The Rich Roll Podcast - The Zen of WuDe — Meditations on Buddhist Philosophy, Gratitude & The Art of Being

Episode Date: June 8, 2015

Today my friend WuDe returns to the show to drop some mad Zen Buddhist wisdom. In case you missed it, I strongly encourage you to dial up our first conversation. RRP #87: Art & The Importance of Living Tea is a fascinating deep dive into the world, history, and ancient teachings of tea as a means to glean broader truths about health, healing, community, the environment, and oneness – the universal interconnectedness of everything. During that initial conversation, we barely scratched the surface with respect to the extensive knowledge and wisdom brimming from WuDe's soul. So when he returned for recent visit to Los Angeles, I jumped on the chance to have him back on the show. A rare opportunity to more fully mine the philosophy and the traditions of Zen Buddhism to help us better navigate our modern lives. Born in the United States as Aaron Daniel Fisher, Wude was drawn to the East from a very early age. After studying philosophy in college, he traveled the world and ultimately settled in Taiwan, where he has since become a Buddhist monk. A tea master. And the founder of Global Tea Hut– a school and center that harvests tea, educates all comers on the traditions surrounding tea, and welcomes people from all over the world to study the Dao of Tea as a method of spiritual cultivation. I said it in reference to our first conversation. I'll say it again. This just might be the most fascinating and soul expanding conversation you will hear all week. I sincerely hope you enjoy the conversation. Peace + Plants, Rich

If you don't have the ability to celebrate what you have now, nothing you get, and I mean nothing, nothing material, nothing experiential either, no amount of information, no amount of experience, no amount of material possessions is going to teach you how to celebrate. That's Buddhist monk and tea master, Buddha, this week on the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody out there in podcast land, podcast landia. Welcome to the show. Welcome back.

My name is Rich Roll. I am your host and I'm back at it again with another stellar killer episode of the RRP where each week I mine the minds of the best and the brightest in health, wellness, and in the case of today's guest, spirituality and excellence. Why? To help you live and be better, to grow, because that's what we're here to do, people. I'm here to help educate, inform, inspire you to unlock and unleash the best, most authentic version of yourself. So I appreciate you guys dropping by today. Thank you for subscribing to the show on iTunes. Thank you for clicking through the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. Okay, I got my friend Wuda back on the show this week. Pretty excited about it. For some quick background and context on this super interesting cat, Wuda was born Aaron Fisher in the United States. He was born and raised in the U.S. And after studying philosophy in college, he traveled the world and ultimately settled in Taiwan, where he has lived ever since as a Buddhist monk

and as a tea master, steeped in the sutras and the wisdom of those traditions. And in case you missed it, he joined the show back in episode 87. Check that out if you haven't already. It's archived on my website, or you can download my free iOS app, which has all the episodes because iTunes only has the most recent 50. And you can also check it out on SoundCloud. It's up there as well. And during that conversation, Wuda and I explored the world of tea

pretty extensively, which is a world that I really knew nothing about. In Taiwan, he founded and runs something called Global Tea Hut, which is a school and a center that harvests tea. It educates all comers on the traditions surrounding tea. And it welcomes people from all over the world to come visit him, study and practice tea preparation, meditation, tea history, tea crafting, the sutras of tea, and its relevance in society, and how to embrace the Tao of tea as a method of spiritual cultivation. However, I felt like during that conversation, we really only scratched the surface when it comes to the true extent of the mad, crazy knowledge that Buddha has to offer. comes to the true extent of the mad, crazy knowledge that Buddha has to offer. So I wanted to have him back on the show to get more into the world, the wisdom, the philosophy, and the traditions of Zen Buddhism, which is really his primary focus. This is his thing. This is what he lives. So when he returned to LA for a visit recently, I jumped on the chance to have him

back on the show. Pretty excited about this episode. Quite honestly, I think it just might be one of the most illuminating and fascinating conversations that you will hear all week. Ready for a little Zen? I'm ready for a little Zen. Let's check out Wuda and get Zen. Really appreciate you coming back out the first time that we sat down. That was such a broadening, enlightening conversation that made me think about so many different things and it was really popular with the listeners and uh i'm glad that we have an opportunity to sit down and continue that thread yeah definitely the effects

of it uh rippled and and changed things also for us we had uh i think 15 20 maybe guests and to the center or to events that i was doing even as far as australia and new zealand they came up to me and said you know i'm here because of that podcast you did with ritual i love that my ego loves that i suppose but uh yeah so i'm very grateful and in fact, a beautiful member of our community now, someone who was actually living just an hour away from the center. She's an American living in Taiwan, teaching English. And she was listening to, she listens to your podcast. And she was listening to that one and it really moved her.

And then she went and got on the site and saw that we were like 45 minutes away and was you know just blown away and she's been coming to the center um you know pretty much weekly since and it's had a really big impact on her life and so she sent along with me big hugs and tremendous gratitude for you as well oh that's really heartwarming, man. I love hearing stories like that. You know, that's why we do this. You know what I mean? And we live in this incredible age where we have the power and the ability to touch and affect people that, you know, we may never, ever meet on the other side of the world. I mean, what an extraordinary thing that is. A responsibility too, but that's really amazing man and i'm so

glad that the podcast reached out and brought people to your center i mean that was the idea so very cool yeah very cool so what is the uh what's the latest in taiwan what's going on at the center um a lot of amazing things you know there's a really really great group of people are living there now with a tremendous desire to serve and energy's definitely picking up this year I think last year we learned a lot of lessons about structure and about the need for that and I think that is very essential to Asian philosophy Chinese philosophy that problems often break down into either structure or energy. So you have either a lack of energy or you have a lack of structure or the improper structure. And last year we had this great desire for abundance. I think in the beginning of 2014,

we made a video and I said in there, we want to reach 2,000 members of Global TF by the end of this year. And then we do gratitude every Tuesday during lunch in the center. We go around and share what we're grateful for each week. But we did a year gratitude at the new year, right at the beginning of 2015. And the first thing that came up right from the depth of my core was that I'm so grateful that that didn't happen because it really would have knocked us over. It would have been like, it would have been like putting a thousand horsepower in a 200 horsepower engine. Right. Like we just didn't have the right structures in place. We even got to 500 members in Global

T-Hat and it almost knocked us down. So now we've, new building just for Global Tea Out for the magazine and the tea and sending that all around the world. And we have better teas than ever, the magazines better than ever, the whole system's structured to actually now grow to any size. Wow. How many people actually live there? Seven. Seven. Yeah. So you keep it small small but you have visitors that kind of we have about 500 guests a year yeah short-term stays yeah and our aim with the where you know our

our ultimate aim is to build a big permanent center and uh we have some land we want to purchase some more and uh the aim is to build a center that can host 15 permanent residents and up to 40 guests on any given day. And so that would be almost three times the size is now. Right. And to do that, we need either $500,000 or 2,000 members in Global TIAT. Gotcha. Which one would you prefer? thousand members in global tiad gotcha and uh which one would you prefer which one i'm i am i am open to support from both seen and unseen sources so how are you going are you doing like a kickstarter or you have some fundraising efforts or what do you how are you approaching that yeah we have some fundraising efforts we um every year we produce a little bit of tnt wear that we then

offer at a minimum donation amazingly we've been doing this is the third year we've been doing it and more than 80 unbelievably more than 80 of people give more than the minimum donation oh that's great and so we've raised some money that way and then primarily we're putting our energy into um improving the experience of global t-hut so you get you know you sign up for a subscription. The amount is up to you. We have a minimum. It's $20 only, though, and the sky's the limit. And then in exchange, you get a magazine and tea and a gift.

And so we've done a lot to make the magazine extraordinary. In my opinion, the best tea magazine that's ever been because it has linear information about the tea you're receiving which are all organic and you know who farmed them where it's coming from but that's something every magazine has um what this magazine this magazine has that other team magazines haven't ever had is that number one it has community so people all around the world 33 countries are literally like going and staying with each other it's almost like the airbnb of tea so it's this huge community that you're connecting with and

tea yeah so it's a huge community that you're connecting with and drinking tea with around the world and then three our magazine also includes articles about tea as spiritual cultivation so it has it's a tea it's called global tea at tea and da Magazine. So it has that Tao element that other magazines don't. And so we've been doing most of our efforts are towards the getting 2,000 Global Tea Hut members root. Right, right, right. And Global Tea Hut itself, I mean, you're only doing a little bit of tea harvesting on site, right? We don't harvest any. You don't do any.

So it's all just education and tea ceremony and the magazine and all that kind of stuff. All the tea, all the tea for Global Tea Hut is donated from farmers. It's all organic though. And, or what we call living tea, which is even more, it's like, we talked about that last time. It's wild and, and special. Yeah. So we do, we are going to, and when we have the bigger, so we have planted some tea seeds, I told you we already have some land. So when we have the bigger, we have planted some tea seeds. I told you we already have some land. So when we have the new center, we will have some tea trees, but we won't harvest them commercially. We will harvest and process them educationally. So I guess we'll have some hands-on experience, which we do also offer now, but we take them to friends' farms.

