The One You Feed - The Path to Inexplicable Joy: How Self-Friendship Can Change Everything with Susan Piver

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

In this episode, Susan Piver discusses the path to inexplicable joy and how self-friendship can change everything. She shares this powerful statement, “I can’t defeat my enemies, but I can strengthen my friends,” which offers a different kind of hope that shifts our focus from fighting battles we can’t win, to caring for the people and communities closest to us. Susan shares what real power looks like, not dominance, but care, and also shares five practical ways to cultivate personal power in everyday life. This is an episode about moving from overwhelm to meaningful action. One friendship, one moment of care at a time.Feeling overwhelmed, even by the good things in your life?Check out Overwhelm is Optional — a 4-week email course that helps you feel calmer and more grounded without needing to do less. In under 10 minutes a day, you’ll learn simple mindset shifts (called “Still Points”) you can use right inside the life you already have. Sign up here for only $29!Key Takeaways:Personal empowerment and its significance in daily life.The practice of mindfulness and its role in self-awareness.Exploration of Buddhist teachings, particularly the Heart Sutra.The concept of interconnectedness and its implications for personal and communal well-being.The parable of the two wolves and its relevance to nurturing positive qualities.The importance of self-care and creating a supportive physical environment.Practical steps for cultivating personal power and confidence.The relationship between meditation and self-acceptance.The distinction between relative and absolute views in understanding existence.The role of compassion in personal growth and community connection.If you enjoyed this conversation with Susan Piver, check out these other episodes:How to Discover Your Way of Being Through the Enneagram with Susan PiverThe Four Noble Truths of Love with Susan Piver (2021)Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Life: Finding Ease and Clarity with Charlie GilkeyFor full show notes, click here!Connect with the show:Follow us on YouTube: @TheOneYouFeedPodSubscribe on Apple Podcasts or SpotifyFollow us on InstagramSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Meditation is a way of making friends with yourself, seeing how your mind works, how your heart works. It's not like trying to go piece out to some other place. It's about being here as you are. 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 can't defeat my enemies, but I can strengthen my friends. That simple idea from Susan Piver really helped me rethink a question that I think a lot of us are grappling with.

When the world feels impossible to change, what can we do? In today's world, it offers a different kind of heart. hope, shifting our focus from fighting battles we can't win, to caring for the people and communities closest to us. In our conversation, Susan shares what real power looks like, not dominance, but care. Susan shares five practical ways to cultivate personal power in everyday life. We also talk about her new book, Inexplicable Joy, which explores the Heart Sutra's teaching that nothing exists in isolation.

This is an episode about moving from overwhelmed to meaningful action, one friendship, one moment of care at a time. I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Hi, Susan. Welcome back. Hi, Eric. It's really great to see you again. Nicole did a little calculating, and I think this is the fourth time you've been on the show.

I think we've done three full interviews, and then I think we did a special episode, maybe early in the pandemic, and you came on for a brief appearance in that, if I recall. Wow. So you're up there. I mean, I think there's probably another person or two that has been on that often, but you are in elite company. I will fight them. I'll fight them if I need to.

Bride Nicole and we'll have you on next week and then you'll win. So, yeah, it's pretty easy. She's relatively, I'm not going to say she's cheap because that has a certain connotation. I don't want to give. Nicole can be bribed, is all I'm saying. Good to know. Yes. All right.

So we're going to talk about your latest book, which is called Inexplicable Joy, on the Heart Sutra, which is a key sutra in Buddhism. And particularly in Mahayana Buddhism, which includes both your lineage, which is Tibetan, and the lineage I've studied the most in, which is Zen. Heart Sutras used a lot. So we're going to get into all that in a minute. But I want to start like we always do with the parable. And in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with her grandchild. And they say, in life, there are children. 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's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, they think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, which one wins? And the grandparent 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. I love the question. And the first thing that jumps to my mind is they are the same wolf. There's only one wolf. And there are two sides of one coin.

And without one, you do not have the other. And if you minus the associations that we have to the words good and bad, we have two very powerful energies, both of which can be of great service. in the journey. Yeah, and I think we'll get into that idea that things that seem like they are different are in many ways the same later in the conversation because the Hart Sutra really orients a lot around that core idea. Before we get into that, though, I want to take something from a recent podcast you did, and it was a line that really struck me, and I'd like to talk about it. It comes up in the context of you talking about relating to what's happening in the world out there

today. And you say, I can't defeat my enemies, but I can empower my friends or strengthen my friends. Talk to me about that. I was really struck by it. I appreciate you bringing that up, and I would love to talk to you about it. And if this is too long-winded, feel free to cut it. But in Tibetan Buddhist iconography, this sounds like it doesn't relate, but it does. There are six realms of existence. And just the first three, very briefly, first one is the God realm. and oh that sounds good who doesn't want to be a god and some people say these are psychological states and some say these are places i personally do not know but if you are in the god realm everything goes your way whatever you want you immediately have it you can fly you're young you're beautiful

you're psychic wow it's really great describing me i think pretty clearly young beautiful fly yeah okay what am i thinking right now mr psychic You're thinking how young and beautiful I am. I assume that's what's going on. I mean, that's what's happening to Joe in the control booth over there. Wow, you are psychic. Ridiculous. So the unfortunate part of the God realm is you die a very long and painful death.

