The One You Feed - Steve Hagen on Perception, Conception, and Enlightenment

Episode Date: January 3, 2018

Steve Hagen is the founder and teacher of the Dharma Field Zen Center in Minneapolis, MN and the author of several books on Buddhism, including Buddhism Plain and Simple which is one of the top five best selling books on Buddhism in the United States. In this episode, Steve teaches us about several Buddhist concepts that are often misunderstood: Wholeness vs Unwholesomeness, Perception vs Conception and Belief vs Knowledge. Knowing the true meaning of these ideas will give you great freedom as you seek the enlightenment that is your true nature.This episode is sponsored by Health IQ and CasperPlease Support The Show with a DonationIn This Interview, Steve Hagen and I Discuss...The Wolf ParableHis book, Buddhism Plain and SimpleThe Horse and the Farmer parableWholeness vs UnwholesomeConsider the welfare of other beings in all you doAwarenessPerception (the immediate, direct experience) vs Conception (our construct of things)Belief vs KnowledgeThat we can't arrive at truth through conceptionThat enlightenment is with us all of the time, we're just not aware of itThat enlightenment is our natural stateThe idea of "stream" as self, the Buddha saidThat the way things appear to be is more of a construct than a realityHow picking and choosing is the mind's worst diseaseNoticing how the mind leans a certain wayThat a Buddha is a person who is awakeThe power of simply observing something about ourselves rather than trying to put a stop to it or judging itThe Story about the 84 Problems Please Support The Show with a Donation See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When the Buddha said, do what is wholesome, avoid what is unwholesome, this wholeness is within every experience. It's just a matter of us being sensitive to it, open to it, and aware of it. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like 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. Thanks for joining us. Today's guest is Steve Hagen, founder and head teacher of the Dharma Field Zen Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Steve is the author of several books on Buddhism. Among them is the brilliant Buddhism Plain and Simple, which was one of the top five

best-selling Buddhism books in the United States. In 2012, Steve updated and revised his first book, How the World Can Be the Way It Is, and published it as Why the World Doesn't Seem to Make Sense, An Inquiry into Science, Philosophy, and Perception. This episode is sponsored by Health IQ. To see if you qualify and get your free health quote, go to healthiq.com slash wolf, or mention the promo code wolf when you talk to a Health IQ agent. And here's the interview with Steve Hagen. Hi Steve, welcome to the show.

Hi, Eric. It's a pleasure to have you on. I read one of your books, Buddhism Plain and Simple, years and years ago. I think probably when it first came out, and I've revisited it a couple times over the years. So it's a real pleasure to get you on and talk with you about it. Yeah, well, I'm very happy to be here. Excellent. Well, let's start like we always talk with you about it. Yeah, well, I'm very happy to be here. Excellent.

Well, let's start like we always do with the parable. There is 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 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. Yeah, well, that's an interesting story. I hadn't heard it before you contacted me.

But of course, we all want to feed the good wolf inside us. The problem, I think, that we have is kind of hard to determine exactly what is good and what is bad. You did outline a few things there, examples of goodness and what is bad, but this isn't so easily discerned. There's an interesting Taoist story of a Chinese farmer, a wise Chinese farmer, and one day his horse runs off. Actually, this is in my book, Buddhism Plain and Simple. His horse runs off and his neighbor comes to console him that he lost his horse. But the farmer said, well, who can say what's good or bad? And the next day, the horse comes back bringing some other horses with her. And now the neighbor comes to congratulate the farmer on his good luck and the farmer says who can say

what's good or bad and it goes on like this the next day the farmer's son breaks his leg trying to break one of the horses and uh the neighbor says well you know commiserating with with the man and uh uh but the farmer just saying, who can say what's good or bad? The next day, the army's coming through, conscripting young men for the army, and they pass over his son because he's got a broken leg. And so it just goes on like this. Who can say what's good or bad? I've heard this story told by people saying the farmer just says maybe, maybe good, maybe bad. But I think it's a little bit more powerful when we get down to what he's saying there. Who can say?

