The One You Feed - Robert Wright on Why Buddhism is True

Episode Date: March 14, 2018

Please Support The Show with a DonationRobert Wright is an author and a scholar. His most recent book, Why Buddhism is True, is an analytical look comparing the ancient concepts of Buddhism and the more recent findings of modern science. The title of his book may be a bit provocative, but we challenge you to hear him out before assuming what he writes about in his book on the topic. We think you'll find this interview thought provoking and interesting as well as instructive and helpful. Whatever your reaction to the episode, we'd love to hear about it. $30 off your first week of Hello Fresh www.hellofresh.com Enter Promo Code Feed30 UltraMax 3 Ultra Pure Omega 3s www.tryomax.com/wolf box of Omax 3 UltraPure for freeIn This Interview, Robert Wright and I Discuss...The Wolf ParableHis book, Why Buddhism is TrueEvolutionary PsychologyThat according to Evolutionary Psychology we're wired to do what's best to propagate our genes into the next generationAnd how sometimes doing that might not be what's best for ourselves or the worldThat we're wired for a recurring dissatisfaction or discontented so we'd keep doing the things that would move us toward our goal of passing our genes on to the next generationCraving and AversionNot following craving and aversion as guides are central to BuddhismAccording to Buddhism if we don't run from unpleasant feelings like sadness, anxiety etc, they will actually become less painful over timeThat the Buddha intuited a lot of things that we now know to be true according to modern science and evolutionary psychologyHow our thoughts can sometimes subtlely influence us - ex Cognitive BiasCognitive Bias being driven by emotion rather than being rational & Buddhism teaches thatThe Buddhist conception of the mind/brain and modern psychology's conception of the mind/brain are very alignedIn the cognitive battle for attention, the thought that "wins" is the one that has the most feeling attached to itHow meditation can help give you clarity on thoughts and feelings and the difference between the twoCBT & questioning your thoughts and feelings in BuddhismMindfulness-Based Cognitive Behavioral TherapyAllowing and observing rather than acting on our strong feelingsThe anguish we add to physical pain by the anticipation of it or the lamenting of itEssences that we impute into thingsThe idea of not self and what it meansThe benefit of parceling out the things that we identify - like anxious feelings - as not being ourselvesThinking you're not cut out for meditationPlease Support The Show with a DonationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In fact, we're wired almost not to be enduringly happy. Welcome to The One You Feed. 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 Know 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's in the museum of failure? And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer.

Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Robert Wright, a contributing editor of The New Republic, a Slate.com columnist, and a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. Robert is the co-founder of BloggingHeads.tv. He runs the web-based video project MeaningofLife.tv and is the author of Why Buddhism is True, The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment.

I have some really exciting news. is true, the science and philosophy of meditation and enlightenment. Monday, March 19th. If you're not on our email list and you're interested in the program, be sure to sign up because there will be some early VIP offers coming via email. The course is called The One You Feed Stress Reducer, Five Steps to a More Calm and Productive You, even if you are the busiest person you know. Do you ever wonder what it would be like if you were productive and present in your life instead of overwhelmed and frazzled? Or if you had the ability to focus on the stuff that matters and you spent more of your time feeling calm and in control, not stressed? figured out for myself years ago that has helped me over and over and over when the stress of working a full-time job and whether it's doing the podcast or trying to build a solar company or raising children, doing all of that at one time, when I kind of hit that point where I feel like I can't keep it together anymore, this five-step process is what I have used for myself over the years to help myself function better and be more effective.