I got you. I got you. Well, let's talk about the dow of tea i mean last time that we sat down it was very tea focused i was very interested in i mean i think my opening question i haven't gone back and listened to it but i i as i recall my opening question to you was something like you know so you know why should i care about tea and we kind of launched into this exploration of the history of tea and, you know, the sort of cultural significance and social significance and spiritual significance and explored that pretty deeply, which was pretty cool. It gave me a completely different perspective on a subject matter that I actually didn't know and what I thought would be cool to do today is to kind of flip the page and explore a

little bit more in depth, uh, Zen Buddhism and your background into that, uh, and sort of the applicability of those principles to, you know, the average person living in the developed world. And I was hoping if you would, if you would be so kind, if you could, I thought it would be cool if we could kind of kick off that conversation with maybe one of your Zen koans because I love your stories. I could listen to you tell those stories for hours. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of traditional Zen koans. I mean, the purpose kind of of a koan,

a koan is more like a question. The question is designed to be almost anti-logic, like the antidote to the rational mind so they're often you know they maybe have answers or they don't you know and sometimes they have an answer so then in that way they're kind of an analogy or a metaphor

or teaching but then often times they don't have answers the answer is more of a state of mind so there's a lot of quans that have the formula something like you know the student says like to like, to the teacher, I think, you know, I think X. Is that right, teacher? And the teacher says, no, you're completely wrong. And then the student says, well, then what's right?

And the teacher says X. So it's kind of like, it's right when I say it. It's wrong when you say it. Why is Zen, like, so confounding in that way? It's meant to, like, just screw with you right a little bit like in a playful kind of way there's a cheekiness to it there's a cheekiness to it but that's you know one of the beauties of zen is that um one of the beauties of zen is that like unlike in fact this is one of the things that i celebrate the most about it and that always always drawn me to it is that unlike a lot of traditions in the world Zen is very self-conscious of its own

limitations and celebrates them and is very open about them that that these teachings and these life ways they aren't they aren't the way right they just point to the way and that they're also not better than other ways or like the answer you know because when you start doing spiritual work you're going to come across those guys along the way that are there on the road telling you that their way is the only way to do it and my teacher always told me to beware of those dudes right interesting so so it's the conduit to the way yeah or a conduit i guess in zen we often use the metaphor of it's the finger pointing at the moon so the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon so if you're after the moon right the finger's not it so you

you you honor and respect the sign by following it so if you're trying to get to Malibu and you stop at the sign that points the way to Malibu and start just sitting there full of prayer and gratitude because you found a sign. And it's the ultimate sign, right? It's the ultimate sign. And it's all about the sign, not the destination. Yeah, so that, you know, and I think talking about Zen is talking about tea.

We can come back around to that again later. The two are very much the same. In fact, there's a saying in Chinese, which is, I have a book by this title. It's cha chan yi wei, which means Zen and tea are one flavor. And to understand that, I think you can understand a little bit about what Zen is and how it started. And then maybe we could turn to the ways that I think yeah let's go there the habits are are applicable to everybody in the world so Zen um the let's start with the legend then we can maybe do the etymology of the word because I think they're both insightful

understanding them both so the the legend is that um you know especially during the meditation retreats the Buddha would give discourses in the evening to motivate, inspire the monks to meditate the next day and also to give them guidance on their journey. So one night on Vulture's Peak, which was a place where he often sat and talked to the monks, he went up on the dais and he was to talk for an hour. And 20, 30 minutes went by and he didn't say a word.

And then he finally, he just held up a lotus. And that was the teaching for the day. And so there was one monk in the audience, Mahakashipa, who is one of his higher disciples, who they say understood this teaching and was liberated by it, was enlightened by this teaching. And so this is the beginning of Zen. And then that was passed on from teacher to student teacher to student um until you get to 28th student which is a guy named bodhidharma and he's the one that brought buddhism to china which actually is really relevant to us i think we can maybe talk about that later because it was

kind of um they say like you know it had lost its flair in india it was becoming more religious and less experience experiential and true so but at the origin point was in india buddhism yeah yeah it began in india yeah the buddha was indian so um then he brought it he brought he brought it to China. And so he had these four foundations of Zen. And the first was that there was nonverbal transmission between teacher and student. And the second was no scriptures, no dogma, no doctrine. And the third is that it must lead to the heart of a person.

And the fourth is that it must reveal the truth of nature as it is. So if you look then at the etymology of the word Zen, Zen is Japanese, that's where we get the word from. And it comes from Chinese, which is Chan. And in the south of China, they pronounce that San in the Japanese order and said Zen. And this word Chan comes from Sanskrit dhyana. And dhyana means the meditative mind. So zen is not a kind of Buddhism.

Zen is the meditative mind. And in fact, we could argue that no Buddhism is Buddhism, because actually this word Buddhism was first used in 1805 by a British person. And the Buddha, as you know, was like 500-something BC. So for thousands of years, there's no such thing as Buddhism. I see. That's interesting. Well, yeah, it's interesting. It begins in India.

It goes to China. The etymology of the word changes in Japan. And all along the way, it's evolved and sort of changing. And at some point, you know, where is this dividing line between sort of a more traditional Buddhism and Zen Buddhism? Like, what is that demarcation?

Like, what distinguishes Zen from the other forms of Buddhism? I think just that focus on the experience, that focus on the, and that's why there's more, I think, Zen literature, new literature all the time than any other kind of Buddhism. Most of the other kind of Buddhism, they rely completely on, like most religions,

on ancient scriptures and texts. But all throughout the history of Zen, you have a tremendous amount of poetry and literature and stories and teachings coming all the time because of this focus on the intuitive, on the direct experiential, which is there in all Buddhism. It's just extremely important in Zen. So Zen is a state of mind. And so Zen is a state of mind. And I think Zen Buddhism can be a carrier of that mind, but it can also get in the way of that mind.

And that's the reason that Zen masters throughout history have always used other arts to try to convey that mind, like archery, like calligraphy, like especially tea, which is where the saying of Zen and tea are one flavor. And so Zen is, like I said, direct transmission between teacher and student and also no doctrine, no dogma, no scripture. So that kind of focus on the direct experience itself, on the mind itself, on your mind itself, that has allowed for a whole, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years of new teachings

and new poems and new writings and new ways that no other form of Buddhism has because there's more of a focus on, you know, what you, following a more traditional outlook on the world or something, and then it's more about experiencing experiencing something so it's very much an experiential kind of thing and I think at least in my exploration I found no other teachings as suitable to especially a modern you know western mind, because Zen is very much a science and a basis on truth.

In fact, you could say that in Zen, the measure of a principle or of an idea is its concordance with reality, with truth as it is. So there's very, I think that the, I think that the instruments are different and they're more internal, but the idea is of like, as I said, leading inward and discovering the truth of nature as it is inside. I think that that's there in all Buddhism, but there's just a great emphasis on that in Zen. Right. Well, there seems to be this dichotomy. I mean,

as you mentioned, you know, more and more poems and writings on Zen Buddhism, and yet the irony being that you can't, this is not something that can be intellectualized, right? It has to be experienced. So it has to transcend the written word, has to transcend this conversation. And I suppose on, on that level, it would also have to sort of transcend that kind of um rubric of of logic and and science in which you're saying it's also rooted in which comes back to the confounding nature of what it is that we're trying to and hence all the the the tautologies the the you know the the the the tautologies the absurdities, even like smacks in the face. There was a Zen master that literally would hang out on the rooftops

of the monastery complex and jump on his students and then giggle and go back and get back on the roof. And the lesson in that is what? The lesson is that they were probably not being mindful and the lesson is that they were probably not being mindful. And the lesson is to wake up. The lesson is to, in Chinese medicine, in Chinese philosophy, all illness is stagnation. And also, they have a very different outlook on this. In the West, we often have this, what I consider to be an illness.

we often have this, what I consider to be an illness. It's in the sense that it's a perspective that isn't in concordance with reality and gets in our way to live a fulfilled life. And I think you can call such a perspective an illness. And the perspective I'm speaking about is the separation of body and mind and spirit. So like body for the doctor and mind for the psychologist

and spirit for the temple. I think that that's an unhealthy outlook. And it's unhealthy because A, it's not true. And B, it does prevent you from living as fulfilled as you can. I mean, look at it this way. Have you ever had a cold that you sat through completely in a perfect state of equilibrium and it didn't affect your mind or spirit at all? It was just purely a physical body phenomenon. Of course not. And it's so self-evident that these things are one and connected. And yet we have this, I mean, our culture is obsessed with sort of a reductionist approach to everything. Separation is the touchdown of the scientific method, right? How do we understand something, a process, a biological

process or a physical process? Well, we, we extract an element of it and we study that, but we don't study the relationship of that to everything else and everything affects everything else. So in this context, whether we're talking about, you know, our, the way that we treat sick people or treat mental patients or just live our lives every day and the perspective that we have on them, we're super sick because we do, by nature, tend to distinguish those things as separate. Yes, and to our detriment in many ways. And that, you know, it seems self-evident also because they have, you know, Western medicine has a very proven and established concept of placebo

and of the effects of the mind, you know. There's been studies that are overwhelming. I think one was done by the University of Colorado. I'm not entirely sure about that because I just read a summary of it online. But they had cancer patients, and they had a control group of meditators and non-meditators. And in an incredibly conclusive way, the meditators lived, you know, more of them lived longer and lived better lives. And they had to establish this very concretely in the study. So what's the solution

how do we how do we resolve this problem buddha um the the meditative mind and that's zen you know and that's that's there's a lot of um there's a lot of aspects of of a zen life that i think um are beneficial to to everyone and and some that i'm not as sure if they're beneficial to everyone, but there certainly have been beneficial to me. So there's some that are in that area that they were very healthy for me, and I'm not sure if they're healthy for everyone. And then there's some that I'm sure are definitely helpful and healing to everybody in the world. The ones, because the ones that you've explored might be too extreme for the typical. Not too extreme.