Please try to avoid that, Eric. And this next one automatically disqualifies you. I'm sorry, but you don't study the Dharma in the God realm because why? Everything's fine. So, okay, good luck you God. people. Then the next is called the jealous God realm. They're jealous of the gods. They want to be gods and they don't understand why they're not. They're also called warring gods. And this is a realm of constant battle that never ends. There can never be enough, power, money. And the jealous gods

have a lot of resources and they put those resources in the service of taking the resources of others. Have we ever heard of such a thing? Right. in our current situation. So the only thing it matters is winning. And they're not going to wake up either because they're too busy fighting. And then the third, the last one I'll mention is the human realm. And I'm sorry, Eric, but I believe that's where you live and where I live. And this is the best realm because this is the realm where we're most likely to wake up

because we have the right ratio of suffering to ease. If we only had suffering, we would not study the Dharma. We would not be, have the bandwidth. If we only had ease, it would be like, why? But we got both. So how does this relate to your question? With what's going on in the United States and other places in the world, of course, it's horrifying and worse than horrifying even.

It's unthinkable. We are witnessing, one way of looking at it, is a jealous God battle. We are watching the jealous gods fight each other. You have it. I want it. I'm going to take it. I don't care what I have to do. I'm going to lie. I'm going to steal. I'm going to cheat. Those are jealous gods. We cannot fight the jealous gods with human realm weapons, which include things like academia, legislation, logic, relationship skills, verbal skills. That's what we use to fight our battles. But those fall flat in the jealous god realm. They do not play. So as I was thinking about this early in the second term of, I don't even want to call it a president, this horrible person, come and get me. If you're listening, I don't care. That's my opinion, is I cannot defeat my enemies. I can't. I can't defeat the jealous gods, but I can strengthen my friends. I can strengthen the human realm. So that has been my sort of rallying cry. I can't defeat my enemies, but I can strengthen my friends. Throughout this time period. And when I think, how do I defeat my enemies? I'm like, oh, I don't have, I can't. I feel so weak and so small. But when I think, how can I strengthen my friends? I feel bold. I feel brave. I feel strong. I feel empowered because I know how to do that. I'm not saying I'm a great at it. But I know what helps and so do you. Right. We all intuitively know because that that is the thing that I think so many people feel is. that it's overwhelming. And I, you know, I think there are things happening right now in the

country that are really awful. And I believe things like this always happen. If you look at governments and you look at history and you look at king. I mean, this is the jealous God realm, if we want to put it, has been operational, you know, since the start. And so there is a certain sense I have in that, you know, our enemies can't be beaten. There's a, there's a line from the Tao, I recently did a new interpretation of the Tao and in it it says, try to improve the world, I don't think it can be done. And it's a statement that taken too literally I disagree with, meaning like, of course we can improve the world. Like I can do a kind thing right now and it makes the world better. And all the time it's happening. But I think if we look at it from the

perspective of what some of that book was written about, it was written about how to govern. It was written about that. And I think what he was pointing at. is people are always going to fight over power and money and like you can't you're not going to eradicate that anyway the last thing I'll say on that that I really love is there's a song I've been listening to I put it in a recent episode of teaching song and a poem which is a special episode I do each week for the supporters of the show I pick a song I love and the song I love and I know you love music which is why I'm doing this is by a band called Vampire Weekend I don't know if you know them, but their latest song, the last song on their latest record is

called Hope. And the chorus is, you know, I hope you let it go. The enemy's invincible. I hope you let it go. And it's just a beautiful, it's almost like a folk song done by Vampire Weekend because they overproduce everything, right? But at its heart, it is a simple, beautiful folk song. That's wonderful.

And by the way, I loved your conversation with my dear beloved child. Charlie Gilkey about the Dow. That was, I love him and that was a wonderful conversation. I really appreciated it. Oh, thank you. Yeah, Charlie's wonderful. I mean, just a crazy. Yeah, my life is so much better because Charlie has been in it. So is mine. Eight years ago, I was completely overwhelmed. My life was full with good things, a challenging career, two teenage boys, a growing podcast, and a mother who needed care. But I had a persistent feeling of I can't keep doing this. But I valued everything I was doing, and I wasn't willing to let any of them go.

and the advice to do less only made me more overwhelmed. That's when I stumbled into something I now call this still point method, a way of using small moments throughout my day to change not how much I had to do, but how I felt while I was doing it. And so I wanted to build something I wish I'd had eight years ago so you don't have to stumble towards an answer. That something is now here, and it's called overwhelm is optional,

tools for when you can't do less. It's an email course that fits into moments you already have, taking less than 10 minutes total a day. It isn't about doing less. It's about relating differently to what you do. I think it's the most useful tool we've ever built. The launch price is $29. If life is too full, but you still need relief from overwhelm, check out, overwhelm is optional. Go to one you feed.net slash overwhelm.