And I'm really excited to share it with you. So if you're not on our email list and you're interested in the course, I'd encourage you to go sign up today. And the course will be coming out on March 19th. I can't wait to see what you think of it. And here's the interview with Robert Wright. see what you think of it. And here's the interview with Robert Wright. Hi, Robert. Welcome to the show. Hi, Eric. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to have you on and discuss your book, Why Buddhism is True. It's an excellent book, and I think listeners of the show are going to get a lot out of it. But let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. 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 greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second and 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 think broadly speaking, it makes sense that if you reinforce your better half, that's the one that will prevail more often. I think one take-home lesson of both Buddhism and, in a way, evolutionary psychology is that the challenge sometimes comes in figuring out which is the good wolf and which is the bad wolf. In other words, sometimes by our nature, we're kind of inclined to think we're doing the good thing or the right thing when maybe we're not. So sometimes kind of getting more closely in touch with the way our view of things is being distorted is half the challenge. Yeah, that's a great way to segue into where I wanted to start with the book. Your background is largely as an evolutionary psychologist, and you talk about our feelings that we have about things're really wired to do is to do the thing that is best to propagate, what is best in the sense of for the world or even for ourselves, or B, necessarily even true in the sense of seeing the truth of reality. Right. There's a slight qualification, I'd make you that, which is that in a modern environment, especially, we sometimes are naturally inclined to do things that actually don't even get our

genes into the next generation, whereas they might have an earlier environment. I mean, I guess the classic example is pornography. You know, men in particular seem to spend a lot of time with it. And that's because in the environment of our evolution, being attracted to, you know, that kind of visual stimulus would have meant being attracted to a real woman. Well, in the modern environment, it isn't necessarily. So, uh, everything you said is right that, you know, kind of even in the environment of our evolution, uh, doing what was, what we're naturally inclined to do to get genes into the next generation, um, you know, isn't necessarily good for us or for the world and

isn't necessarily conducive to seeing the world clearly. In the modern environment, it's even more ridiculous than that because it's often, you know, not even getting genes spread in any event. Right, right. The desire to eat sweet or salty foods to excess being an example. Another classic example, right. Having a sweet tooth in an environment that has only fruit and no junk food is better for you than having a sweet tooth in a modern environment, yeah. Yep. We had a Buddhist teacher on named Noah Levine, and he said something to the extent of, you know, we're wired very well for survival, but not so well for happiness. Right. In fact, we're wired almost not to be enduringly happy. I mean, if you imagine an

animal that was easily contented, that just ate one meal and then just sat there contented forever, that would be an animal that would never eat again. So a kind of recurring dissatisfaction is built into us. And, you know, Buddhism's emphasis on suffering as kind of part of the human condition sometimes sounds a little overstated, and I think maybe in a way it is. But if you recognize that the word that's translated as suffering, dukkha, can also be translated by, according to some scholars, as a kind of unsatisfactoriness, then it makes a lot more sense that that would be just kind of a pretty pervasive thing. Because natural selection designed us to be recurringly discontented, never contented for too long, so that we would keep doing the kinds of things, pursuing the kinds of goals that would have gotten genes into the next generation.

Exactly. And to go a little bit deeper in that, particularly the Buddhist idea of both craving and aversion tie in with that perfectly well the craving to continue to experience pleasurable things which as we talked about are wired into us the things that are pleasurable or the things that are evolutionarily good for us and then the desire to push away things that aren't is in the same thing it's it's to it's to help preserve the organism but that since that's kind of baked into who we are, it brings up that sort of constant dissatisfaction that's driven by craving and aversion. Yeah, craving and aversion are central to Buddhism. Not following those as guides is central to Buddhism. In other words, not reflexively pursuing everything that seems as if it'll bring gratification, and also not necessarily reflexively avoiding everything that

seems forbidding. Now, obviously, you should shy away from truly dangerous things, but when it comes to dealing with our feelings, Buddhism counsels that we not cling to the pleasant feelings and that we not try to run away from the unpleasant feelings, that we make, in a certain sense, I guess, make our peace with them, but in any event, experience them with a kind of equilibrium that gives us some critical distance from them. And that includes forms of aversive feelings like out-and-out pain, physical pain, but certainly includes as well things like anxiety, sadness. is that if you don't run from those things, then they will actually be less painful or can become less painful, you know, with enough kind of discipline to practice over time. Right. And so one of the key principles of the book, you know, why, you know, Buddhism is true is what you're saying is that the Buddha intuited a lot of things that we now know from modern psychology and evolutionary

