Everybody Kevin Rose here. Welcome back to another episode of the Kevin Rose show quickly swipe up if you're on iOS and I guess it's on Android like that as well swipe up from the bottom and you could do a little quick multitask over to Instagram and follow me up at the username at Kevin rose on Instagram. I'd appreciate it today. My guest is Sam Harris and Sam is an extremely well-known podcast host. He created the podcast called waking up. It has since been
renamed to the making sense podcast. It's one of my favorites and rotation. I listen to almost every episode. He's a he's a great host. He's also an author. I'm really well-known author New York Times bestselling author several times over and he has created books like the end of faith and waking up Free Will and then also book called lying lying. I got to tell you it is it's awesome. It's all about the white lies that we tell to other people and
Why we should avoid doing that and we should be direct and transparent with people and he really puts forward a great argument for doing that highly recommend. If you have inaudible credit and you end up liking this interview and Sam download the book lying, I think you'll really enjoy it is one of my favorites today though. We're covering and talking about his meditation app waking up. And the reason I wanted to have Sam on is because I just finished doing his 50-day introduction course, and I thought was one of the best courses on
meditation that I've ever taken and I've done a lot of formal meditation training. I used to live across the street from the Zen Center the San Francisco Zen Center. I was very lucky and that I just ended up buying a place that was like five Doors Down from that on Page Street in San Francisco and I would walk to the Zen Center and I could listen to Dharma talks I could go and do zazen and sit and so I really got into meditation pretty early on then app started coming out gotten to
Space gotten the calm and I realized that the one thing that was lacking from these apps is that they were very prescriptive in nature meaning that you would come in and they had a pack for pretty much everything like a package of different meditation. So if you had a fear of flying or how you had some anxiety or you were dealing with a difficult breakup these types of apps would have a series of guided meditations that would bring you relief which I think is a great thing and certainly something that
needs to exist. I created a meditation app called Oak which was trying to fill some of the gaps that I thought weren't really out there. So we had a course on Mantra based meditation, which there isn't really anything out there on the App Store. So we launched that we did an unguided timer which is a really high-quality unguided timer that we launched for people that already had an existing practice. So for example, you know, if you went to Zen meditation and you want to sit at home, you could just launch our unguided timer and use pretty much any discipline that you wanted and just use it for a Time.
So very simple app, but what I was looking for was an app that would go deep in a discipline and was a serious app for people that didn't want to do this just once a week or twice a week or use it in times of emergency, which I feel in my conversations with other people that use meditation apps. They'll say I'm really stressed so I decided meditate today and I haven't done in a month, but you know, it helped me out and I think there's obviously value in that but what about
those of us that want to develop a real regular practice and want to be guided on how we can take this to the next level and go even deeper within ourselves and figure out what's going on in our heads and Sam is the perfect kind of host and guide to take us through not attend a course but a 50-day course the basics of a posthumous I'll meditation and I thought it was fantastic. He also the app has a bunch of lessons as well.
I talked to Sam and he has agreed to include one of my favorite lessons at the end of this podcast. So stick around for that. It's seven minutes of Sam speaking to you. I don't want to ruin it. But I think you're really going to enjoy this lesson. It's a lesson in mindfulness that is unlike any that I have heard before and it will definitely give you a different perspective on moment-to-moment in everyday life and give you a little taste of what some of his lessons are like, so this is normally a paid thing, but it's going to be
Be completely free here at the end of this podcast. So definitely I mean even if you're like halfway through the podcast or like I just can't you know, I don't have time for this or whatever skip to the end and do the 7-minute course from Sam. I promise you is awesome in you're in a really like it. So don't skip that we're going to dive in now and talk to Sam and really get into the ins and outs of taking meditation. Seriously. Well, thanks for agreeing to do this. I appreciate
it. Oh, yeah happy to do
it.
Decided to I just had Tim Ferriss over at my house last couple days. He came out to visit and we did a podcast together and we brought up your meditation happened talked about how we both love it. So
cool. Yeah. Yeah, he's been super-supportive. It's really it's great. I'm glad you're finding it useful. It's really but as it is, I'm as you know, a reluctant entrepreneur who's been getting a very expensive business education, but it's all it's all working now, so it's just it was a kind of a long road to get
here.
That's great. I want to start off actually, I think a great place to start for the podcast would be just to get you kind of your your background because I think a lot of people come to you through different Avenues, and I know for me it was not through your books initially. I had since gone back and and just recently downloaded waking up and but it was a podcast that I first learned about, you know, your whole platform in the stuff that the content you produce but I'd love to hear you know, when you got into meditation like how long ago was that and what?