Just like a really good example is I really love and appreciate the Zen approach to prayer. So the Zen approach to prayer is that the arguments for or against, I personally, I pray to Guan Yin. So Guan Yin is an Asian deity. She's very, very, very similar to Mother Mary. She's a goddess of compassion and mercy. But in the Zen perspective is that the existence or non-existence of this entity, Guan Yin, is a moot argument. It doesn't matter. What Zen would say and what I would say, I wouldn't just say this because Zen says,

this isn't something I read in a book, this is something I experienced in my life. So I can speak about this personally. I have found in myself a deep-seated need for daily prayer. And I have found that because I have lived in a state of life where I did not have daily prayer and I've lived in a way of life where I did not have daily prayer and I've lived in a way of life where I did. And the life where I did is much more healthy and fulfilled and happy for me. So what I'm saying is that I

have found in myself, and I suspect it's there in most human beings because we have a hundred thousand years of history of it. So I suspect it's there in most human beings, but I'm not certain, but I can say for me, I have found a deep-seated need for daily prayer, and I found tremendous benefit in doing so. And so what the Zen perspective is saying ultimately is that, because I'm not making petitionary prayers, so I'm not praying for things. And I think that a lot of modern people, they make petitionary prayers, and then maybe they don't come true and then maybe they lose the...

Conditional. Yeah, conditional praying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm not making petitionary prayers. I'm just making prayer and ritual and I've found that that has been transformative in my life and so I'm willing to leave it at that. I'm not saying that I believe or disbelieve.

I'm saying that the arguments don't really come into my consciousness on a daily level. I'm saying, and you'll understand this analogy very well. I'm saying that I pray the way that you on any given Tuesday morning go out for a run.

You're not running to get somewhere. There's no destination. You're just running for your health. I'm not talking about running when you're training for something. I'm talking about just a good old-fashioned run right right no like you know you don't even know where you're gonna go you don't know how long you're gonna be out you've got it's a set it's a tuesday but you don't have anything planned there's no appointments you just want to go for a nice run and so i'm saying that i pray for its own sake

because that activity i have found in my psychology a deep-seated need for it. And so that is a very instrumental practice in my life. And I'm not sure, that's not one of the habits that I would say is a habit that I would want to promulgate to the whole of humanity that I think is necessarily beneficial to everyone. But I definitely would state that it has been extremely important to me. And so if not petitional, then I would suspect devotional and oriented around gratitude. Like what is the approach to your practice?

I mean, gratitude are absolutely fundamentally amazing, wonderful prayers. Gratitude is one of the key, the most essential keys to your contentment, your happiness on this planet. Because what is gratitude? Let's define it. Let's unpack it. What is gratitude? Gratitude is a happiness with things the way that they are. Gratitude is saying yes to the way that things are. And we spend a that, you know, a lot of our suffering comes from wanting what is to be is not and wanting what is not to be is. I can relate to that.

And gratitude is what? Gratitude is saying yes. Gratitude, when you get something that you wanted, and you feel in that moment grateful, that moment feels full. It feels beautiful. It feels like everything in the world is as it should be. It feels yes. I say yes to this. I say yes to the way that things are. So there's a kind of peace treaty, an end to the war, the war against the way things are. And there's a way of kind of letting in. And so gratitude definitely is a beautiful prayer. Well, let me, let's, let's camp out in gratitude for a moment. Great.

Wonderful. Because I think that, that for a lot of people, and I've certainly experienced this more than, you know, I would like, uh, gratitude seems out of reach, you know, for many. And I think there's this idea that I have learned is misplaced, which is that, that gratitude is something that comes to you. Like I don't feel grateful. And then you're in that place of lack of gratitude because you want what's happening to be different than what it is, right? So that causes additional suffering.

What I've learned, and I'm interested in your perspective on this, is that gratitude is a practice. It's accessible, but you can work towards it. There are tools to try to bring that into your life in terms of shifting your perspective, and I'm sure your prayer and your meditative practice are conduits to that. But I'm interested in hearing about tools for getting more in touch with gratitude. Definitely gratitude can be practiced. And that's why, I mean, I listed you, you actually, you were the one that into that insight that that's definitely one of the kinds of prayer that I think is instrumental. It can definitely be practiced. of prayer that I think is instrumental.

It can definitely be practiced. I mean, it can be practiced in all kinds of ways. You can, you know, both negative and positive even. And on the negative side, I mean, if you actually think about it, even your most grumpy, gloomy, gray, you know, 20-minute morning that you've ever experienced, if I gave that to a blind person, they would be running around ecstatic because there's blue and there's red and there's you know so all of the conditions intellectually i can understand that but i also know that you know when you tell somebody yeah well somebody else has it

worse that doesn't always work no yeah yeah yeah so negative isn't always going to work we also need the positive so i mean then you have to you know, and this is where it becomes a practice. You have to look around and start to cultivate and look for the things that are wonderful in your life. Because if you're not, if you don't have, this is key to contentment as well. If you don't have the ability to celebrate what you have now, nothing you get, and I mean nothing, nothing material, nothing experiential either, no amount of information, no amount of experience, no amount of material possessions is going to teach you how to celebrate.

Getting things, getting a million dollars is a reason to celebrate. It's not going to teach you how to celebrate and so you have to you know if you want to be happy you have to really you have to learn how to know what is enough and you have to celebrate what you have there's so many chinese sayings about this i wouldn't even know where to begin so that you know and right the idea of happiness being resting in a contentment with what one has. And so that's where it starts. It starts with cultivating some gratitude for, start with the people that you love. Start with the fact that you have right now, most of us, right?

Everybody has limitations. Everybody has limitations. But most of us are in a life space where right now, we aren't as physically uncomfortable as we will be when our end starts to come. So you're alive, you're breathing, you're on this planet, you have food. There's plenty of things to be grateful for. And when you start to move out, you start to realize that all the conditions

for my happiness are here right now, just as all the conditions for my unhappiness are here right now. So I think gratitude is definitely a practice. And the more that you participate in that, you know, consciously, the easier it becomes. And so maybe in the beginning, you do have to struggle and you have to like take 10 minutes

and you have to sit down and say like, you what am i grateful for today and then it's kind of like um um and then one thing one thing comes you know and then um um two things come but you know the more you do that the more somebody could say what are you grateful for and it's just that will just start to flow out of you like like gushing spring because you get more in tune with that kind of energy, which is just inside of you. It's in your heart. It's there. And this is what we're talking about, gratitude.

This is one of the ways that, like I said, I've found in myself a need for daily prayer. It's definitely facilitated that. I pray in other ways too. I pray, for example, for, um, to share my merits. I think that's really important so that I don't, um, become, uh, um, I think there's a, there's a way of becoming kind of a possessive of one's spiritual accomplishments. There's a way of becoming possessive of one's worldly accomplishments. Like being service oriented. Yeah. Being service oriented and sharing merits. So, you know,'s say you meditate, and in that meditation hour,

you have maybe it's 15 minutes of really peaceful time. And so we start and we share that with a specific person. Maybe share that with your wife. I hope she feels like this. I hope she has some of this peace in her day. And then from there, you can move to maybe a neutral person, like the cashier that you see all the time at Whole Foods and you guys just kind of, you know, she's neither a positive nor a negative influence in your life, just a neutral. And then you can move from there and kind of start sharing with all beings, not just people, but animals and all beings. And there's a power to real positive that's another

really powerful kind of prayer and um i think another really powerful prayer that you know is there even in um western prayer orientation is is um power for you know for the both the both the knowledge of the of the divine will and the power to carry it out, as they say, you know, to know where I need to go and to have the courage to take those steps, right? Yeah, I know. That's a good one. We're having an AA meeting right now. Yeah.