psychology to be true, or at least to be, you know, prominently held theories. You know, he intuited those on a different level a long time ago. And now we're starting to have the science to show that some of those things are indeed correct. Yeah, I think early Buddhist writings size up human nature pretty well. I mean, and it isn't just in understanding how fundamental just, you know, kind of positive and negative feelings are in guiding us and getting us to either pursue or avoid them, uh, respectively, but it's also an appreciating how subtly those feelings guide, like our thought, you know, like a lot, like how, how some thoughts kind of feel good. And we cling to those thoughts and some thoughts kind of feel bad. So we reject them. I mean, you know, you hear a lot these days about what's called confirmation bias, you know, that's a cognitive bias that leads us to kind of see the evidence that supports our preexisting views and kind of not see or acknowledge or hold on to the evidence piece of information and you either want to share it with other people, retweet it or share it or like it or whatever, or you don't, if you pay

close attention, you'll see that it's a feeling about the information that's guiding you. If you retweet, it's because it feels good to retweet. And so cognitive bias is in a way a misnomer, you know, because it's not purely cognitive. It's actually driven by feelings. And that's something that I think Buddhist psychology was onto very early. And modern psychology is really only just kind of catching up to. make, all that sort of stuff. You say somewhere in the book something to the extent of that modern psychology is sort of coming to what Buddhism realized, that our affective and our cognitive centers are really not separated, right? They're very interdependent upon each other, and that feeling is often what will drive what actually happens, and then our rational brain will try and come up with a good reason for why we feel that way.

Right. I mean, the opposite view and a kind of traditional view is the kind of metaphor of the chariot where the horses are your feelings and the rational part of you is the charioteer, which is controlling the feelings. And so in that metaphor, there's kind of a sharp distinction between the two. And that may be kind of apt with really strong and obvious feelings like rage and jealousy and intense hatred. You know, sometimes feelings just take over and it's kind of obvious. But I think it's important to realize that even in a more subtle and fine-grained way, feelings can shape our thoughts and our perceptions in ways that we might not realize without paying really close attention. Thank you. 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.

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you know, if that's true. And one thing you hear it sometimes at meditation retreats is a meditation teacher will say, thoughts think themselves. And what they mean is that once you get your mind, you know, through meditation into a pretty calm, reflective state, that's the way it seems. You realize that thoughts, you don't kind of decide to think them. They just show up. They enter your conscious mind. And then you normally choose to kind of take ownership of them and say, well, I thought this thought. But, you know, the idea is that that's not really what's going on. And this idea that that's not really what's going on does get support, as you suggested, from the modular model of the mind, which has the support of many psychologists, not all, but that includes a lot of evolutionary psychologists who say that, you know, really, the mind consists of a lot of different kind of players, and they're kind of competing for control. So sometimes, you know, you may get a sense for this if you're like at a cocktail party, and you're, on the one hand, you're talking to somebody, but on the other hand, you can

see the hors d'oeuvres over their shoulder, you know, and you might feel some tension. You know, you don't want to be rude, and you want them to think highly of you. On the other hand, you can see the hors d'oeuvres over their shoulder, you know, and you might feel some tension. You know, you don't want to be rude and you want them to think highly of you. On the other hand, you're hungry. Well, you know, proponents of the modular model of the mind would say, well, yeah, that's two different kind of actors in your mind competing for control. Now, in that case, you can see the competition because it's playing out kind of at the conscious level. You feel the urge to go get the food. You feel the kind of urge to be nice and not go get the food. But according to the modular model, a lot of times the competition plays out at the subconscious level. And so all you see is the thought that kind of won, the thought that comes from the module that kind of won the competition.