That's one you feed. I want to move on from that just a slight bit because I want to stay with that podcast episode for a minute because the core idea in the podcast is how do you get more power, but not in the sense of the power we were just talking about, not the jealous God kind of power, but personal power, empowerment, or confidence if you like. And I liked it because A, I think that's a really useful topic that people don't want to use that word. But it's not a word that I struggle with because I came up in a 12-step tradition. And in the second step, right, we talk about finding a higher power. Right. And so for me, that's just always meant like, what are the sources of power I can

draw on in the world and inside myself? The second thing I was struck by, and I'm going to then let you talk about them, is that they were all what I would call behavioral. And, you know, there's a phrase that I use on the show often, sometimes we can't think our way into right action. We have to act our way into right thinking. And this was really a beautiful version of that. So I was wondering if you could run us through briefly the five ways of seeking power kind of outside of the inner work that we do. Yeah, I'd be happy to. And thank you so much for listening and for clearly giving a careful listen. I appreciate that a lot. Yeah, and I don't have a problem with the word power either, although it scares people, and that makes me interested.

Like, it doesn't mean aggression. I don't need to tell you this. It means bravery, courage, confidence, as you said, and spiritual warriorship, even. So we all think, well, if I want to feel confident or powerful or whatever word I use, I have to find it within me. And that's good. But you can create a world from which you you draw power. And that is simpler. So the first step, and I was taught by a Tibetan teacher, so I'm not making them up, is to, what he said was clean up your room, which is one way of saying, sort of order your space.

It doesn't mean have it be perfect or fancy. It means so much, actually. It means care about it. And if you are stepping over piles of things, it affects your mind. And we all have different degrees of order that we like. Some people, just basic is fine. Others, like, got to be really tight. So whatever works for you is fine.

But look at your environment and care for it. That has indescribable impact. Don't take my word for that, you know, or anything. But, and then the second step is to what he said, wear nice clothes, which doesn't mean fancy clothes. I'm wearing a tank top of jeans. I don't know if you can't see me. It means clothes you like that are clean, that you feel good in, that you like the texture. And this, again, is not about fronting.

It's about caring, respecting yourself. and the way you clothe your body. I think he also said the chance that you're going to become, this is a funny way of saying it, the chance that you're going to become enlightened if you wake up and pick up your sweats off the floor and put them on, that chance is diminished. Whether that's true or not, I don't know.

Well, I was reflecting on this with my partner, Ginny, recently, because most of my work is lived in the way you see me right now. It's from about the chest, middle of the chest, up, meaning I could have anything or nothing on my lower body. Like, me too, by the way. Joe is happy that I don't choose that route. But I actually dress for each day of work. I dress.

Not super fancy, but a little bit more than I would on a day that I'm not working. And it's for no one except me. Right? It's 100% only for me because there's something that I think it does from a mind. mindset and to use the word that you used a care perspective, because I'm trying to infuse anything I do related to my work in this project with care. Clearly. And it brings getting ready for the day, it brings to it a sense of ritual, not fancy ritual or swinging smoky things around, but just this is how I do to enter my day. And the idea of ritual is, if you know,

very, very important, and it has to be heartfelt and done for yourself, which it is, as you just said. And it's with the very simple, ordinary things of everyday life. These things are magic. They have magic. And we skate over that, you know, for obvious reasons. No one tells us. But there's living quality to the place you live.

There's a living quality to the things. what happens when you put on certain clothes and then the third step is clearly there's a living quality to what you put in your pie hole what you eat so this third step is eat good food now that's a very loaded statement in our culture it doesn't mean be a vegan or give up gluten or if you want to do those things that's fine but it means again care about the quality of what you eat, the preparation and the storing and the cleaning, these are the ordinary things of our life, where we live, what we wear, and what we eat. And when you bring your heart to it, not like in just this very simple way by caring. And I have a little anecdote about caring. I'd

love to share with you if we have time. Please. Your world starts to come alive. Yep. And you draw confidence from this respect that you have shown. Yeah. One of the things that I, in a program I've taught over the years, talk about is the Zen concept of Samu. I've never heard of that. What is that? It's basically like you approach

you pick a, you approach your chores as sacred essentially. You give them your full attention and your care. So what I, in my course I do is I say pick an everyday activity that you do. One thing. Like for me, it's washing dishes.

And try, during that period to give it all, A, my attention, what does it feel like, what does it sound like, what's the soap like, what's the temperature of the water, just be present and do it with care. And the way it was explained to me is it's a bridge between seated meditation and the hustle and bustle of everyday life. It's sort of an in-between place that you can take the qualities of care and practice, that you might be nurturing while you sit there. And maybe you're not ready to imbue them into every

aspect of your life yet, because who is? But in the middle there sits this Samu, this work practice. That's very interesting. And makes total sense to me. And it's actually the point of meditation. It's not to be, the point of meditation, as far as I can see, is not to be good at meditating because who cares if you're the world's best breath follower it doesn't matter no one's good at it i'm not going to win that i'll be at the back of the line with you not winning and it doesn't matter if you win it's like who cares what good to that means who cares what what matters is can you work with your mind by practicing doing so so that you can work with it when your meditation is over.