No, I mean, so many of these principles are integral to recovery and have become habits that I indulge in sporadically and should be doing more because being service-oriented and being grateful and all of these things are not my default setting, right? They're a practice, just like you said, and there are things that you can do

to bring them into your life, whether that's through prayer or certain actions. The simple act of getting out a pen and paper and writing down a gratitude list, 10 things you're grateful for, then in turn expressing those to the people around you, to share that, the sharing aspect, right? And then the idea of thinking about and then acting upon trying to help somebody else who's less fortunate than you, or even a neutral person like the checkout person. By practicing that, it's sort of like i always say

if you want self-esteem do esteemable acts if you want to feel good about yourself if you want to feel like your life has meaning if you want to if you want to get in touch with gratitude express gratitude and that's a very tactile practice that requires mindfulness you have to like have that in mind because we're just running around you know with our faces you know stuck in our phones it doesn't occur to me randomly to do that unless i'm i stop and i'm mindful about what i'm doing in each moment yes and i am i always teach my students you know and and uh the same is that you know all the the highest of spiritual states they mean nothing if you can't be happy in the most basic human ways being connected to this life as it's happening and to the beautiful people around you

i think that's essential you know we have a lot of we have sayings a lot of zen sayings like like after the ecstasy the laundry you know zen views um staying in a in a state of non-duality in a state of ecstasy or oneness or satori, as it's called in Japanese, being stuck there as a form of illness. So you can find some people who had a spiritual experience many years ago and they're still kind of stuck in it, still talking about it. And it doesn't matter how mindful or how enlightened I was at some particular moment when I lived in India for five or six years.

That was more than 10 years ago. It's what I'm bringing to this moment that really matters. Yeah. That's really cool. I mean, one of the things that, that, uh, I learned early on in recovery that, that, that somebody shared with me that I thought was really powerful and that I think about a lot is, you know, when you're, when you're about to enter into, um, an experience, maybe it's a stressful experience. Maybe it's a celebratory experience. Maybe it's administering to a loved one who's about to pass away, whatever it is,

something intense, right? You don't want to get on the other side of that experience and think, I wonder what, what, what that experience would have been like if I'd been, quote unquote, really sober. In other words, spiritually grounded. If I really had my house in order spiritually, if I was mindful, if I was in gratitude, if I was in service, what would that experience look like as opposed to walking through it just kind of you know the

way you do when you're not being mindful or grateful or just present as present as you could and i've noticed i've done it both ways and the experience doesn't matter if it's a good experience about it you've removed the judgment on that the experience always is carries extreme value when you can kind of navigate it in that way. I have a small prayer. Yeah, I wanted to hear kind of the Zen perspective on that. Well, I don't know, but I personally have a very small prayer like that. When I was speaking earlier, I was speaking more of like formal prayers

in front of an altar. But I have a small prayer that I carry kind of with me in my bag of tricks that I use quite regularly, and it's very simple. I'm praying to my higher self, don't let me down. And I say that inside myself quite often. When I get into an event, like you said, like before I speak here, or I didn't say it before, but when I come into a situation where I have to do something and it might be challenging or whatever i say i'm praying to my higher self don't let me down

i like that i i do that sometimes when i have to i have to get up and give talks in front of people and i get nervous and i'm just like just let my higher self you know channel whatever needs to happen yes let the best outcome be the result of this. Extract the ego out of it and just try to show up for it. Good. Is that right? Am I doing the right thing? I think that's awesome. I don't know if we succeeded that, but I'm trying, you know.

So what else is in the Zen bag of tricks? Yeah, I think there's a lot of amazing habits that maybe, you know, these are the ones that I think are applicable to everybody. And maybe I can share some of them and then you could talk about. I want you to do the talking. Yeah, but I'll share some Zen habits that we practice in the center and that I practice in my life. And I think it'd be cool if you would then share what you think

or you feel about them and about what they would do for you if you were to start from today practicing them. Yeah. them and about what they would do for you if you were to start from today practicing yeah so one really in fact it's one of the very one of the um sometimes one of the definitions of zen is uh zen is doing one thing at a time so at one of the real one of the really strong practices that i try to do in my life and that i encourage all my students in the center and that we really try to practice is to really more more and more focus on doing one thing at a time and so that means that what that means is doing things more completely with all of yourself and all of your heart and doing them doing them one at a time as a very powerful practice. And that may seem like an overwhelming and all

encompassing practice. So I'll add to it an amendment, which is a more practical thing that you can try that applies to that, which is to put gaps between, and I mean everything, between everything you do in a day. Put a gap between the things that you do. And because every ending is a beginning and every beginning is an ending, ending, beginning, like that. And one of the greatest minds to begin a new task, and if you look at your life, you'll agree with me, one of the greatest minds to begin a new task is the job well done mind. The job well done mind is a really good mind.

When you finish a task and you know you've done it well, that job well done mind, that's a really good mind. And if you sit and like bask in that mind for just a few minutes, right, the next thing that you do will be much, much, much more awake, more mindful, and not only that, but more well done. And so what this looks like is you've got to answer some emails and take a shower. And so what it looks like is like, answer your emails, finish your emails, close the computer. I mean, even if it's just five breaths or a minute or five minutes, it doesn't really matter the duration. The point is

you don't just close the notebook and go right up to the shower, but you make a gap, however long the gap is, a minute, five breaths, right? And see what doing this, what kind of effect this has of doing things one at a time, doing things more completely, more wholly, and having breaks between doing everything. What kind of effect that can have on your day. I like that. I'm not a very good multitasker as it is. And I think certainly there's new science showing that all this ideas, all these ideas, these habits that we have about multitasking are kind of,

we're not really ever truly multitasking successfully anyway. We're sort of tricking ourselves into, I mean, I suppose you can, you can text and drive, but you're not really showing up for your texts and you're not really showing up for your driving. Right. Um, you know, I know that I've always functioned best. I'm, I'm, I like to just immerse myself in one thing at a time. Uh, what happens is the idea of all these other things that I have to do start to creep in and that provokes anxiety. So the challenge for me is, is, is trying to find a way to show up for that one thing when I'm doing it without letting all of those thoughts sort of infect me and distract me. Um,

and sort of, you know, create that anxiety. Well, the answer, the answer to that is, is another thing that, um,

I think is applicable to everybody, which is to create, create, um, create ritual, create ritual in your life. And so it's one thing to say, I should do everything with extreme mindfulness in my life.

Part of understanding that is then, but also understanding and embracing one's capacity. In other words, spiritual honesty is a necessity for real cultivation. You have to be honest about your capacity. But one thing that's beautiful about like tea, having a tea practice is I encourage my students to, you know, kind of draw a line around the tea space in your life, whatever that is, the tea time, you know. And, you know, okay, I acknowledge honestly that my capacity is thus. I'm not capable of being mindful and doing everything in my day one at a time.

But I can do it when I make tea. I can grab every bowl one at a time. I can set them down extremely mindfully. I can make a practice of doing that. I can do that. That's where that comes in, see. And as you do that day in and day out from you know whenever in the morning you do that for an hour you make tea in that way

right it doesn't have to be tea you can see how this can apply to other things but tea is a very powerful one and you and you do that day in and day out you will find that that like ink in water it starts to spread to other aspects of your life. And that you can live a life this way. And it's not a supernatural. It's not supernatural the way that I live. I live this way because I practiced for many, many years living this way. I love that idea of the sort of mini ceremonies, though, about just the smaller things throughout your day, like whether it's the emails or whatever it is, just taking that moment to sort of close the book

on one chapter and begin the chapter on a new thing. That's, that's something I think that is very easily, you know, sort of practiced and accessible to people because I think a lot of people will, maybe they'll say, I'm going to do my one hour tea practice, but life gets busy and then it doesn't happen. But the idea of like very simple, like small things that you can do throughout your day that are not disruptive or aren't asking too much of you that can have a dramatic impact on your daily experience. The tea practice doesn't have to be so long. And one of the things about tea that's really magical that we've found is that, you know, cause a lot of zen teachers you know there's a part of me even that would say rather than the tea like have a meditation practice i mean that's going right to

the source like meditate every day a couple hours a day get remove the tea in between you and your source just meditate sit and put and cross your legs and we you know in our center we meditate two hours a day an hour in the morning, an hour in the evening, every single day. So I'm a big fan of meditations. Zen is meditation, meditation is Zen. But one of the beauties of tea is that even people, and this is happening all over the world

as I travel and teach, I'm finding this just literally in the thousands. People that struggle to, for the reasons you just said busy modern life they their struggle to to create and keep a lasting meditation practice those same people have no problem making a tea practice in the morning because when you wake up you want a hot beverage and you know you're going to do it anyway you're going to do it anyway you want something hot to drink that's going to wake you up and make you feel good and help you to go about your day.