And so we are much less in control than we realize we being the conscious self. as it sounds, we can, by recognizing that, actually come to be in more control, behave more reflectively and judiciously. Right, because going back to feelings, what you're proposing is that, so there's all these, I'll just call them parallel processes in the mind that are going on, and as you said, they're vying for attention, and the theory that you propose in the book is the one that has the strongest feeling attached to it is the one that tends to win that sort of cognitive battle for attention. And that's the one that sort of pops up into consciousness. It's the one that tends to capture us more than the ones that might be more tepid feeling-wise. That's right. And, you know, again, if you pay attention, meditation, I think mindfulness

meditation can be a big tool here. You will notice, I think, that thoughts tend to have feelings associated with them. I mean, a relatively obvious example is if you're thinking about sending a kind of irate email. Now, on the one hand, that's a thought. You're thinking it would be a good idea to send this email to this person in this kind of intemperate voice. On the other hand, if you pay attention, there's a feeling associated with the thought. You're kind of a little angry or you feel aggrieved or something. There's a feeling associated with the thought. And, you know, if you meditate a lot, I think you get better at noting the feeling that accompanies the thought. And that allows you to examine the thought more on its merits, you know, without the feeling attached. Now, again, that's a

relatively obvious example that, you know, we all know on reflection that, yeah, okay, sending this irate email was kind of a feeling-driven thing. But the point is that there are even subtler examples. And then the larger point is that in any event, I think at least that view my feelings with some measure of detachment than to view my thoughts that way. And you're talking about in the meditative process, right? This idea of just mindfully watching what happens and that you find that it's easier to look at the emotional component versus the thought component. And you go on to say that that would make sense if indeed feelings are the glue that make thoughts stick to your consciousness, that makes you unreflectively take ownership of them.

After all, presumably you can't start dissolving that glue and so can't get any distance from your thoughts until you learn to see it clearly and learn to view feelings with some objectivity. And I thought that was really interesting because I'm always looking for which comes first, the thought or the emotion and, and, and how to, what's the relation between those two. So I just thought that was a very interesting way to look at it. Yeah. And I think a lot of meditators have this experience that feelings are a little easier to kind of see objectively. So like if you're, you know, beset by anxiety and thoughts accompanying the anxiety, you know, this terrible thing is going to happen. I know it's going to happen. It's going to happen tomorrow. That's why I don't

want to go to this meeting or whatever. If you sit down and meditate and have success in the sense of getting a little objectivity, probably what's going to work first is just observing the anxiety itself, the feeling of anxiety. Where in my body is it? Oh, it's in my abdomen and it's in this part of my abdomen. And by focusing on the feeling, you start getting a little critical distance from the whole thing. But then, yeah, getting that critical distance from the feeling does allow you in turn to get a little distance from the thoughts. And I think it tends to work in that order. At the same time, though, a lot of what you would look at from a cognitive therapy perspective would tell you that if you change the thought, if you can question the

validity of the thought, you can diffuse a lot of the emotion that's coming from a thought that may not be accurate. And I always find it interesting to look at which of those two levers can I move? You know, sometimes it seems like I can look at a thought and I can see the falsity in the thought. And then I can let the anxiety, say, drains away as I realize, oh, that's not really true. And then there are other times where the thought just seems like, well, that's just true, and no looking at it seems to do that. Whereas in those cases, it's almost by accepting the anxiety and looking at the anxiety closely, it goes that way. So I've seen it kind of go both directions, which is why

it's such a question I always have. Yeah, I think in principle, it can work either way. I mean, I think cognitive therapy works for a lot of people and it makes sense. And it can work like that where you just address the logic. Like if you have some kind of huge distortion involving the prospect of public speaking, like, you know, some people, they really imagine themselves like projectile vomiting while doing this public speaking, even though it's never happened before. It's just a weird kind of phobia. And you might say, well, you know, has it ever happened before? And they're like, well, no, it's never happened before. I mean, is, have you ever done anything remotely like this? Well, no, I haven't. And, and it may, that may work. Uh, and when it works, you know, that's great. And I think I'm a big kind of booster of cognitive therapy.

