us today to not give into excess, you know, or sort of the all

or nothing, always, never mentality or way of thinking, very black and white, which is so brittle, so dogmatic. The middle way includes so many things, just that I think it helps us avoid the ditches. You know, the middle way has many lanes on the great highway of life, but it helps avoid the ditches on either side. I think that's the point. So for me, it's a touchstone for not being too extreme, not arguing with my mate, you know, with words like always and never, not seeing others as all good or bad or all good. Even over-idealizing people is also leads you to all kinds of trouble, as we see in the spiritual world and with celebrities and so on. So I think in a way, it's really Buddha's greatest teaching in a way.

I always hear myself saying that, although it's not something my teachers ever said. My teachers always stress wisdom and compassion and generosity and that kind of thing. But I think this sense of balance or appropriateness, the middle way is really a Buddhist greatest teaching and maybe contribution. What would be, in your own life, what is the lesson that has taken you the longest to learn?

Perhaps what I just talked about, the middle way. Yeah. How to really, you know, live and die and be a center in the middle. You know, have to live in the center. That's all. And not veer off the sides. As I said, even too much of a good thing could be a problem. Like over-idealizing people or things that can lead to disappointment,

as well as being hopefully kept cynical. Yeah, that one is, I would say that's probably right up there with mine, is finding that middle way through things without being too far to one extreme or the other. So that's been perhaps one of my greatest challenges. But I could mention something else. I find this interesting and I love to share this with people. I have a lot of students, and I have asked a lot of them to column and blog online and things like that. People always ask me this kind of thing. So I also like to say that it's very challenging to realize that things that you hear in life are really a myth.

Like, all you need is love, which I grew up with, you know, with the Beatles and the 60s and all that. Actually, love is not enough. Sometimes other things interfere with being together or being harmonious, like people die or change their sexual orientation or stop loving you. You know, there are other factors that have to come together. And there are many myths that one could mention. That's very challenging for me to accept that so much accepted knowledge or wisdom that's passed down is really very, very questionable. For example, about reality or good and bad or us and them. It's easy to pick on outer things like American superiority or white superiority. It's easy to see through those things, but we still may act from that. And if you go travel around the world, you see Americans acting like that everywhere. I mean, many cases. And it's very hard to root prejudice out of our hearts and minds. So that's been very challenging also for me to notice how strong conditioning is and can be

and to work on that. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer.

We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend.

Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really.

Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com So many times over the last couple weeks, I've seemed to be getting the message about learning to, you know, unknow, not thinking that we get pretty set in thinking, well, I know this to be true, and I know that to be true, and for whatever reason, I keep running across constant reminders to go back to being a beginner in a lot of these things that I might think I know the answer to. Well, like I was saying before, we know so much, but we really understand so little. And the mind and intellectual knowledge also has its limits. Thus, the Zen Buddhist teaching about not knowing and living with the mystery and not having fixed opinions and points of view, as the

Zen master of all of China sang, do not seek to find the final truth, merely cease to cherish opinions. I think that's an awesome statement of timeless wisdom. And if we are believers in science, which is kind of the religion of today, we notice that every few years or decades, science changes a lot. It's fixed the truth and its beliefs. So that's also very instructive, I think, to also take these, you know, top commenter or scientific facts of any generation with a grain of salt. I'm not here to say science or modern medicine isn't better than superstition and witchcraft that we had thousands of years ago. It is better, but still it's a very malleable or evolving field of knowledge as well.

So I've concluded in my graying years that my head is not really the best neighborhood for me to live in. And again, making the journey from the head to the heart and prioritizing or being more attentive to the heart path, to heart-opening relationships, and so on, like with children, with pets, to quality time rather than quantity, and so forth. And to my true vocation and joy path, and not just the big should that I should on my head with sometimes, oh, I should do this or that. I get a little old for that. But the joy path never gets old. We often teach what we need to learn. Is that kind of been at one of your challenges? Is that moving from the brain and the overthinking into more of the heart path?

I guess, yes. We teach what we need to learn. So, you know, if you're a teacher, you find out that you may think you're teaching one thing, but you may be teaching other things too. So, yes, definitely about the hard path. But I also don't want to set the hard as opposed to or separate from the head. I'm definitely an educator and a thinker. And I'm also questioning and judgment and discernment and discriminating awareness. Not just becoming simple-minded in the name of simplicity. You know, simplifying your life is becoming a simpleton.

But life can be quite simple when one is less complicated. That's for sure. So sometimes I think, I say, I hear myself say, oh, walking my dog in the morning is the best time of my day. And people give me a queer look like, oh, that's sad. But it's not. I'm sorry. That's how it is. What can I say? That's how it is. It feels that way to me. What do I know? I think my dogs have done more to help me make that journey from the head to the heart than anything else

that I've probably come across. Yeah, now that I have grandnephews and nieces and a step-grandson of a cougar, you know, I'm spending more time sitting on a phone playing with them. Life is good. It doesn't have to have some other grand agenda. And it's a mystery. It's a miracle and a mystery. I love it.

Life can become if we take ourselves too seriously, right? My girlfriend in the 70s used to call me Serious Doc. Much younger now. And less serious. Now I'm more like the Jolly Llama. In fact, I suggested that Ben and Jerry asked me to name some ice creams for them. So I named one the Jolly Llama and another one at the Butter World, but they didn't make it through this taste testing, unfortunately.

Did you get to pick the flavors too, or just the names? Yeah, we worked on it. So the Jolly Llama had some kind of red acai berry and yellow, something rather orange, kind of like Tibetan Buddhist colors. But we had fun with that. It's fun. It's fun to collaborate with people. I love my friends. I've been gifted with a treasure of friends. Well, Surya, thank you so much for taking the time to join us on the show. I've really enjoyed talking with you. And there'll definitely be links on the show notes for how everybody can find your book, find your website, and all of those things. Is

there anything you want to add as we wrap up? No, but I want to say thank you for what you're doing and also for picking out some of the short, pissy words of wisdom or Buddha bites, my one-liners from the end of the book where I have a list of them. And I think those are things that it's worth writing on a yellow sticky or an index card and thinking about maybe one a week or one a day, like things are not what they seem to be, nor are they otherwise. And a few other one-liners like letting go means letting come and go, letting be. I have some good one-liners listed at the end of the book in the section called Buddha Bites. So it's a co-meditation practice I call meditating with words of wisdom. Of course, you can make up your own, or you can

find your own in the words of wisdom of Ecclesiastes, or whoever you like in the great Enlightenment literature of the world. Yeah, there was one other you had in there that we didn't have time to talk about, but it was, if you're not here now, you won't be there then, which I think is awesome. Exactly. Well, I can guarantee that. And that's the whole message of this mindfulness and new nowness movement to free us from past and present and future conditioning and live more and savor the now. Who knows how long we're going to live or what's going to come next.

But this is the now, the holy now, this big present, the gift, something to be grateful for. Every day that we wake up is a gift and a miracle. So let's enjoy it together and treasure it and treasure and protect life and not squander it. Thank you, Eric. Yeah, thank you. Take care. Okay, you too.

All right. Bye-bye. Goodbye. You can learn more about Lama Surya Das and this podcast at oneufeed.net slash Surya. That's S-U-R-Y-A.