That's where it counts. Yeah. It doesn't. So I'm in full agreement with you. And this little anecdote is illustrative of that, I think. This was long ago, maybe 20 years ago, I was in New York City with my husband, and we were going to visit a neighbor, this woman, a peer of his parents. I'm sure she's passed away, so I will say her name, who hadn't seen in many years.

But she grew up next, he grew up next door to her in a very fancy suburb of Boston. And now she was living in the East Village. So I wonder how that happened. So we're going to visit her, Marion Miller, who had, by which, the name by which he knew her, had become Marian Miller-Minooski. And she lived near Baselka's, if you know New York City, you know what I'm talking about. So we're going to visit her, and she lives in this very humble building. We walk up five flights of stairs.

There's no elevator. and we knock on the door and who opens but like central casting old lady you know her hair was in kind of a messy bun gray hair house dress whatever that is and we oh hi Marianne how are you blah blah blah we go in we sit down on our couch it's a very simple home the things look kind of threadbare

there's like a shelf with chotchkes on it just knick necks like little dolls and stuff like that And we just talk a little bit, how are you, this and that. And she goes to the kitchen to get us tea and cookies. And as I'm sitting there, I'm like, wait a minute, where am I? Something going on here. Because it seemed like it was glowing. And I felt, the felt sense I had was, I'm in a palace.

And I better sit up straight. and you know mind my manners and not that it was and this is before she brought the marijuana cookies out of the kitchen exactly well before so everything's very humble and then she comes out with the tea it's like Lipton's oh this delicious there's like Oreos or something oh these are great so everything became heightened and then we had normal chitch chat about relatives and friends and then we left. And I'm like, what the hell? Turned out that she had become a Zen practitioner long ago. A serious Zen practitioner. And my supposition is that she had put her heart into everything she owned by caring for these things. If something was ripped, she bended it.

Something was broken. She repaired it. If something went on a shelf, she dusted it before she put it back. I mean, I'm making that up. But it felt like her heart had seeped into it. to the environment and was glowing back at me and I could feel it or something I made this up, but that's what I thought. And so that's the vibe is when you put your heart into your world, your heart holds you and that's and gives you energy and confidence and that is power. That's a beautiful story. All right, we've gone through the first three.

What's number four? This one's funny. spend less time with people who you don't like and more time with people who you do like or people who like you or try not to spend not that much time of people who don't like you and try to spend extra time with people who do and that sounds very obvious on one hand and we all have people in our lives that we don't like or don't like us and we don't have a choice that are your boss or your relative or something but as much as you can spend time with people who when you look back at yourself through their eyes you see

someone wonderful as opposed to the opposite. Of course, we can, it doesn't need explaining that we know why that is helpful and gives a sense of power. And then the final one is to spend time in the natural world as best you can. I'm in a city, but I go swimming every morning in a spring fed pool. It's an aquifer. It's in the middle of the city, but it's an extraordinary experience of being in the natural world. And the reason perhaps that that is so powerful is you see there's an order to things. You see there's something going on that includes you but doesn't have anything to do with you. And it is not questioning itself. And when you sit in that unquestioned, something wakes up in you that is important. That's what I think. What do you think? Does that happen

for you? Yeah, there is something definitely healing about the natural world, I think. And I think it is that It's a lot of things. But one of them that is always salient to me is it is outside the jealous God realm. It is just going on and doing its thing. It doesn't care who's president. Now, I'm not saying that policy doesn't affect nature because it does. But nature kind of just on its own, it just does, as you said, it just does its thing. It is unconcerned with all of that.

And it just plays something out. And it's not benign, by the way. It's not always benign. No, no, no. It has, it contains, the universe contains the universe. So I'm not saying it's all like, go outside and your life will be good and kittens and balloons. No, no, I mean, nature can be ruthless. I feel it's trying to eject us right now for a very good reason.

I'm reading a fascinating book called The Light Eaters. It's all about plant intelligence. And it is freaking me out in a good way. But all of a sudden I'm like, hang on. Plants can, they're just far more intelligent than we think. What is the last word? The light what? The light eaters.

Great. And it starts with this premise that we all sort of know but don't think about, which is that if there was not a plant, there'd be nothing in the way that we know life, right? Because they do two things that had to happen for life as we know it to evolve. And one is they take sunlight and they take water and they make glucose out of it. They make the fuel that fuels every living thing. Including our brains. And as a byproduct of that, they output oxygen.

Our planet was entirely a carbon dioxide mess. No living creatures that we know them could have lived in the earth at one point. But as plants proliferated, they oxygenated the entire environment. So every single plant that you see is doing this miracle thing all the time, just by itself, just going about its business, that made all of life as we know it possible. And I just love thinking about that. That is beautiful. I get why you say that. Okay. So I don't go down a rabbit hole of talking about what plants can do, although maybe I'll do an episode on plants.