And there is, by the way, a a fusion of the mindfulness based cognitive behavioral therapy. So some people work on it at both ends. They and in fact, that tends to happen anyway. I mean, just with meditation, just with mindfulness meditation, you know, questioning the feeling, again, tends to lead you to question the thought. But you're right, you can, in principle, start on either side of the problem, the feeling or the thought. Right. And sometimes one or the other will be more effective than the other. In my case, like I said, sometimes cognitively, it's like, it just seems like my mind is in that place where like, no, this is absolutely true. This thought is absolutely true, whether it is or not, that's just kind of where

I'm stuck. Another idea similar to this, going back to the modular model of the mind and that the, you know, the one that comes up and wins is the one that has the most power and talking about self-discipline in this case. And I thought this was a really fascinating way to say that you say there's a difference between thinking of the goal as strengthening the self-discipline muscle versus thinking of the goal as weakening a module that has grown dominant. Can you talk a little bit about what you mean by that? Yeah. So there is a specific kind of mindfulness-based therapy for addiction, for example. And the idea is that when you feel the urge to smoke a cigarette, you don't push the urge away. You know, you don't say, you know, I'm an exercise self-discipline.

I'm not going to think about cigarettes. What you do is you allow the urge to go ahead and assume full form, but then you try to observe it mindfully. So the urge to smoke a cigarette comes and it materializes, but you don't smoke the cigarette. You just sit there and entertain the urge. And of course, it takes some practice and meditation to get good at this, but it's doable. And the idea is that what that does is it's like, I mean, if you think of the urge as an actual, like an animal, like a rat in a laboratory, you know, you're not giving it the food pellet, right? I mean, if you keep giving a rat a food pellet, it will keep pressing the bar. If you keep giving the module in you that wants to smoke cigarettes, I mean, there isn't, of course,

an evolved module for that purpose, but metaphorically speaking, if you keep feeding the urge to smoke a cigarette by giving it a cigarette, well, the urge will keep showing up. But if you let the urge show up fully and then it doesn't get to the cigarette, the idea is that's a very effective way to disempower the urge. And there's some actual evidence that this works, that this can be a very valuable therapy. Yeah, I've been in recovery from addiction most of my adult life. And the phrase I like is it's kind of like stray cats, right? If you just stop feeding them, eventually they stop coming around. But if you feed them, they're going to, you know,

they're going to keep coming. The modular model of mine in this sense works very well with the kind of your, your kind of rubric paradigm or, or, or, you know, parable, I mean, uh, for, for the podcast, it's, you know, it really with, with the modules, some of which lead you to good things and some bad things. Um, it's very much like feeding them if they get positive reinforcement. I mean, the way the mind is designed is that if they get positive reinforcement, I mean, the way the mind is designed is that if they get the gratification and what qualifies as gratification is different for different modules, but if they get the gratification, then they will grow stronger.

You know, like if hating somebody, if you feed that by then going around and saying the negative thing about the person, right, that's reinforcement for the feeling of hatred, I think. And so the reinforcement can differ, but the basic parable that this podcast is under actually makes a lot of sense in terms of the modular model of the mind, I think. Right. a lot of sense in terms of the modular model of the mind, I think. Right. And so I think the other thing that's important in what we're talking about, and it's, you know, threads through the whole book and speaks right to the topic of mindfulness is the answer isn't to force these things, you know, it's not to not reinforce them by forcing them away. It's by examining them. And you actually have a phrase, and I can't find it right off the top of my head, but you say something about, you know, paradoxically, by looking really,

really closely at something, we manage to get distance from it. Right. That is one of the fundamental ironies of mindfulness meditation, is that if you have something like anxiety or stress or sadness and you don't run away from it, like if you're just feeling sad and you don't have to be like a practice meditator to try this, if you're just feeling really sad and you sit down and rather than go, you know, rather your normal reaction is to go, well, how can I get unsad? You know, maybe I can have some chocolate. Maybe I can talk to somebody who'll cheer me up. And that can be fine if you talk to somebody who cheers you up.

But if you instead take the path of just sitting down and... 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.