Who can say what's good or bad? I always think of those buildings in New York back in 2001 when the planes flew into the buildings. And, of course, we would all say that this is bad. But, of course, to the people who flew the planes in, they probably thought they were doing something good. And we can find all heads of one of the networks about giving so much airspace to Donald Trump. And he said, well, you know, this might not be good for the nation, but it's good for us, he said. And, you know, so here we are, good and bad, and pretty difficult to discern. And I listened to a couple of your other interviews that you did, and I noticed one person, it was Sean Carroll, very interesting fellow.

I really, you know, like him and what he had to say. But he observed correctly, I would say, that it's hard to be objective in terms of determining what's good or bad. And I would agree with that, except there is a way of, without expecting to arrive at some kind of objective view of good or bad, there is a way of viewing this that can actually get us out of our confusion. And rather than casting it in good and bad, if we just simply look at it in terms of wholeness and what is unwholesome. And this brings us, you know, there's a teaching in the Dhammapada where the Buddha said, he just simply put it as do what is wholesome, avoid what is unwholesome. And he said, purify your own mind. And then he said, this is what the awakened teach. There it is unwholesome. And he said, purify your own mind. And then he said, this is what the awakened teach. There it is in a nutshell. Do what is wholesome, avoid what is unwholesome. In Zen, we have the pure precepts, which my teacher used to express

them in this way. It's just simply do what is wholesome, avoid what is unwholesome, consider the welfare of everyone in everything you do. That's a way that helps us to avoid any kind of one-on-one confrontation between good and bad, which I think anyone, if you stand back and look at it and separate yourself from your own attached views, can see that, well, it's hard to say that that itself is good. Yeah. To have that duality. Exactly. Another thing that you wrote talking about the Buddha's teachings, one of the things you said was that when Buddha was asked to sum up his teachings in a single word, he

said awareness. Yeah. Not awareness of something in particular, but awareness itself. Can you talk to me about that difference between being aware of, say, like the color of the wall or the sounds that I'm hearing and being aware or awareness itself? Yeah, normally we're so used to, we're highly conceptual beings. And so we immediately conceptualize our experience and see things in terms of form and color and also for ways in which feeling and thought get mixed in with all of that. But this is

awareness of objects, awareness of the conceptual. And pure awareness is just simply that. It's not formed in any way whatsoever. This is what I think the Buddha was speaking of there. It's not formed in any way whatsoever. This is what I think the Buddha was speaking of there. It isn't that you're focused on something else. With that kind of a focus, you're also having a strong sense of self at the same time. But just simply to be aware of, tune in to, settle down with the actual raw experience of this moment. And that's kind of a general awareness.

And I would refer to this as perception. And it's not conceptual at all. The conceptual is something where we try to describe what it is we're experiencing. We feel like we have to say something about it, but we actually can't describe the actual immediate direct experience of the moment. It's like tasting orange juice. You know, we know it immediately, but it's not a concept. It's not an idea. It's like tasting orange juice. We know it immediately, but it's not a concept. It's not an idea. It's a direct experience. And there's no way to describe it. If you had never tasted orange juice, there's no way I could describe it to you so that you would taste it. This is something that has to be done directly. And so awareness like that, just simply aware of what is the immediate, direct, unformed experience.

In a different book, you refer to perception as knowledge and conception as belief. That's kind of what it boils down to. And we confuse what we believe with knowledge. This has been an ancient problem, goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks and probably before that. How do we parse out belief from knowledge? And again, the problem that we have is because we're so caught up in the conceptual and we're not paying much attention at all to the perceptual or to immediate direct awareness. Right now, I'm just finishing another book where I get into this rather heavily and really spell it out in quite a bit of detail.