At least listen to an episode of all time, but nonetheless. So your latest book is called Inexplicable Joy, and it's about the Heart Sutra. But before we even get to that, I want to ask a question because there's a phrase at the end of it. And I think this is intended as the first book in a series. And that, phrase is Buddhism beyond belief. So I would love to have you talk about what that phrase means to you and why you're choosing to create a series of books around it. It must be a really important idea to you to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for asking. Yeah, Buddhism beyond belief, which is very different than Buddhism without belief. So in the Tibetan traditions that I studied in, one reason that I like that phrase, first of all, it's a play on words. I think

it's cute. Yeah. The second is on some level, and the Heart Suture really points to this, all beliefs, all are considered obstacles on the path. So what is beyond beliefs? What is it? You know, that's a rhetorical question, but I like the idea of, because in most spiritual traditions, there's core beliefs.

And if you hold them, you know, depending. on the tradition, you get an A. Or if you don't, you know, you get kicked out. But here, and there's certainly essential teachings, obviously, as you and I both know, but has nothing to do with belief. At the same time, the Buddha Dharma, for me, talks about, you know, what else you got? You know, no beliefs? Okay, well, what else you got?

A lot. A lot. So what happens when we let go of our beliefs? It's scary. That's the first thing that happens. And then the second thing that happens is you believe you should let go of your beliefs. Okay, well, you're back where you started. And then you believe, well, I shouldn't do that.

Now you're back again. So there's this very profound kind of letting go that I understand in some moments and really don't understand in many more moments. But it's the beyond that is of great interest. Yeah, I resonate with that. And we're going to get more into that as we go into the Heart Sutra. So tell us what the Heart Sutra is before we dive into it. Well, as you mentioned earlier, it's a central text in the Mahayana tradition and in the Vajuriana traditions that I've studied in as well, in a different way,

but not unimportant at all. So the Heart Sutra or Prasna Paramita Sutra, Prasna means wisdom, and Paramita means like transcendent. So it's the wisdom, it's the transcendent Wisdom Sutra. It's been around for some period of time that no one can quite pinpoint. Thousand years, 800 years, all different theories, a long time. Let's just say that. And in the book, I believe I said maybe it's always been here, you know, somehow.

The full version of the Prasna Paramita Sutra is something like 100,000. lines long. Very long. There's another version that's 8,000 lines long. That's long too. And the version that I chant and have chanted almost every day for close to 35 years is a convenient 43 lines long. And then there is a final version that is zero lines long and one syllable. And that syllable is ah.

So that would be the best one to study. probably, but I can't, I don't know how to approach it, so I'm staying with my 43 lines. And, well, anyway, there's so much one could say about it. The version that I do, I do it in English, and the English title is the Sutra of the Heart of Transcendent Knowledge. And the heart here doesn't mean emotion. It means pith. So the heart sutra is the pith of the pith of the pith of the journey. Define that word.

For people who don't know it, pith. P-I-T-H? Yeah. The essence. The essence. Right. So it's saying this is the essence of wisdom. Of transcendent wisdom.

Yeah. Not ordinary wisdom. Yeah. So the version that I'm most familiar with is even shorter than your version. It cuts some things off the front and back, at least in the Zen. And it is, for me, at first glance and at many glances, the most inexplicable thing I would go to Zen and they would chant it and I would be like I do not have the foggiest idea what they are saying here like I knew Buddhism I knew about sort of the four noble truths I knew some of the core teachings this was I mean again I didn't understand it I knew it was central to Buddhism or to certain parts I knew that it must be important because it the Zen centers I went to they were always using it and every service, if that's what we called them. I don't think that's what we call them. But

anyway. Sadna, every sodna, every... Yeah, but I didn't understand it. Really? That's shocking. I'm very sorry. I'm joking because it is inexplicable. Of course. Right. Okay. Yes. That's why the book is called inexplicable joy. Yes. And there's no explanation in there, but... We're not going to explain it because you say pretty clearly, like even after all these years, you can't explain it. And one of the biggest mistakes would be to think you understand. it, but I'd like to explore it a little bit versus try and understand it. In the beginning and end of it, in the version you have, it sets up who the key protagonists, who the people are. And maybe for now, maybe that because it's not in my version, I'm less interested in that. But can you tell

me what a couple of the key ideas are in the sutra itself? It's very easy to do that because it's in four lines. Form is emptiness. Emptiness also is form. Emptiness is no other than form. Form is no other than emptiness. That's the main idea. Okay.

That means a lot to me today. That means a lot to me. Can you say more? Because I've explored what is meant by form and emptiness. And I guess here's the way I would say it that is most, applicable. And I'm trying to keep this at a certain level for people who are non-Buddhist without getting really too far down the rabbit hole is that one of the things that Zen talks a lot about is a relative and an absolute view of the world, right? And the absolute view of the world

is sort of, I will just, for ease of sake, the enlightened version. It's where you see the totality of everything. You see the wholeness of everything. You see in one sense the perfection of everything. That is a view. That is one view. The other is the relative, which is the day-to-day stuff that we as humans deal with. I'm Eric Zimmer. I have a particular identity. If I hit myself in the head, I feel it, you don't feel it, all that, that sort of thing. And what Zen says is to hold either of those beliefs on their own is to miss it, right? That it's actually seen being able to hold and move between both of those, and then ultimately seeing that it's the same thing. And that's what form and emptiness is pointing to, in a sense, for me, it's pointing to