LED you to a practice
Yeah. Well, I kind of got into all of my my interests in a what I consider to be the backwards order. I mean, so I got into meditation first and and this is so it's now over 30 years ago Meg. I guess this isn't backwards out, you know, I had some experiences with psychedelics which led me to led to an interest in just the nature of mind and what could be understood about it in a first
Person way through introspection and that naturally led me to meditation and you know, I'd actually I was I was into writing at this point and now I'm about you know 18, but I thought it was just going to write fiction and so I went up dropping out of school because it you know, really I didn't see the necessity of finishing. I didn't see the necessity of going to graduate school because I was going to write novels and study meditation and I got very into meditation at that.
I went and spent a lot of time on Retreat and I study with various teachers in India Nepal and and that really absorbed much of my 20s, but my writing changed to nonfiction and because I would just was reading a lot of philosophy and Science and wanted to write about the nature of mind but you know the moment I transitioned to nonfiction became just glaringly obvious that it now mattered that I had not completed my education.
Education, so I decided to go back to school and wind up doing my PhD in Neuroscience, which I always entered that program very much in a in a philosophical frame of mind and I was I was you know, a philosopher of mind or you don't Aspire in philosopher of mine who just wanted to get his arms around me the scientific details as we were coming to know them from from Neuroscience. So and I you know, I thought I was going to do a PhD in philosophy, but then
The last minute decided Neuroscience made more sense. So I'm in the middle of my Neuroscience PhD or you know, the first two years of it when September 11th happened and so, you know here I was someone who is now, you know, 34 and had spent the better part of a decade, you know more than a decade studying religion and philosophy on my own and was now
now do actually by just coincidence doing research fmri research on the nature of belief in belief in any kind of any form of propositional knowledge, whether it's you know, factual or semantics are autobiographical or or in fact religious. So I was thinking about religious faith and its consequences and you know had spent, you know, at least a decade pursuing my own, you know, contemplative experiences, but you know both
On Retreat and and with psychedelics and so, you know, I understood what the core experiences were that they had given rise to our religious traditions and now people started flying planes into our buildings based on specific religious ideas that most rational people should find fairly incredible and I just observed in the aftermath of that that because of our attachment to our own religious mythology.
We had no way of talking about what was happening apart from just doubling down on our own religious tribalism, right? And it just it seemed absolutely perverse to me. So my first book the end of Faith was very much a culture War book where I paint a very Stark opposition between reason and faith and real and Science and religion and you know, this could have brought me into prominence among atheists, you know among whom I had never really positioned.
So I hadn't thought of myself as an atheist. I never used the word. I'd never visited an atheist website much less gone. Donate the atheist
conference. Did you have any religious beliefs when you were younger at all was it was that any ever in your household or no?
No, I mean I just I had a very strong interest in quote spiritual experience once I turned around 18 or so, and that was based on some initial experiences with MDMA and you know,
Oh, then once I started sitting meditation Retreats and studying in India Nepal, and then it then it became an explicit interest in Altered States Of Consciousness and Eastern philosophy and you know, all those related topics and religion. Generally. I just it just not but just not faith-based religion. I was just interested in the contempt lot of teachings in you know, in each religious tradition East and West so then the this kind of moment of public criticism of
Religion and you know kind of Fairly militant atheism sort of sidelined my scientific research for a few years. I then wrote another book letter to a Christian Nation which was the response to the Christian push back to the end of faith and all the while I was still talking about meditation and there's a there's at least one chapter on the nature of mind and contemplative experience in my first book, but still it it all got
Overshadowed by my very uncompromising criticism of religious faith. And so, you know, atheism was the first framing under which I became public and anyone would have noticed me, but then I wrote, you know several other books that you know where it was not it was not about atheism that the next book the moral landscape was how we can understand morality and values in a rational scientific framework, and that was actually a
An edited version of what was my PhD dissertation in for UCLA? So and then I you know, I've written a book on on the ethics of line.
I love that book. By the way. I thought that was great. Oh cool. That was a pretty short little book, right if I recall.
Yeah. I'm now a fan of short books both as a reader and a writer. It's dry. I noticed that you know, everyone has the the same bandwidth problem I have which is e there's an infinite amount of stuff to read and
You know, it's just so much is competing for your attention now and so if you write a long book your is a very common experience to especially if it's an argument driven book, that's controversial you often see people reacting to it where it's clear that they haven't read the whole book and they read the first chapter. They read your last chapter. They poked around in it. And then they are slamming you for not saying things that you know did in fact say in the book and so that all that becomes more and more frustrated and so I'm now like to write books.
So short that if someone starts them there's a good chance. They're
going to finish them. Yeah, that was a you caused internal debate amongst my family. I had brought up the idea of not telling our daughters. There's a Santa Claus and you covered that in the book as well. And that was just like, you know, my family is very traditional my wife and I are on board with that. But you know, I definitely my mom and my sister were a little appalled by such a ideas but
Yeah, it was it was a fun read for
sure. That's amazing. That's the most common question. When you when you draw a very firm prohibition against lying the first question you get a part is real. There's really only two questions. It's you know, what do you say when she asks do I look fat in this dress? And what do you say about Santa Claus? That's basically what people are worried about in the 21st century.