And so what we're talking about here when we say perception versus conception is perception being I am present in the current moment. I'm here now. As you said, I'm just experiencing the raw sensations that are coming from my perception without categorizing them, putting them into concepts, labeling them, judging them as good or as bad. I'm just simply aware to them. Is that a way to sum it up? Well, actually, what you just described is still conceptual. And mainly because you referenced everything in terms of I, me, and my perception. Strictly speaking, with pure awareness, there's no such thing as my perception. There's just perception. Once we get to my perception, now it's conceptualized.

perception. Once we get to my perception, now it's conceptualized. And I'm formed, and then there's something else out there formed as well. And so pure perception, it's a very subtle thing, but we're always experiencing it. It's impossible not to experience it. It's with every waking moment of our life. Well, more than that. It's just continuously with us. It's just that the gap between that and the conceptualizing is almost non-existent for most of us. Right. Most of us, we're so quick with the conceptualizing

that we don't even realize that there is any distinction here to be made. uh that we don't even realize that there is any distinction here to be made you know and and we and we also uh intensify that with uh just the way we talk like i'm sitting here in front of a microphone now and i i might say something like i perceive the microphone uh well that's how we would normally talk i would never say that well i just did but did, but I would never. I realize that the microphone is something conceived by me. It's a conceptual construct. And there's nothing wrong with that. I also don't mean to set out one against the other, like perception is good and conception is bad. We need the conceptual. But it's just that we can't arrive at truth that way. Truth doesn't go in the concept.

But we can see it directly, and we omit that. We overlook it simply because we so quickly wrap everything into a conceptual construct, and we miss the actual immediate direct experience that we know from moment to moment all the time. that we know from moment to moment all the time. Is that part of what you would say meditation helps to do, is to allow us to get some gap between that perception and the conception? Yeah, well, that's what the meditation is. That's how we start out. We tune into and settle down. It's quieting the mind, settling down to what the actual experience of the moment is

without adding anything to it. And at some point, we can start to become more discerning and realize how much we are adding to the experience of the moment, how much we're explaining to ourselves or just assuming in a conceptual way. And we're constantly acting out of that and not really tuned into what the pure experience is. So the meditation is just simply settling down in the actual perceptual experience. This episode is sponsored by Health IQ. This episode is sponsored by Health IQ. Health IQ is an insurance company that uses science and data to help you get lower rates on life insurance if you're health conscious. If you're a runner or a cyclist, if you do strength training, vegetarian or vegan, Health IQ can help you to get a lower rate on your life insurance. Health IQ can save you up to 33% because physically active people

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Oh, it's not rare at all. I was going to say different people have different thoughts on that. You have to train for so many lifetimes before this could happen. Yeah, yeah. Well, actually, enlightenment is with us all the time. It's just that we're never tuned into it. It's actually our true state. If we would just settle down and not play with so many different things, or at least if we would start to recognize what we're doing, and so we don't allow ourselves to get emotionally caught up with too many things, forming attachments, all of that. The enlightenment is right there. But with that, it's really the perception itself. It's just that with enlightenment, we've kind of brought in the element of understanding, knowing, realizing what is taking place.

But of course, people could easily interpret what I just said as bringing in the conceptual now. That wouldn't be enlightenment because the enlightenment is the actual perceptual itself. But it is knowing reality. And it isn't something foreign to us because we actually all know reality. You could not not know reality. It's all we ever experience. It's just that we, in conceptualizing it or attempting to, we go with that with all the various things that we form, including ourselves, and pay virtually no attention to what is actually taking place, what is actually happening. So let's go back to that idea of self for a minute. You're talking about the Buddhist conception of

no self. And one of the ways that you describe it in the book that I think is great, well, actually, I guess the Buddha described it, and you're just passing it on, but what we call a person the Buddha referredha referred to simply as stream yeah what does that mean well it's it's just that the actual moment uh experience of the moment is stream it is uh nothing is holding still there's nothing persisting a self would have to be something that doesn't change and if we look carefully at the experience, moment by moment, there isn't anything that doesn't change. Everything within the experience, all thought, feeling, objects, everything appears to be coming and going. The Buddha described himself, the term he used to refer to himself, rather than saying me or I, he used the term Tathagata, which literally means coming and going thus.