So it's easy. It's natural, and it just kind of really quickly gets into people and gets into their life in a really powerful way. And most of the people, even the ones that struggled, I have a student, a Taiwanese student, who went to all kinds of meditation retreats and courses. And same thing, like you said, she would go to the retreat for 10 dayss and courses and um she uh same thing like you said like she would go to the retreat for 10 days and then she would come home and for the first month

she would practice meditation uh kind of religiously and then slowly slowly slowly it would wear off as the vicissitudes of life come you know but my teacher in a really cute way um he always says tea is the Eastern antidote to Western stress. Well, I think that's amazing. And I also, I think that it's really powerful to express to people and share with people the importance of ritual. And I find that I get so many people that contact me and they ask me, well, how? How do I worship or how do I set up an altar or how do I perform ritual? They believe that it's only for a selected few.

And this is such misinformation. I mean, ritual is part of humanity and part of indigenous practices for years. So I really feel like for those that are feeling the call or they feel this yearning, what would you advise for them to begin the ritual? I mean, I know the tea practice is a beautiful, beautiful ceremony. But how would I begin if I was somebody who's, you know, interested in trying tea or want to become part of Global Tea Hut? What does that look like? I would start as simply as possible. Like, as much as you, like you were saying, get all the human stuff out of the way, you know? So we encourage people to start. And I often, like,

when I give workshops, I'll give them homework. I want them to do it like every day for a week and see what it does to their life. And like I said, people in the thousands are coming back and saying like, it's changed my life and I'm still doing it. And just start really simple. So get a bowl, like a rice bowl. Everybody's got a bowl. And then you need something to heat some water. Everybody's got that. And you need a little bit of tea leaves. And the most ancient way of brewing tea is to put some leaves in a bowl and add some water. I mean, what tea essentially is, there's been a lot of culture and a lot of philosophy and a lot of poetry and a lot of magic that has come out of tea over thousands and thousands of years. It's the second most consumed substance on this planet after water is so essentially human.

But when you reduce it, reduce it, reduce it, reduce it to what it really is. What is it really? It's leaves and water and heat. That's all it is. It's really simple. And so put a few tea leaves in a bowl and add some water and drink three bowls in the morning and drink three bowls and only drink three bowls. So don't, you know, and you can drink 20 if you want. I always tell them, but like start, this is the homework. I'll give it to everybody out there listening. Take a week, wake up first thing, drink three bowls of tea. And while you're drinking that tea, no music, no phone, no talking, no nothing, just three bowls of tea. If you want to drink more, go for it. But it actually doesn't take that long. You know, it takes a little bit to prepare the water and stuff, but actually you sit down. It's about 15, 20 minutes to drink three bowls of tea and see what that does. Because one of the things that I love about the Buddha's teaching,

he had this, he would often say, ehipasiko. Ehipasiko means come and see. So he had this really strong attitude of you come try. Don't listen to me. He would say that a lot. It doesn't matter. I'm a Buddha. Don't listen to me. It doesn say that a lot. It doesn't matter. I'm a Buddha. Don't listen to me. It doesn't matter. I'm Buddha and I came here from Taiwan. You have, it has to be meaningful to you and your life has to be experiential. It has to really change you. So you give it a try for a week and you know, see, see what that does to your day. See what that does to have that, have that ritual there, have that i mean like you said a ritual can be anything it can go you know that's in fact there's a zen saying how you do anything is how

you do everything i always tell my students and it's actually very true i learned this when i lived in india for five or six years and i lived in a meditation center and one of the things i learned there is that you can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat their shoes. You can tell a lot about the way a person lives by their relationship to their shoes. And I just learned that just from observing hundreds and thousands of people coming into a meditation center

and they're always taking their shoes off and putting them on in the way that they do it and watching them and myself too, of course, observing myself more than anything. And so how you do anything is how you do everything. And, you know, whatever you think defines you, running or painting or making music, the fact of the matter is at the end of your life, much more of your time on this planet will have been spent chopping vegetables and tying shoes and putting on clothes and doing all of these things than doing that thing that you say defines you. And so what often happens is like George tells me, I'm a really careful person,

Uda. I do all my homework. I'm a student and I do all my homework very carefully. But then I like spend a day with George and I spent a whole morning with him and he wakes up and he gets dressed, takes a shower, makes breakfast and does like 30 things. And then he goes to school and does his homework. And of those 30 things, the homework is the only thing he does carefully. The other 29 were done in a sloppy way. So actually he's not a careful person. What he, a more accurate statement would be, I do do those things which i consider to be of value in a careful way and i do other things carelessly and actually they're they're related because how he cooks and eats his breakfast is going to influence how he does his homework i mean you

know that better than what he cooks and how he eats it is going to very much influence poor george but george is making george is making a choice about what he's going to invest his mindfulness in. Yes. And he's myopic to the bigger picture at play. And to a healthy life. Right, right, right. So let's go back to this idea of preparing and enjoying this three bowls of tea in a wine.

So let's say someone's listening and they're like, I'm going to do that. Okay. What are they supposed to be doing with their mind while they're doing this? Like, what are the, you know, I would imagine you're going to say like, well, just be present and mindful about what it is that you're doing. But then, then, you know, sort of you get infected with whatever, you know, you've got to do that day, and your mind starts to take on a mind of its own. And what's the opportunity and the strategy and the tools for rooting yourself in that experience better to get out of it what it is you're trying to get people to get out of it?

Well, I think for me, we always, we always say the tea space is a free space. I don't know that there has to be anything done with the mind. I think that it naturally happens. There's a movement towards the body because the, you know, when you start drinking tea, the fragrances and the aromas are going to come first. So you're going to start to notice the smells and the taste in your mouth.

And then, you know, maybe you're going to start to feel warmth in and the taste in your mouth. And then maybe you're going to start to feel warmth in your stomach and in your body. And then you might notice some slight psychosomatic change. There's caffeine, so it's waking you up, making you a little bit more alert, maybe making you a little bit more calm. I think that those kind of things are just going to bring the person to the body and to the experience of it naturally. And the mind will go there.

So I don't think that there has to be an active participation. Other than that, enjoy the tea. So if that's your aim is to enjoy the tea, naturally you're going to go to your body. And your body's never not present. Your body's always in this moment. It doesn't time travel. Right? So all that stuff will come on its own.

I don't think that anything, there needs to be an effort. In this particular tea meditation, that's one of the beauties of it also. It's not a, it doesn't, there's no, there's no dogmatic approach. No. And there's also not any like a judgment of levels or what you're doing or what you need to do. If, if, you know, if you drink tea one morning and, and some thoughts come in about what

you got to do today, fine, that's okay. But I think you'll find that that's the point. You have to try it, but I think you'll find if you do try it that um and i think you should not just the listeners you should also try it i'll even give you the tea rich are you judging me no but i'll give you i should i'll give you the tea he's he's teaching us and he's transmitting this incredible beautiful energy that i'm i hope is felt through the airwaves because it's a completely peaceful, beautiful, present energy that Buddha carries with him. So that's a blessing. Thank you.

Yes. And I think if you, no, the reason I said should is just because if we're going to ask the world to do it, that it would be really cool also if you did it and then maybe talked about the experience of what it did for you and then you could share that with them as well that's what i meant now i'm happy to do it i have been having tea every morning but i can't say that i have have cultivated the level of ritual to which you speak okay so there is work to be done so one week and you brought that beautiful cake of is it uh what kind of tea was that it's a poor yeah poor tea yes um well it's over there yeah yeah we'll give you some other tea that's a little that's a cake so i'll give you some tea that's a little bit more conducive to putting in a bowl uh-huh and you can give it a try what do i do with my desire to rush off to

starbucks and drink a venti starbucks with three add shots of espresso and get completely jacked up yeah i mean that's what i want to do i often i often i often say right any anything and everything that coffee can do for you d can do it better you know because coffee does i mean it wakes you up yeah it wakes you up but it makes you kind of uh like that it jacks you up it makes you nervous and you also kind of crash later on in the day or you need more. I also find, not in every case, there's plenty of people who drink coffee in healthy ways as well.

But there are certain element of people who drink coffee in a kind of addictive way where it increases, they need to increase the amount that they drink, et cetera. And, you know, I've been teaching meditation for many, many years. And if somebody came up to me and said, you know, Wu, I want you to distill the meditative mind, which is Zen, as we talked about,

distill the meditative mind in as few words as possible. Like what is the meditative mind? I would say in two words, calm and awake. That's the meditative mind, calm and awake. And that's very much how tea makes you feel words, calm and awake. That's the meditative mind, calm and awake. And that's very much how tea makes you feel. It's calm and awake. So it both awakens you, but it also keeps you calm. And that's a really good way to start your day.

And tea is very much about slowing down. So it's about taking those three bowls and slowing down. And I'm not saying that there's not a place in a life for speeding up. So I'm not saying that either. Right a place in a life for speeding up so i'm you know i'm not saying that either right right right so but but you know on the if you live a life where you're always speeding up as you were mentioning right where you're bombarding yourself from the moment you wake until the moment you sleep with discursive thinking with um you know a lot of a lot of tasks a lot of duties i think that what happens is you start to generate a habit of forgetfulness.