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Examining the feeling, just going, okay, fine, I'm sad. Let's experience it. What's it like to be sad? What part of my head is the feeling, just going, okay, fine, I'm sad. Let's experience it. What's it like to be sad? What part of my head is the feeling of sadness located in? How exactly does it make me feel? If you let yourself get close to it in that way, the irony is then you get some distance from it, at least when it works. And you may find that, wow, I sat down and just sat with the sadness for a while.

And the more closely I looked at it, the less of a problem it was. I was doing this today. I've been having back pain lately more than normal. And what I realized is that it's generally the thread of thoughts that are going through my head about the back pain that are far worse than the pain itself. I find myself saying things like, oh, it's my back's killing me. It's terrible. I can't take it. And then if I just stop and actually pay attention to what the actual back pain is, then I'm like, oh, well, this isn't really that big of a deal. I mean, like it just puts it in a totally different perspective. And it's, it's the story that I'm adding on top of it that is causing me so much challenge.

And that's really that looking closely at the thing itself instead of what we think the thing means. Yeah. I mean, in the extreme case, there are really adept meditators who can become pretty much completely indifferent to physical pain. I mean, I've had some success with that. Like when I was on retreat and I developed an abscessed tooth, I kind of fooled around with that. I mean, like I would drink enough liquid to really make it cause what would normally be tremendous pain. It was way less painful than usual. But you're right. You don't have to you don't have to meditate for days at a retreat to get some value out of the fact that usually even with physical pain, I mean, with either anticipate it before it's actually showed up, or you lament it when it has showed up. And if you can do less of that, physical pain can be less of a problem. I don't want to trivialize it or minimize it. I mean, physical pain is a serious

thing, but you're right. And this is something that's emphasized in Buddhism, is that there is the intrinsic pain, but a lot of the actual suffering is not part of the intrinsic pain. So let's talk about the idea of essences and the fact that we impute an essence to everything. And this sort of ties into the Buddhist idea of emptiness. Can you kind of walk us through tying those things together? Sure. I mean, emptiness is, in a way, an unfortunate term. It is a very fundamental Buddhist concept, especially in what's called Mahayana Buddhism, which is a good part of the Buddhism in Asia. And it sounds like, you know, the claim that, look, everything is actually empty, that sounds kind of depressing. But let me, by way of an anecdote from my very first meditation

retreat, tell you what I think emptiness is best thought of as meaning. So I was taking a walk through the woods and I saw a weed called a plantain weed, which had infested a couple of yards in houses that I'd owned. And so I had spent a certain amount of time trying to kill it, uproot it, dig it up, whatever. And I had, you might say, hostility toward it. But all of a sudden I looked at it and I thought, well, why have I been trying to kill this thing? It's exactly as beautiful as all the other stuff in the forest. And in one sense, that's kind of a trivial observation. But I mean, to say, if I say to you, well, look, it's not like the word weed is written in the DNA of what we call

weeds, right? I mean, weed is just a cultural construct. It's like some cultures consider some things weeds, some consider other things weeds. We all know that in a sense, but when you have such a powerful feeling, such a perceptual shift, right? And a weed looks to you like it has never looked before, you realize that you have in the past been kind of imputing essence of weed to it in a really deep-seated way. I mean, it shapes your very perception of it. Like, you just look at it, and it seems to have this kind of aura of badness, but it doesn't. That's not an intrinsic part of it, and that's what Buddhists mean by emptiness. They mean things are empty of essence, okay? And we go around attributing essence to things kind of perceptually and cognitively to some extent when, in fact, it's just a human construct.