And what he meant by that is that the experience is nothing but this coming and going, just as we find it. And so that's what he's referring to there, rather than saying I or me, which is a mistaken view of that, well, I am something here that's persisting from moment to moment. We talk about, well, when I was five or six or whatever, but it's still me. We have this idea that there's some element here that's persisting from moment to moment. But if you look carefully at your experience, you realize you'll never find that thing. That's just a conceptual construct that we live by. If we're tuned into the actual

perceptual experience, it appears as continuous flux and change, but there's actually nothing changing there. And describing the idea of stream a little bit, you give the analogy of a book, you know, the book that you were writing. Could you share that analogy? Because I think it's a very helpful way to think of this idea of everything sort of being in flux and also it being really difficult to determine where to draw a line that this thing begins and this thing ends that's what the conceptualizing is is that where we do draw the lines and these could be very functional and useful again i as i mentioned earlier there's nothing wrong with conceptualizing we need we need to conceptualize but if we look very carefully at the experience, though, you'll see that there's actually no line, no border, no boundary that we can actually discern beyond the conceptual.

So in other words, the actual perceptual experience doesn't give us any boundaries like that. And this is something we can even notice if we really tune in. I like an experience I once had lying in my tent at night and listening in the deep wood there in the distance was an owl. And in an unpredictable way, I never knew when he was going to hoot next, but just lying there in the tent and listening. And I noticed that either the hoot was hooting or it wasn't. And it was like, even though it seems like now there's a hoot and now there isn't. So it would seem that there would have to be a boundary there. And yet just lying there really tuned into it and focusing on it, you can't really find that.

And that's getting in with the perceptual experience, just noting very carefully. So there's nothing really bounded at all, though our experience certainly appears that way. And we don't deny the appearances, and we don't ignore the appearances. It's very important that we tune into these things. But we do make the mistake of thinking that the way things appear to be bounded and separated from other things, that's actually more of a mental construct than an actual reality, an ultimate reality. It's an apparent reality. Call it smaller reality. Or a friend of mine once used the term senality it's how things seem to be and i don't deny that yeah the analogy that you used um about a book was you you were saying you know how how do i tell this book is a as a distinct

thing i mean on one hand here it is in my hand, but, you know, the paper came from a tree. So is the tree, you know, is the paper part of the book? Is the tree part of the book? Is the water that came down to make the tree? Is the fact that you were taught by somebody in order to be able to write that book, you know? And that person was taught by somebody. And so that all these things flow into each other in a way. And again, on one hand, it's easy to say, this is the book. You can hold it in your hand. But at the same time, it's also not just that. It's everything that had to happen.

All the events that occurred all along the way until that thing comes. And so, and that's the idea of, to some extent, when you don't put a conception on something, you are able to see that unfolding. Yeah, yeah. And you can realize that within any small sphere or object or whatever that we find ourselves in, everything is there. Everything comes together with it. Totality is there everything comes together uh with it totality is there and this brings us back to to wholeness again uh which i talked about at the very beginning i'm talking about the two wolves and uh uh if we look carefully this wholeness when the buddha said do what is wholesome avoid what is unwholesome uh this wholeness is within every experience. It's just a matter of us being sensitive to it, open to it, and aware of it. And we can also see the divided and fractured

and all of that, the unwholesome, those things that appear to be unwhole. And we honor that, we respect that. But if we look carefully, we realize that these are not two different things. But if we look carefully, we realize that these are not two different things. This world ultimately is without such boundaries. But they are apparent. They are there in the conceptual form. So we have to honor that. Right. It's sort of part of what makes life functional in the way that it is, is being able to do that.