there are all the things of the world in the way that we define them and know them, form. And then there is emptiness, which is, we can talk about what that means, but it's closer to that sort of absolute view of the oneness and the perfection of everything and that they are the same as each other yes well to me i mean i i i have been taught something very similar yeah and the absolute i mean i don't live in an absolute world i i'm still a very relative person with relative you know concerns uh but those concerns those my the relative is where i have to start at then I don't know what's going to happen even after 35 years so the form by the way and this may be rabbit holy so feel free to let me know is the first of what are called the

five scondas or heaps five things that we think are real but they're not they're empty of independent nature. They're not empty of existence, because there you are, here I am, but they don't exist independently. You didn't get here, we were saying, let's talk about emptiness. It doesn't mean

null or void. It means almost the opposite. I mean, you didn't get here in a spaceship. I didn't get here in a spaceship. Parents, grandparents, they ate particular sandwiches. If they'd eaten a different sandwich, maybe I'd be different. And they went

this country and then that happened and here I am. Now I'm a culmination of that and I would not be here without those things. So emptiness means empty of independent nature and it could just as easily be expressed as fullness completely and totally full, no different. So nonetheless, form is emptiness means there is no form that didn't come from something interconnected. And the scondas are heaps, as they're called, are form, feeling, perception, formation, which is different than form, and consciousness. These are the five things that we think comprise us, and as far as I can tell, I believe they do, but the sutra is saying, think again.

So it starts with form is emptiness. In the same way, the sutra goes on, feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness are emptiness. And then it goes on and says, oh, you think this is real? No. You think that's real? No. And there are, I think, 37 nos there. And even thinking they don't exist is no. I want to try and ground this for a second. And then I sort of want to move on to some other aspects of the book. I think what is important about this idea, at least for me on a simpler level, is exactly what you're saying, that nothing exists. on its own, everything exists in relationship to something else.

And that when we try and isolate something on its own, that can become problematic. It is a way of looking at certain things, but it misses the bigger picture. And when we do that with ourselves, when we think that we are a separate, independent existence that isn't a result of all the causes, conditions, and all the things around us, then we also, I think, can get in trouble. And to tie this back to what we talked about with power earlier, one view of this is that since we are not separate, we are in relation to everything, the way that we are in relation to our space, to our clothes, to the people around us, to nature, to the food that we

eat is profoundly important because it all ties. together. The last thing I'll say on emptiness is the way I've heard it explained also sometimes is it's everything all at once, right? It's basically everything when you take out the dividers, which is, you know, you can just imagine if you didn't see things as separate, but you saw them the way they all came together, you would see something resembling the view of emptiness. That sounds right to me. And again, in that way, it could be. called fullness. That's equally as accurate. And going back to the relative and absolute for a moment, this is a sutra on absolute compassion. It's the main figure who's actually teaching

is not the Buddha. It's somebody named Avalo Kiteshvara, who's the bodhisattva of compassion. I'm glad you said it, not me. That's who's giving the teaching. Pardon me? I'm glad you pronounced it not me because I tend to butcher words like that. So, well, it took me about six years. to figure out how to say it. So it's about compassion. But how is this about compassion? So on the relative plane, there's relative compassion in absolute. Relative is like, let me try to be kind.

Let me be compassionate. Let me care about all the things you just listed. But on the absolute level, absolute compassion is removing all the boundaries. I suppose it must include collapsing the space-time continuum in some way to feel the oneness, not to believe the oneness, not to go, oh, that sounds like a reasonable theory, but to dwell within it.

Yeah. Absolute compassion. Yep. So emptiness is synonymous with absolute compassion, which can be a little surprising. That's a beautiful place to wrap up that discussion.

I want to move on to some other things that you say in the book that I think I'd like to touch on, that aren't directly about the Heart Sutra. And one of them is you say it's helpful to consider that mindfulness is not just a self-improvement tactic, but a gateway to seeing beyond all such improvements. Tell me what you mean by that.

The next book in the series, by the way, is going to be called Inexplicable Magic. And it's about the practice of meditation, which is usually deployed as a technique for fixing something. and it does fix things. Science has proven it, so thank you. But when you look at your practice as a way of fixing something, you're sort of starting with the assumption that something is broken. And, yeah, countless things are broken in me and others, so no argument with that, and it needs fixing.

Okay. Depression, sleeplessness, anxiety, meditation can help. I'm pretty sure that when meditation was first taught by the Buddha, you know, 5,000 years ago or whatever, no, 2,500 years ago, he didn't say this will make you a better leader. He said, this will help you wake up. And the foundation of meditation as a spiritual practice rather than a technique is you're not broken. You're whole. You're worthy. You're full. You're complete.

and this practice can reveal that. So it starts from the opposite end of the spectrum. There's a problem here, let's fix it, to actually, there's no problem. Who you are is whole, and ideas to the contrary are signs of confusion. And meditation is a way of participating in that wholeness. Meditation is a way of making friends with yourself, seeing how your mind works, how your heart works. It's not like trying to go piece out to some other place. It's about being here as you are, lowering the wall around your heart to sit with yourself as you are without trying

to fix or noticing that you're trying to fix and going, okay, well, I guess that's what I'm doing right now. But that softening towards self has enormous implication because without it, there is no compassion for others. As I'm sure you know, all the compassion practices begin with extending loving kindness to yourself, extend compassion to yourself, and go from there. That's not an accident. So it opens your heart. That's why my online community is called the Open Heart Project. It opens your heart, and that is profound. It turns you into who you already are. I think that's beautiful. I'm reading an obscure Zen text by Zen Master Dogen.