It's not really an intrinsic part of things. And with weeds, you may say, well, it's not that big a deal, right? Okay, so you tried to kill a weed. That's not a grave moral transgression. But we also do this with other people, right? I mean, it's like, you know, my rival for, you know, some guy who wants a job I want, right, or is getting more attention than me. I mean, I, you know, I start to see essence of bad person in the guy, right? And sometimes we do it with entire groups of people. That's called

bigotry or racism or xenophobia. And that's the kind of thing that leads to wars and deep social conflict. Or in the current environment, maybe it's political, it's ideological. You hear that someone is a member of the other ideological tribe and you just look at them in a different way. And that affects the way you process information about them and all these subtle ways we're learning about. So what emptiness means is that in really subtle ways, without realizing it, we go through the world seeing essence of this and essence of that. And often it's innocuous, it's fine, it's no big deal morally, but sometimes it really does get us into trouble. And in those cases, the kind of distortion

that essence brings is worth doing something about. And again, my view is that meditation can help here. And so going back to the emptiness idea, it's not saying that nothing exists. It's saying that these things of themselves do not have most of the, going back to emotions and feelings, we're putting the feeling or emotion into most everything that we see out there. We're imbuing it, the word we're using is essence. We're giving it this essence that we then react to one way or the other, but of its own self, it doesn't have those things. Right. It's another case of feelings infiltrating our perception and cognition more subtly than we realize. And the feelings are giving shape to this thing called essence that isn't really there. And one reason emptiness is really

not a great word is that, you know, when I no longer saw essence of weed in this thing, it was part of a generally more beautiful vista that I had. And in general, people who really adept meditators who say that, you know, they kind of go around seeing emptiness, they report things being beautiful. It's not like they don't see the things. It's not like they can't tell the who say that, you know, they kind of go around seeing emptiness, they report things being beautiful. It's not like they don't see the things. It's not like they can't tell the difference between one kind of plant and another. But the experience of emptiness apparently tends to make things more beautiful. It makes you more appreciative of them. Excellent. Let's now talk about what has been one of my favorite topics as of late, the idea of not-self. And you talk a lot about it. I'm going to ask you to you, fine. Just let it be. And, you know, you don't have to get all caught up in

it. Do the other parts of, you know, contemplative practice that go around that and kind of see what happens. And it's funny because that's what I did. You know, I've been reading about and studying Buddhism and practicing meditation for a long time. And most of that time, that just idea did not resonate with me, did not particularly interest me until I had an actual experience of it. And I think that's really good advice, because I would start to try and occasionally throw all the baby out with the bathwater, because I'd look at the not self thing and be like, well, that doesn't make any sense. And then I'd say, well, does the rest of this make sense? And so I think your idea of, you know what, set that to the side if it doesn't make a

lot of sense is good. But let's talk about what not-self means. And you've got what I'll call a gradual approach to it. And so can you walk us through that? You know, Buddhism's kind of famous for saying that what you think of as the self does not exist. And one version of that is something we mentioned, the idea that the conscious self is not as in control as you might think. That's part of it. But there are also other dimensions to the idea of not-self, the idea that the bounds of the self are in some sense illusory. You know, when you add up all the parts of the not-self doctrine, it sounds pretty radical and crazy, and maybe less so if, as you said, you've had some experiences, like I've had experiences,

especially on retreat, where the bounds of the self seemed to dissolve. But if you haven't had some kind of dramatic not-selfience, and I haven't had the full-on version myself, I think the idea can still be of some use in a more kind of incremental way, as you suggest. And what I mean by that is that if you do what we mentioned and look at a troublesome part of your experience, like some anxiety, and you look at it meditatively and you go, you know, I don't have to consider that part of myself. And, you know, I've had the experience with anxiety of just suddenly I was like, you know, I meditate on it for 15 minutes and then all of a sudden this feeling in my abdomen, it's still there, but it's as if I'm looking at like a piece of

abstract art in a museum, right? So it just no longer seems like part of me. It's neither good nor bad. It's just interesting. And I think, you know, the incremental approach to not self is just to remind yourself that these various feelings you have, especially including troublesome feelings and thoughts you have, identifying yourself with them is optional, strictly speaking. You don't have to think of that thought as part of you. You don't have to think of that feeling as part of you. In fact, meditation can help you really, you know, kind of in a way, in a certain sense, separate yourself from them. separate yourself from them. And I think I'm not just playing word games. You know, when I say that is a version of, you know, that's an increment of not self experience. The fact is that if you go to the fundamental discourse on the not self, what is thought to be the Buddha's second discourse

after his enlightenment, where he goes through the logic of not self, to some extent, this is the way he puts it. He goes through different parts of human experience, you know, thoughts and feelings and so on, and says, you know, is it, he's kind of, he can be interpreted as saying, given the fact that you don't really have control over these things, given the fact that they can lead to affliction, right? They can make you, you know, not happy. Does it make sense to say this is mine? I mean, does it make more sense to say, no, this is not mine? And then he does say, you know, if you say that with everything, then you attain complete liberation.