But it's, as you said, it's not the only way to see things or necessarily the bottom line truth of it. And I always think that's interesting. It's kind of like the self, no self question, because on one hand, when that comes up, and this was my reaction for a long time was like, well, that's ridiculous. Of course, there's a self. Here I am, right? And so on one hand, in a relative sense, right? Yes, there, you know, I am here and I am, you know, doing these things. But then at a deeper level, at a different level, it's, you know, it's more what you've talked about. It's the stream. It's the everything moves together as one thing. Yeah. You can't pick out that individuated thing, you know, myself. can't pick out that individuated thing, you know, myself. And we actually don't use the term no self because that's kind of going to an extreme. Just as we would avoid using the term self in

terms of grasping anything or thinking we've gotten hold of something by using the term self, we also avoid grasping at the other extreme, which is that there's no self. We tend to speak of it more as that we just simply don't find a self. We tend to speak of it more as that we just simply don't find a self. And again, a self meaning that thing that doesn't change. This is what we don't find in our experience. So it's not that there's no such thing as a self or whatever. It's just that, you know, what are you going to point to? We do talk about big self with totality. Yeah, and it's always thus. But that's not an object. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

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One of the things that you reference and you say is that picking and choosing is the mind's worst disease. Yeah. Talk about what you're getting at there. Yeah, that's from the Xin Xing Ming early Zen poem is the mind's worst disease. Yeah. Talk about what you're getting at there. Yeah, that's from the Xinqing Ming early Zen poem by the third patriarch of Zen in China. He starts out by saying, the great way is not difficult.

There's nothing it prefers. It's often translated as, for those who have no preferences. But if you look at the Chinese, it's closer to saying that the great way itself is without preference so in our conceptualizing mind where we divide things out and now we start evaluating them some things we think are good and some are bad and we and some things we want some things we don't want and And we start picking and choosing.

And Sun Tsang, the author of that piece, Sun Ching Ming, he says that this is the mind's worst disease. And it leaves us, we easily get caught up in a lot of frustrating and difficult situations or even terrifying and frightening and painful. difficult situations or even terrifying and frightening and painful. Whereas if we look at the larger picture, the larger experience of what is always being experienced, we can learn not to get caught up in these distinctions. We need to honor them with their distinctions, but we don't need to let them carry us away. The other thing you talk about, I think, similar to choosing or preferring this or preferring that, you talk often about the idea of that our mind leans a certain way. Explain that. This is the best way really to get in touch

with the awakened mind, which is right there with you always. But again, we ignore it. Once we wake up, our minds are leaning. And it has to do with that preference again that I was just talking about, where the great way doesn't have any preferences. And to the extent that we're not picking and choosing, the mind isn't leaning. So it's a matter of really getting in touch with that, noticing your own mind. You can feel the pull. You can feel the attachment or the aversion that might be going on within your mind. Rejecting, shunning one thing or another or a person or whatever else and being drawn toward another. When you allow yourself to act out of that rather than out of the whole. In Buddhism Plain and Simple, I talk about this as really what we can do.

It's called the mind that knows everything. And, of course, in terms of the conceptual, we can't know everything. It's just too much. And it's just a sheer impossibility. But we can do that which is equivalent, which is knowing the whole. But we can do that which is equivalent, which is knowing the whole. And this is this matter of being aware in any given moment, particularly when you're interacting with others. Say, if you can detect some pull of your mind, you're trying to bring about certain results or certain ends and this sort of thing.

This is what the Buddha meant by avoid what is unwholesome. Just see if you can stay away from this sort of thing. This is what the Buddha meant by avoid what is unwholesome. Just see if you can stay away from this sort of thing. And to the extent that we can do this, our own mind now doesn't lean. It's not leaning toward this. The disposition of mind isn't constantly shifting like that. And this is characteristic of an awakened mind or a mind of totality and wholeness and understanding. And so that is a very easy thing to say. Easy to say, yeah. Right? It's a lifetime of practice.

A lifetime of practice, yeah, exactly. But this is what most distinguishes a Buddha or an awakened person. A Buddha is a person, a human being who's awake. But this is what most distinguishes one who's awake from one who's caught up in confusion. Is this matter of, well, this disposition of mind, the leaning of mind. The one who's awake, the mind doesn't lean. Or their inclination of mind is, you could say, zero. It's vertical. It's not leaning. And that's characteristic of an awakened mind.