Forgetfulness of what's important to you. Not what's important to, not what Buddha says is important to you, but what's important to you. You start to develop a habit of forgetfulness of the things that are important to you. That's absolutely 100% true. And that's been my experience because my addictive mind is driven to like,

I, I crave that, you know, that, that kind of energy boost. And I tell myself that what, that, that the, that what comes with that is a higher level of productivity and alertness and focus. But the flip side of that is the anxiety and the harriedness and the sort of, you know, lack of not attention to detail because I usually like I'm working and I'm very focused. But that sense of being immunized from the bigger picture and being more aware of what's going on around me. So that's my work to do. So, so how do I, how do I quell that? How do I quell that addictive chattering brain? Well, I think this is another zen kind of zen practice that i think is applicable to everybody that uh that you understand very very much as with your experience

with addiction which is in zen we make a very strong practice of turning all suffering into medicine so if not seeing life as in in terms of blessings and curses but in terms of challenges right challenges are to be overcome and they make you stronger. And this is why there's an old saying, right? Without Zen, even a good day is a bad day. And with Zen, even a bad day is a good day, right? And the thing is- That's an awesome recruiting slogan. So the thing is with a meditative mind, right? If you don with with a meditative mind right when if you have if you don't have a meditative mind which is what this is saying a good day comes and you're kind of

attached to it and it passes and then you're going to feel miserable or you can't see it as a good day yeah or you can't see it as a good day but the more important is that when you have a meditative mind you get out of this i'm lucky unlucky blessing and curse fortunate and and and unfortunate kind of dualistic perspective of life like oh that's unfortunate because if you look back in your life many of these so-called unfortunate events they made you strong they made you who you are they made you what you are they made your eyes the way that you are. They made your view the way that you are. They brought you many glories like this. And you wouldn't be who you were without any of them. So to begin to see and turn all suffering into medicine is to start to focus.

And you can even do it linguistically. Stop saying problem and start saying challenge. You know that from being a runner too. If I want to, I'm nowhere near running 28 kilometers right so if I want to get there if I can run two right now it's a good idea that I run three or four it may be not a good idea for me to run 17 I might injure myself but I'm never going to get to 28 if I just keep running two so if I can run two I better tomorrow try to run three I mean I'm never going to get to 28 if I just keep running two. So if I can run two, I better tomorrow try to run three. I mean, I'm sure you challenge yourself like that all the time.

Of course, of course. And by doing that, you grow stronger, right? And so that's a really, you take that outlook and apply it to everything, including this, like you have this issue where you want to, this is a relatively small and minor issue. You feel your addictive mind goes towards the boost of energy of of things like coffee or whatever it is right that's a challenge also to be overcome a challenge of how do i incorporate a more peaceful mind into my day and yet at the same time

remain productive remain able to go to sleep at night feeling like i've accomplished what i needed to on this day and so that's where the experiment comes in that's where they're like i'm giving you the seven day experiment you try it see what those three bowls do does your productivity actually decrease or is that something you're projecting onto them is that a possibility that you're projecting onto it is that actually going to happen or not i don't know you have to try it's your experience right right right right so i i suspect though that with clarity and focus of peaceful time especially in the morning when you start the day that way that what happens is oftentimes many people experience a greater an increase in capacity to work and a greater clarity

and focus which has the result of like you said doing things better so that you actually over time spend less time going back and fixing the things that you did improperly right which eventually saves you time and you become more efficient so um i'm not saying that that'll happen for you i'm just saying others have found that but whether that or that that'll happen for you. I'm just saying others have found that, but whether that or not, that will happen to, for you is the, is up to you. Yeah. No, I'm up for it. And I think that that's a really important point, which is the distinction between truly being efficient and your projection or your imagination of efficiency or your sense that you're being efficient when you, you really aren't like, I can feel very efficient, but then I get tired and then I have to rest

longer before I can be show up and write, you know, and have myself be present as opposed to, cause I'm, you know, I'm the guy who wants to like burn bright and flame out. You know, I'm not the guy who likes to have the even keel like you know i like the highs and the lows right and so it's about acclimating to it's about a willingness to let go of that that drive for that and getting comfortable with a more neutral way of being and that's that's uncomfortable for me you know what i mean so back to that's but that's the chat that's uncomfortable for me. You know what I mean? But that's the path, right? That's the challenge. Yes, and I think back to my point, the more serious point for me

is the more serious question is that does that way of living, does that way of living create a habit in you of forgetfulness, of the things that are important to Rich? Not of the of the things that are important to Rich. Not of the things that Buddha says are important to Rich, but a forgetfulness of the things that you know are important to you. So does that habit of moving in that way through this life

make a habit in you of forgetting the things that are important to you that's the question all right i will uh lodge that question into my deep consciousness yeah you have to think about that yeah because that's a very important question to answer right now right yeah this is something that's that's the mission it's a rhetorical question i don't want an answer it's a question for you to ask yourself right right And for every listener to ask themselves. All right. Because it's not my job to tell the listener or to tell you what's important to you in your life.

That's for you to tell you. But those things that are important, those things that are primary, right, we can't, if we lose touch with those, we're not going to live a fulfilled life. We're not going to live a happy and content life. And that's one of the keys of, you know, of living well is recognizing that, you know, my time here is very short on this planet. And that in this moment right here, sitting at this table with me is also my dying self because my dying self is remembering this just as your dying self is

remembering this day i'm a part of the memory of my dying self so he's here with me so your your future self and most likely that dying buddha is in physical discomfort he's in pain you know very few people go out without some kind of physical discomfort or illness. And he's looking back at this time now and he's remembering it the way that you remember your past experience. And so if I could talk to him, if I could turn to him as he remembers this day, what would he say to me? What would he say? For me, it's very simple what he would say. He would say, live. Not just live, live exclamation point. He would say, live. And so I don't want to live in ways, in habit patterns that promote forgetfulness.

I want to live in habit ways and life ways that promote a remembering. A remembering to do the things that I need to do, to say the things that I need to say. Because it doesn't matter how healthy you are your time here is very short so you can you can you know even you're the you're the healthiest dude in the world which you arguably maybe are but it doesn't matter still there's accidents we're fragile we're you know we can we can um we can we can very quickly our time here is really short so that's one of the things that I think for me me, for Wuda, not for everybody,

but for me, one of the things that is primary. I'm just giving you an example of something that's primary to me. For you to live with that exclamation point, how do you define that exclamation point for you? I define that exclamation point by being sure to celebrate. There's a sunrise and a sunset every day. I make sure that I'm as mindful and as celebratory and grateful, as we talked about, for every day.

And I remember to look at beautiful people like this and to say what needs to be said. He's pointing to Julie, not at me. And to say what needs to be said, you know, to say, I love you to say, I'm so happy you're in my life. And to, to, like I said, to be connected and be happy in the most basic human ways, which is to be connected to life as it's happening right now. And to be connected to the beautiful people that are around you, you, my friend, have a beautiful family and a beautiful home. And if this were my home and my family, and it's not, but if it were, then probably something that would be primary to me

as an example would be to celebrate that every day, to celebrate and honor. So to learn to listen and to learn to honor, and those are things that I'm getting better and better at as I get older. And those are things that make up that exclamation point for me is to honor, is to honor the life that I have and the people that are in my life and the amazing influence that they have on me and to recognize and celebrate all of the abundance that surrounds me and to, you know, simple things like that for me. I think that one of the things that T has taught me, and you could say Zen too, but one of the things that T has taught me, which is another of these things that I think everybody

can benefit from, which is to, there's two more that I wanted to cover today. This is one. I have a question for you when you're ready, but I don't want to interrupt you. There's two more that I wanted to cover that I think are beneficial for everybody and this is one, which is to, T has taught me this and Zen has also taught me this, which is to learn to have a great love for the simple. Learn to have a great love for the simple. To learn how to really, really enjoy and revel in and adore the simplest of things. One of my favorite things in the world, for example, is when the sun is coming through a window and the incense smoke goes through the shaft of sunlight.

I absolutely love that. I could watch that in awe for like hours and hours. I just absolutely adore that kind of thing. I love the grains in wood. I love the markings in a piece of natural stone. I'm very interested in the aesthetics of teapots and other really, really simple things. And I think when you cultivate an appreciation for the simple, you're also cultivating an appreciation for life itself. And I've learned to really, really appreciate very, very, very small things.