Everything he writes is somewhat obscure called the Shobigenzo. And Dogen was preoccupied with this very question, which was, hey, if you know, you're telling me that everything is perfect and whole the way it is and I am too, then why practice, right? He was, you know, he was really trying to explore that idea of, well, if everything's fine the way it is, why am I even doing this thing that takes a certain amount of discipline, it takes a certain amount of effort? Why? So how would you answer that question? I go back to what we were talking about, relative. I have to start in a relative way. And not only did Dogen say that and, you know, everything he said, as far as I can tell, was also Pith or essential. Longchimpah, the Tibetan Buddhist Zogchen master, says the same thing. And they're not alone, by the way. A lot of these great masters say this.

There is no practice. There is no practitioner. And there is no result. Nonetheless, I'm in a relative world. And I want to start, I have to start with something that hopefully will open the door to that truth. So in other words, if I, right now, Susan Piver just said, oh, Dogen says I don't have to practice. Lung Chimpa says, don't worry about it. I'm just going to slip into my habitual patterns that create suffering for myself and others.

So let's start where I am, which is not where they are. Right. In my book, I talk a little bit about this, that there is this idea of certain contemporary teachers, which is you can just wake up right this second by realizing that everything's perfect the way it is. And that is true. And if you look at people who do get some degree of waking up, most of them, you're going to see a lot of practice involved also. And so I think about it a little bit like, that's a little bit like saying to a, you know, a third grader who's out facing a major league pitcher. Like if you just get the, if you get the ball on the bat, you can just hit it right out of the park.

And the truth is once in a while, once in a great while, the child is going to get the bat in the right spot and the velocity of the ball and boom, it's going to go. But they're much more likely to end up with like a traumatic brain injury than they are to hit a home run. And I hear that dialogue happening in contemporary spiritual circles and I'm always suspect of it that like you don't need to do anything, just wake up now, which is a lovely promise. Who doesn't want that? Who doesn't want the just listen, you know, like the five-minute version? Right. Anyone who says that you should go somewhere else because, in no offense, people who say that. But the path is so intimate.

It's so personal. It's so particular. While there are great masters, we just named two, Dogen and Longchimpah, who can offer impeccable guidance. The truth is what they do so extraordinarily is, wake up the inner teacher. That's who knows what's going on. And often in the spiritual world, people try to take the place of the inner teacher. They try to take your wisdom and substitute their own for it.

That makes me very angry because what the hell? And that's why I'm very suspicious of charisma. Don't care for it. It separates me from myself. Obviously drama. It's hard to find a teacher. Anyway, that's not our topic. But once I heard the great Condro Rinpoche, a female Tibetan realized master, as far as I can tell, say the job of the outer teacher, the Dogen's, the Llan Chempas, whoever your teacher might be, the Zhangsarkensi Rinpochase or whoever you study with, their job is to introduce you to the inner teacher.

And the inner teacher's job is to introduce you to what is called the secret teacher. or the absolute teacher, which brings us back to our conversation of oneness, emptiness. The inner teacher's job is to help you understand that. And if someone doesn't make the handoff, someone's not doing their job. So it's personal. It takes a lot of devotion. I was going to say effort, but that's not quite right. it takes a lot of devotion to yourself, to your path, to wisdom itself.

That's a beautiful way of saying it. I love that, you know, hand off to the inner teacher. I want to explore something that's happening in a thread I'm part of where this discussion is kind of happening. It's been a perennial one in the spiritual world, and it's been a perennial one in my life. And it is this. There is one school of thought, and I think I know where you land. based on what you do, which is that progress happens by staying in a particular lane.

There's a lineage here, there's a series of practices, there's a thing, and you kind of just keep walking that path, even when it seems like it's going nowhere, when you're not interested, when you're bored, you keep walking it, right? There's that. And then there's another path, which I would have to say I have been more drawn to for maybe some better and probably some worse for sure, which is that I do a practice for a while, a thing, and then I will go do something different. And then I might find my way back to that first one again, and then I might try this thing. And the analogy that has been often made

is, and I'm going to try and put both those camps into what an analogy is, is that the stay in one line lineage camp says you're trying to get to water underground. And so you just keep digging in the same hole. And when you jump around, you're digging lots of different holes that never go that deep. The people who have some favor of you can move around will say you're digging the same hole with just different tools. So the only reason I'm saying all that is this seems to be a perpetual thing that goes on in my mind and I'm in the middle of a conversation where people are talking about this very thing. So just love to hear your thoughts on why you've chosen to do it the way you have,

which is more or less, I think, to stay in a lineage if I understand it. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, I love this topic. And yes, I've been a Buddhist for 35 years. I started practicing in a particular lineage. I've never practiced anywhere else. Who knows why. But the important thing, I think, for listeners is you have to figure it out.