And you would say, I think, putting words in your mouth, that we can't make our mind go this direction or that direction or not lean or yank it back up straight or push it back in. What we can do is see that our mind is leaning and come back to trying to be awake here and now. That is the best way to get to the point where we have a mind that doesn't lean is simply to see that it's leaning versus judging it pushing it forcing it by the same token and we also don't try to make it not lean that doesn't work that's more leaning actually so it's just it is simply a matter of seeing and and when i when i'm writing uh that word seeing this is when i'll italicize the word to distinguish it from our ordinary seeing where we're seeing an object here what

we're seeing is totality or the mind of totality and uh in the way in which things might be entering into it that you know the conceptual the constructs the the inclinations and this sort of thing we can see that and um and then we can stop or we can learn to do that that that takes some time but the way the way that we learn it too is is through just acquaintance with this tuning into it and becoming aware of what's going on we start to realize all the pain and confusion and anger and anxiety and, you know, that go along with that. And, you know, the hatred and all of that. The mind then can become more supple and open and magnanimous and tolerant.

And that's kind of the promise of learning to live without being caught by your inclinations. Yeah. So we're near the end of our time here. I'd love to have you tell the story about the 84 problems. Oh, yes. Sometimes people get a little confused about this. But it's about a man who heard of the Buddhadha his teachings and heard that he was a wise man and all of this and the man thought well you know i'm gonna go talk with him i have certain problems here that maybe he can help me with and so the man went to see the buddha and the buddha patiently sat and listened to him and and the man when it turned out he was a farmer, like the wise Chinese farmer, but this guy maybe wasn't that man. But he said, you know, I'm a farmer and I like farming, but sometimes, you know, it rains too much or it doesn't rain enough and my crops fail or I don't get the yields I want.

And the Buddha's listening. And the man says, you know, I'm married and I have a wife. She's a good wife. I love her, but sometimes she nags me too much. And he says, I have kids and they're great kids, but sometimes they don't show me enough respect. Anyway, the guy's just going on like this, like any of us could. We all have difficulties and problems in our life. And that's what the Buddha said. I can't help you.

And I said, well, what do you mean? He said, I thought you were a great teacher. And he said, well, we all have problems, the Buddha said. And he said, as a matter of fact, 83 problems. We all have 83. Sometimes people get hung up on the number, but it just means a lot of problems. And then the Buddha said, well, maybe you can solve one of them. But if you do, there'll be another one just pops right back in its place.

And no matter what, it's always 83. You always have just going to be problems is what he's saying. And a man just kind of kind of blew up at him and i said what good is your is your teaching he said then and the buddha said well maybe it'll help you with the 84th problem the 84th problem to the man and he said what's that and the buddha said well you don't want to have any problems and uh and this is what we can learn to do it isn't like uh you know we go to this heavenly place or whatever where everything is just hunky-dory and and wonderful from then on that's just not reality it's not it's not life uh it'll never be that way but what we can learn to

do is to not be and this this is now appealing to this mind of totality, this wholesome mind, the mind of the whole, as opposed to the splintered mind and the divided mind. We can learn to, uh, live in this space without being tossed about, um, you know, and, and so this is what the Buddha, uh, promised. This is what he teaches. This is what he helps us with. Yeah. I love that idea that we all have problems and that they're not going, they're not going away. Yeah. And I think that's just such a great thing to recognize. And then realizing that most of the suffering comes from us wanting there to be no problems. I just think it's such a profound, profound story. It's a little different than Jay-Z's song, 99 Problems, and beep, ain't one.

But that'll be for the more modern listeners, unless you're a big Jay-Z fan, which I don't think so. No, I really don't know what you're talking about there, but I... I know, I couldn't resist it. But I think I got the image, though. It's a hip-hop star, a rap star. Well, Steve, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. I really appreciated talking with you. I've appreciated your writing over the years, so it was a real pleasure. Yeah, well, thank you, Eric. It was good to be here. Okay. Take care. You too. Bye. Bye now. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support.

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