Then you have the full-on not self-experience. But I think even if you stop short of full-on liberation, which, you know, takes time to say the least, not sure how many people have actually attained it, even if you stop short of that, you can have incremental gains by just starting to question how much of your psychological, quote, self you really have to think of as part of yourself. Yeah, I really like that way of looking at it and explaining, as you did in the book about, I think they call them the five aggregates or the five heaps, right? The different things that the Buddha walks through, you know, your thoughts, your perceptions, your emotions, your body, you know, that you can look at each of those things. And by becoming a little bit

less identified with each of those things, you are walking the path towards the not-self piece. And I just found that a very helpful way to think about it. And I know, you know, for listeners, I've been, you know, they know I've been talking about this a fair amount lately. And so I really wanted to bring your perspective in on it because I thought it was a really good one. Well, I'm glad it makes sense to you. It is something a lot of people have latched on to who have read the book. And I think it's I mean, the larger thing that I'd like to emphasize is that even if you're doing meditation in a kind of therapeutic way, like, you know, stress reduction and dealing with anxiety, you are closer than you may realize the kind of deep ideas in Buddhist philosophy. And and I think sometimes it helps to understand the philosophical underpinnings of the meditative practice. And so we're kind of at the end of our time here, but just to kind of wrap up,

you refer to yourself as a not very likely meditation candidate. Could you kind of talk about why you thought that and what you've personally gotten out of meditation? Just because I think there's a lot of people who also think I'm not a good meditator or I'm not really cut out for meditation. And so I always find it helpful to provide other views on that. Yeah, well, I have real problem focusing on things. I have, you know, probably a modest version of attention deficit disorder, but a version. I have a very limited attention span. I also think I'm actually a kind of emotional person. I mean, it's hard to compare yourself to other people. You've never

been them. But I would say that common equilibrium, people who know me would agree that common equilibrium do not come naturally to me. Um, and, you know, I think I'm, uh, I'm capable of, uh, you know, doing many things, very capable of doing many of the things that meditation is designed to make you do less of. I, I, you know, think really negative thoughts about people, think really negative thoughts about yourself. So I think I'm on the one hand, somebody who's not naturally good at meditation. I'm on the other hand, somebody who needs it. And I think that's a common thing. I mean, I mean, it's often the case that the people

who need it the most are naturally the worst at it. But I have found that it's doable even for somebody like me. For me, it was very helpful to go to an actual one-week silent meditation retreat. And if you're really, really poor candidate for meditation, you might think about that. But a lot of people pick it up more easily. You know, they do these, they may use these apps like Headspace or 10% Happier, or they may find a local community of meditators or take online lessons or whatever. There's a lot of ways to do it. But I would just say to people, even if you don't take to it easily the first time or the first few times, I wouldn't necessarily give up on it.

It is challenging. And even once you feel, OK, I know how to do it, it can be challenging to sustain the daily practice. And some days the rewards are very meager at best. But in my experience, you know, sticking with it is just a very good thing and changes the way you view the world and changes it for the better and changes you for the better. Yep. I would definitely agree. I am not naturally good at meditation for whatever. I don't settle in to it easily, but I found it to be really helpful. And I've also found that doing it for a longer period of time as in a retreat can make a big difference.

It can be a good way to recharge your practice. Just do that every once in a while, yeah. Absolutely. Well, Robert, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. Thank you for the book. I'll have links in the show notes to to get the book and to some of your other work. So thank you so much. Thank you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net support.

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