And they don't have to be natural things either. Just today, for example, I'm staying with a couple of friends in Hollywood and I was, I sat for like two minutes, just admiring this with a gorgeous wallet that my friend has, because I haven't, I don't, I'm, you know, obviously don't have money. So I haven't had a wallet in decades and he just has this, he had the most amazing wallet. It was just really, really really amazing and I was looking at it it was really well crafted and not only well crafted but seemed like the perfect most perfectly functional wall that I had ever seen so I was really admiring his wallet and and so that kind of thing comes

from you know I guess you know like they say almost it's almost cheesy stop and smell the flowers but just learn to appreciate the simple and I I think that that is a practice and a habit that will make life so much more rewarding if you learn to celebrate the little things, because so much of the juice is there. If you ask, you know, because like we were talking about, gratitude is a practice that you get better at. Running is a practice you get better at. Sobriety is a practice you get better at. So is living. That's why old people are wiser. And if you ask old people, like old couples, like old widows or widowers, right? It's almost cliche. They always answer the same. If you ask an old widower or widow, the thing that they miss the most are all the little things, the little quirks and like the way he or she did this or that

or walked or laid down. These are the things that make up a life. These are the things that are really important. So learning to appreciate the simple, that's the second to last of the Zen practices that I think everybody can benefit from is just learning to adore the simplest little things yeah i mean the the question that i was going to ask before well it wasn't really much it wasn't really as much a question it's just an observation but it was getting exactly

to this which is that um it really is the simple. And we have this overdrive kind of compulsion to over-intellectualize and overthink everything and want to sort of divine some kind of crazy, complicated solution for what ails us, what in truth it really is as basic as that. Like the practice of appreciating the smoke wafting through the window can be as profound as, you know, six months in the chair at the shrink's office or what have you. Right. And, but for some reason it's easier for us to do that than it is to just sit still. sit still. Just like it's easier. I mean, for you, the perfect analogy, it's easier for a lot of people to go buy a bag of potato chips that have like 300 ingredients. And then it is to like, just eat an organic strawberry. There's like the simplicity in when, you know, when you, but actually when you start like eating the amazing thing for me about eating vegetarian and, and, uh, and vegan diet for so many years is just how I never get tired of just celery.

Celery is awesome. And you can put a little something on celery, but a lot of times cooking is the same thing. You can overcook a lot of stuff, especially when it's vegetables. A lot of it's just really great when it's raw, when it's simple. I mean, I came in here today and your daughter was just eating some berries and in the center of the berries was some like sauce to dip them in and i was like what's that sauce and she was like you know it's got dairy and i'm not gonna eat it i just i just love the berries and she was sitting there eating all the

berries and you know that's just that's awesome and they were so bright and gorgeous and um you know what a treat for her to be able to have like six different kinds of berries on a plate you know, that's just, that's awesome. And they were so bright and gorgeous. And, you know, what a treat for her to be able to have like six different kinds of berries on a plate, you know. Yeah, it is. I mean, I talk about this a lot also about, I mean, you know, we cook about 70% or 65% of everything that we eat. So we're not all raw. But I also feel like, and when I cook those, it's a very quick cook. Like I don't cook things all day. And that's why all the recipes in my book are actually very quick because even if you're cooking, it's just not, it's not that long. But the other thing that I really, I feel like we've lost touch with,

and it's just the beauty that is provided in nature around us. Like when you were talking about your favorite thing, you know, my, one of my favorite things on the planet is a lemon, you know, just a lemon. Just a lemon. I can hold a lemon and smell it and feel it and take little bites out of it. I just love it. There's so many things in the plant kingdom that have been provided us. I Instagrammed this week just an artichoke. Just look at these shapes that appear in nature.

Nature is just the most beautiful artist. And so abundant. This week, for the first time in my life, I had a Meyer lemon. Oh, you had never had one. I'd never had one. They're amazing. They're amazing. Absolutely amazing.

They're really good. So beautiful. And they put the zest in our food. It was very good. Well, since we're talking about food, I'm going to make you my special superfood pad thai tonight. Awesome. Before the tea ceremony. Yay.

So if we want to deepen our practice in terms of cultivating that appreciation for the moment, for the simpler things, as a conduit to get more in touch with the things that are more important right um i mean are there some you know i feel like i'm going back to this because you've kind of already said it but i'm you know i'm wondering if i've left a stone unturned in terms of you know kind of simple takeaway things that people can actually do where they can go i can do that i can wrap my head around working that into my day like the what you mentioned earlier like having those you know moments of pause in between the beginning and the end of something well that's a perfect segue to the last of the practices that i wanted to share which is something that's actually very prevalent in asian society and it isn't really a concept in the west at all but it's very prevalent for

thousands of years in the East, which is the idea of temporary ordination. Temporary ordination is really powerful. So in some instances, like in Thailand, it means young men often will go to the monastery at the age of 19. They'll stay there for a year before they go about their life of getting married

and working and all those things. So they have a year of solid practice to approach their life. That's one perspective. But that's not really what, what I mean. That's, that's just a, uh, an example of its application historically. Another example of its application historically is that it was very common in Japan and China and parts of China too, for wealthy businessmen, they would build, um, very beautiful gardens in the back of their house and in that garden they would build a hut and the garden itself was meant to mimic as much as possible on a miniature scale the environs of the mountains and the hut was built of the like simplest materials so that

once every two weeks or once a week that businessman for a couple hours could go and be in the same state as the hermits that are out in the mountains and in chinese the word for holy man is is literally the character is mountain man because in the traditional days like the people on the mountains were always holy holy men in the that were not living in the city. And so I think this is a concept that's really central to living a healthy life in this time. It's like temporary ordination is very much what the tea ceremony is about too. It's about creating a space. In that space, we're all monks and nuns. Like nobody comes to a tea ceremony and thinks about how much money they have during that hour

or who makes more money or what class or society. A really good example, one of the most famous tea masters of history is named Rikyo. And he was a noble. He was essentially a lord. He was very high in status. But he was, and Japanese have very formal, very strict social obligations,

like in the form of gestures and language about how to address those that are elders or those that are higher in stature or higher class from the way that you bow to the way that you talk there's a lot of these things and he forbade any of that in the in the tea ceremony so if a if a lower class person came to his tea ceremony they were forbidden to show any of that respect towards him as a higher status and he often said in his tea ceremony, they were forbidden to show any of that respect towards him as a higher status. And he often said in the tea ceremony, there's only a host guest and tea. There's nothing else. There's no higher or lower. There's no, you know, so in that state, we're all monks and nuns. We're all, and we can cultivate that, um, not just through a tea ceremony. There's all kinds of ways you could do that. You could do that on a Saturday afternoon for two hours. You can, you can literally

cultivate a practice of temporary ordination. A lot of people do just in the sense of a meditation practice. A daily meditation practice is essentially that. But you could do it through other things like having an altar. You could do it in many, many ways. But there is a very real way where we can all benefit from what I'm saying. What does it mean to be monastic? Monastic is to withdraw from the ordinary worldly life, to withdraw from the vicissitudes, the trials and tribulations of money and paying bills and what your kid has to be at school and all of the things that come with life,

and all of the things that come with life, to take some time to set that all down and rest in a space where there's not any of that. And that can come from going out on a walk into nature and finding that medicinal spot and hanging out there. Like I said earlier, there's a sunrise and a sunset every day. Every day, there's a sunrise and a sunset. And I don't care where you live, they're gorgeous. It doesn't matter where you live. They're gorgeous. And so that could be one way, but I don't really want to formalize it in the sense that what I mean, temporary ordination is just a general principle that I think that anyone can practice in the sense that we can all be monks or nuns for a short time.

And we can all benefit from, you know, what does that essentially mean? It's a retreat. And a retreat doesn't have to be 10 days. It doesn't have to be three days. It can be 20 minutes. But we need retreat. We need retreat. We need to be free from all of the burdens of our daily existence.

We need that. We need it consciously, not just in the sense of like it sometimes comes when I take a bath, but like a conscious cultivation of it. That's what I am, getting a conscious creation of that space for us. Yeah. And isn't that beautiful, the way that you've presented it, that it can be a mini retreat. So we don't have to be saving up for our annual vacation or trying to figure out how to get out of town, which would put us away from our families or our children. But we could simply incorporate that into our life, whether it's a spot in the

garden or just a three by three square in the corner of a room or a closet, you know, cleaned out with just a very simple, you know, couple things that you love or a couple things that, you know, bring you peace. And I absolutely love that. And I know the immense benefits of embracing that kind of lifestyle. Well, also, you can save up and go on your vacation. But when you get there, you've brought yourself with you. So that doesn't mean that you are engaging in that kind of brief transcend uh, you know, transcendent experience to which you speak, which is really to get, get outside of yourself and tap into something, you know, deeper for that moment of time. So it doesn't matter where you are. It's, it's the state with which you,

you know, enter. It's temporarily renouncing letting go of the worldly things that, you know, that sometimes, like I said, this is back to that central issue, sometimes get in the way of what's really important to you. Not what a spiritual book says is really important. I want to keep emphasizing that. a spiritual book says is really important. I want to keep emphasizing that. Not what Buddha says is really important. So we're not talking about some religious ideal or some Zen ideal

or something that a certain guru said. But I'm saying things that get in the way of the things that you yourself consider to be important. That if I asked you, like, you're in a dire situation. You're on a sinking boat. You're in a prison awaiting beheading. Whatever it is, if I asked you to sit and make the list of, like, now is the time. These are the things that are most important to you.