Neither of those answers is correct. One of those answers, however, one of those answers is correct for you. And how good is your bullshit meter towards yourself? That's very important. So the analogy that I use is getting married. If you love, love, great. You're going to fall in love if you're lucky. and then you fall in love with someone else,

and you can do that for the rest of your life. And that can be right for some people. However, if you want to understand the depth of love, you could try getting married, because then it gets very complicated. And that's how I view lineage. If you want to date around, cool. But if you want to see what's under the hood,

like really see in your own heart and in the heart of others and in the depth of the wisdom traditions that are perpetual get married because it's going to hit you back and then you're going to look again and then it's going to get deeper and then it's going to disappear and then it's going to come back so the way I was trained and I'm a meditation teacher and so on is you could tell anyone how to meditate within like 30 seconds yeah you sit down follow your breath let your thoughts be as they are, get lost, come back. I just did it. But to teach meditation is, you know, in this example, it's not about explaining something. It's about transmitting something. And it's not woo-woo or magic. You don't have to

wear a wizard hat or anything like that. You'd look good in a wizard hat, though. Well, I'm very flattered. Maybe I'll rethink this one. Yeah, exactly. The transmission quality comes from lineage. The person who taught me taught by someone else, Chugim Trunkhapurimper Rumpurhé in this case. Chugam Trunkhapurr was taught by maybe Kempo Gangshar, one of his teachers and so forth and so on, back and back and back, theoretically, to the Buddha. So I'm not saying that I am standing in for the Buddha, but I am saying there is a direct line. and the wisdom seems to be attracted to you when you connect with lineage. It's very important.

It's maybe the most important thing. It doesn't mean you should be a Zen practitioner or Sotazan or Rinsai Zen or Tibetan, whatever. It doesn't mean that. It means what wisdom stream speaks to you. Who knows more than you, which is a lot of people, by the way, speaking for myself. who inspires you? Who are you in love with? So though I never met Choggyam Chunkpa,

who has a very controversial, confusing, brilliant, who knows who that guy was, from the second I read a book of his, which was more than 35 years ago, I was like, what? This is the first thing I've ever read that makes sense. What is going on here? How do I learn more?

And then I met students of his. I'm like, whoa, you guys are the best people I ever met. I'm sure there's, you know, exemptions to that rule, but not the people I met. And I just kept going. I just kept going, kept going, and I still keeping going. So it really is like falling in love. And like falling in love, you're going to get disappointed and bored. And then you might want to fall in love with someone else or you might stay.

And I'm not saying one of those is better. because I don't know. I appreciate that that you're not saying because I think people are different. I want to ask a question about the staying, though. Have you found it hard to stay? Have you been tempted in any serious way to try something different, go somewhere else? I'm in a fallow patch. Or are you in some way made up constitutionally that makes this path easier for you?

I'm just kind of curious, like what your level of, you know, being seduced by the new apharia's. I would say no and no. No, I've never been tempted, and no, I'm not wired for it. Okay. So how? I'm just going to try not to cry. I have a teacher who I adore.

When I am with, he's dead, so I'm not with him anymore, when I have heard him talk and what my own medicare, meditation teacher. His name is Sam who taught me to meditate more than 35 years ago and told me how to pronounce Avalokita Shvara. These people keep giving me things that wake me up that, I'm like, I got to know more about that. I got to know more about that. Oh, this is helpful. Oh, this is, I was just wondering about this. How did you know? You just sent me an email about it. You know, the magic is there and has never not been there. And, you know, I don't know how this happened, but I have no doubt that I may be smart.

I may be not so smart. I don't really know. I don't know anything, and they really know a lot. And I'm not trying to humble myself, but they have demonstrated to me the truth of wisdom. So anyway, I guess that's what I can say. Is that makes sense? It does. It does.

So the book isn't about this, but I think a lot of your teachings and world is about this idea. And it's around the idea that little by little, a little becomes a lot. So if a listener wanted to take one thing away today that would help them with this idea that we started with around power, what would be one little thing you would encourage them that they could do today before they go to bed? I have two answers Fair enough One is I have no effing idea I don't know you I don't know what you need

Two is Ask yourself that question And write the answer down See what happens Because you know I don't That is a beautiful and humble and teaching moment

For me on the end there So thank you so much Susan You and I are going to continue for a little bit longer in the post-show conversation, because I want to talk a little bit about a sentence you say where we can try and pay attention to the words, we can pay attention to the sound of the words, we can pay attention to the environment with which the words are spoken, and this can be for teachings, this can be for music. It's just a way of thinking about engaging, and I love it.

So we're going to talk about that in the post-show conversation listeners. If you would like to support this show and the podcast world is changing, and it's a podcast world is changing and we could really use your support. And you want to get this post-show conversation and some other special things that we do and be part of the community. You can go to one you feed.net slash join. Susan, thank you so much. I can't wait till number five. Such a pleasure to talk with you. Me too. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought-provoking, I'd love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don't have a big budget, and I'm certainly not a

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