Not to me. Not to any book. These are the things that are important to you. Maybe it's your daughter. Maybe it's whatever it is. It doesn't matter. You have your list. So the things that get in the way of what you consider to be primary, right? And so, you know, right and so you know too much of that is obviously unhealthy it's obviously unhealthy and obviously what happens see if you don't cultivate some mindfulness and if you don't cultivate some presence and you don't cultivate some gratitude and some celebration of the day. What will happen, I promise you, is that at a greater and greater velocity, time will slip by. And 10 years will be gone. And then 20. It will start slipping and sliding faster and faster. What is the Zen perspective on the like increase of passing

of time as we age well the founder of of the of my uh lineage of zen is named dogan and he had this um he called it time being it's really difficult to translate like time hyphen being where he suggested that actually subjective time is more relevant to us as people than so-called objective time because the only real measure of a clock is another clock. And most of our time measurement systems are arbitrary. There's also lunar calendars.

Yeah, our experience of time, our relationship to time is more important than actual time. Yeah, exactly. Do you remember, like I'm sure I have memories. I have memories. I have literally one memory. I have a memory from when I was like 10 of sitting in the dentist office waiting room for like six months.

Yeah. At least it feels. Yeah. Or the idea that like, you know, summer vacation, you know, maybe it's like a month away. And that's just like an eternity when you're 12, right? Like the idea that, yeah. And then, and right. But now, you know, at age 48, like a month, like, are you, you know, I blink and you know,

it's past already. But what I mean is also like in my, in my memory, that dentist office, uh, like takes up the space that the other periods of six months take up. Do you know what I mean? And so there is a really like warbling of time where it can slow or it can speed up. And so there's a definite, that's part of what I'm saying. I'm not saying that time itself objectively will go by like that. No, no, no. but i'm saying your experience of it yeah exactly so is part of the practice to slow that clock definitely to uh be more present and to be more celebratory and be more fully in you know in the moment definitely uh we can do even it can go even beyond that i mean if you're willing to follow i think that there's a realm of time that

is not linear not passed into present into future there think that there's a realm of time that is not linear, not past into present into future. There's an aspect of time that is vertical. And so there is even a potential of transcendence of the whole linear realm. And then it's how long that lasts. That's like an absurd notion because if you've gone outside of linear time, there's the lasting. You see, it's not even forever. It's not really talk notion because if you've gone outside of linear time, there's the last thing you see. It's not even forever. It's not really talkaboutable.

Right. And that's a part of Zen. Have you experienced that? Definitely. I think that almost every meditator has, whether they unconsciously recognize that or not. They definitely have. There's an aspect to that as well. And that shift completely out of time is kind of available too.

But I think more importantly, without any presence, without any mindfulness, without any celebration of the day, without any really being fully there in life as it's happening to you, you will find subjectively and ask, go do a survey of some elderly people. You'll find that the velocity increases at which it starts to just roll by. And I don't experience time so much like that.

How would you articulate your experience of time then? Well, in this moment, I mean, especially since you just called attention to it, I became extremely present. So, I mean, you helped to draw my awareness to this moment, so now I'm fully here. I don't know if I was five seconds ago ago but I am now because you just made me conscious of the fact that I'm present and that I'm here and that I'm in my body and we can all do that right now, right? We can look in each other's eyes and be here

and so I became very present when you acknowledged that we should be present so that's my experience of it right now and I try to, you know, I think it's absurd to even say that that we should be present. So that's my experience of it right now. And I try to, you know, I think it's absurd to even say that you try to cultivate that moment to moment, but that's what it is, is the generating, right, life ways that make it easier and easier to live the way that you want to live, to be the person that you want to live, to be the person that you want to be, to fulfill

yourself. When you, you know, come out of Taiwan and insert yourself into, you know, you're staying in Hollywood right now, like there, there can be, you know, no greater contrast. I'm sure, well, there probably could be, but you know, it's a pretty significant contrast in terms of environment and lifestyle. And as you're sort of mindfully present, you know, kind of wending your way through Los Angeles and you're observing how people are conducting and the simple things that could shift their awareness to improve their lives to the extent that we haven't already discussed? You know, there's a lot of sleepiness. And there's also a lot of waking up more than ever you know this it's uh it's easy

to get pessimistic because i think the darkness is noisy there's people right now we're sitting here there's people for example taking meditation retreats all over the world and cnn's not going there and like reporting that to us not showing that and that's like maybe hundreds of thousands of people are doing that right now and they're not showing that a single image of that and yet like one person does something naughty and they're going to show that image again and again and again and then all their friends are going to start to show it and they're going to you know so there's there is a um we we we have to be careful because you know one of the things is we have a limited attention field. That's why our education takes so long.

We have to scan literally miles of text. We have to scan text word by word where our attention is limited, right? And so what can happen is, again, these are where bad habits come. Habits are really important in Buddhist philosophy. They're called sankharas and habit energy because you can experientially recognize this in yourself.

What often what constricts you from being free is the habits that your past self made. So your past self has made it so that you have to break through barriers in order to be free in this moment because your past self laid habits on you. And so being compassionate and kind of getting out of that because ultimately it only ever boils down to just that one agreement.

The one agreement is really simple. It's not you don't need spiritual acrobatics or complexities. It's really simple. The agreement is always this. Right now, right here, I am free. I think that's a beautiful place. And if you can say yes, then boom. So, you know, and you walk around and there is a lot of,

there's a lot of challenges, you know, but at the same time, remember what we talked about earlier about turning suffering into medicine. The Zen saying for this is no mud, no lotus. about earlier about turning suffering into medicine. The Zen saying for this is no mud, no lotus. So, you know, I don't, I try to not see the world and see people around me as, you know, to see my experiences as blessings or curses, but to see that there's challenges to be overcome and that there's a lot of beautiful awakening happening. And how do I participate in that? And I don't need to participate that either in the spirit of like goal orientation like let's fix the world but I can also participate

in it for its own sake so participating in the healing of this planet like you're doing rich I mean one of the great amazing joys of that is just's just that. Participating in the healing of this world is a beautiful joy in itself. You're bringing joy and you're connecting people. And like I go to Australia and some beautiful, beautiful young woman comes and sits down and says, you know, T has changed my life and I'm here because I listened to that podcast. And boom, you know, there it goes full circle. And yet, you know, I walk around in judgment of others and myself and, you know, there it goes full circle. And yet, you know, I walk around in judgment of others and myself and, you know, full of all sorts of character defects that I'm constantly, you know, butting up against and, you know, that, that the challenge, you know,

continues. Right. But we claim spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection. That we do, spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection. That we do. That we do indeed, right? Yeah, you know, it's, I think it's important, you know, for people to understand, like, I think when we start talking about these practices, there is a natural tendency to think, like, these people know what they're doing, and I don't, and I just, you know, I'm full of all this stuff, and I just don't think I can do that. And to create kind of a welcome mat of permission to help people understand and get comfortable with the idea that it is progress, not perfection, and there is no failure in the effort of embarking on this path because the,

the embarking is the victory, right? It's like it's taking that journey. It's the decision to take that journey and to walk it and to embrace the imperfections that come with it and the challenges and the misfires and all of that that enrich the experience. And it's not something that you get to. It's something that you're going through. Yes, absolutely.

The grass only looks greener on the other side because it's fertilized with dung. There you go. Well, I think that is a very apropos place to wrap it up. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you. That was beautiful. Yes yes what a treat um amazing thank you for blessing us with your presence um that was an incredible conversation so i appreciate

it um and now we're going to have a tea ceremony with you right yes i'm looking forward to that awesome it's going to be good so if people are digging on WUDA and, and they want to connect with you, the best way to do that is global teahut, right? www.globalteahut.org. Uh-huh. You don't have a Snapchat? I don't know what that is. We just, you just did it your first Snapchat with Rich actually. So, um, so it's 2000 the number then that, that, that you want to get to this year? 2,000 members? Yes, we hope to, yes. 2,000 members. So podcast listeners, this is our time to join with Wuda and make this happen

and be a part of something really extraordinarily beautiful. And I just want to say, Wuda, thank you so much for coming to our home. And whenever I see you, and especially now, I feel so extremely blessed. And your presence, your energy, your beautiful wisdom in your teachings, they touch me deeply, deeply. And I am fully aware of the beauty of this moment with you. And so, thank you.

Most welcome. Namaste. Namaste. Peace. Most welcome. Namaste. Namaste. Peace. Plants. Okay, so that was kind of amazing, right? Let me know what you thought of the episode in the comments section on the episode page at richroll.com. Anyway, thank you for all the love. Thank you for sharing this podcast and for using the Amazon

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