Yeah. How do you I'm curious just to dig into that book a little bit because I we never had chat about it offline when we've hung out a couple.
Times. I'm really curious to know how do you Embrace those principles with your spouse? Like how do you is something that might be charged you try and land it a certain way like at you there's a there's a fine line between being just kind of brutally honest and also being just like, you know a dick like a how can you make sure that something lands the right way if you are being honest
Yeoman. Well, there's the background fact that you're on the same team, right? I mean the I really
Do you love your spouse and you want what's best for them and insofar as you think you can see what's best for them? You're honestly articulating that is is never going to be a bad thing. I mean you can be wrong, right and you you certainly can admit that you might be wrong, you know, if anything really matters, you know, presumably they actually want to to see the world as you see it and so it's never really a matter of being tempted.
Ally I mean, obviously there are better and worse ways to communicate what's true and it can be challenging to figure out exactly what is true, I mean the truth might be just that you have a preference for something and you're not sure how that really maps onto the world right like, you know, you think one thing looks better than another but you know that you're not you're not going to say that all of humanity would agree with you right and so you can you can kind of finesse it
Which is to say you just you know, be more and more scrupulous about what you really think is true and in these situations, but part of it is also I mean that you know, so if you if you realize that that's the context where you might be delivering any kind of awkward truth to someone it softens it a lot but I mean the reality is that there are certain people who just don't want the truth, right? I mean like they'll hand you something for feedback and all they really want is to be told is great and when you
At all from that line you you're offending them. And what happens is you just wind up training these people that you're not the person to come to when they want to be bullshitted. Right? And and that's great. I mean then you no longer have to deal with that in your life and and people people real it in the thing that a moment to notice which is really great is is when you have given someone truly honest feedback that is critical.
And they you know, they receive it and they presumably find it useful and they absorb it it's not what they wanted to hear. But it is what you know, you truly had to say then on some other occasion when they give you something that you actually really love and your feedback is fundamentally different at that moment. They just know you're being honest, right? They know you're not bullshitting and that's so valuable. I mean the people are so grateful to its and you know, and as someone who receives critical feedback myself is just
It's such a relief to recognize those moments when you're in the presence of someone who is telling you to your face exactly. What they would be saying behind your back to somebody else that they they respected and you know, that that you really want to bring those two sides of your life into close register and you want to be around people who are doing likewise me want friends who who speak about you in your absence exactly the way they would speak if you were sitting at the table and
I
know what it's like when you know this awkward moments where you're at a group dinner and someone gets up to go to the bathroom and then you know, then people start dishing about them and they come back and the conversation changes and was interesting to notice about that is not only have you not only does that say something about your relationship to that person. You've actually communicated something to everyone else at the table should because everyone else at the table knows that you're like you're likely to be dishing about them when they get up to
Go to the bathroom and and it just it reduces trust it kind of everywhere all at once and it is very Insidious. It's a
great point and also, you know, it's just it's how we learn to get that honest feedback and improve is individuals. I know one thing that I did that was really useful couple years ago was this idea of 360 feedback? It's a it's a popular thing in the corporate world, but I did on a personal level where I had 10 of my friends a mixture of just friends only and then friends / colleagues.
And I had them where they were interviewed by this coach and it was completely Anonymous and then the feedback was presented back to me in aggregate. So I would know who's saying what and it was shocking. I mean there was definitely some big. Aha's in there. I'm like, wow, I really wish I would have had this I would have this conversation directly with my friends, but I found it very useful because sometimes there's people that just don't you know, they don't know how to go about this and giving good feedback and people tend to dodge and
in and soften things and but yeah, I'm one of those people I'm sure like you are the just would rather have the the real honest straight talk, you
know. Yeah. Yeah that's fascinating. I've never done that but I have a friend, you know, you do, you know Dan Harris the who's got the 10% happier app in the book A. So, yeah, he did that. I think he just did that in a professional context, but he had like all of his colleagues hit him with 360 feedback and and it was it was he was reeling from it was quite an intense experience.
He talks about it a bunch on this podcast.
Yeah, it's definitely useful. So I'm jumping back a little bit though. I wanted to know what was the first discipline of meditation that you studied and did that change over time.
Yeah. Well, I got into a pasta practice first and that that is the pasta is the the Pali word for insight practice and it comes from the the oldest tradition of Buddhism the Tera vaada and it is the source of
Of what we generally speak of as mindfulness in the west which is a you know, the type of attention your training in the pasta. So as to produce what's called inside is mindfulness. And so I spent a lot of time doing that with some very great western teachers who are among the first people to popularize mindfulness in the west people like Joseph Goldstein and Jack kornfield and then I went and studied.
With some of their teachers mainly the Burmese meditation Master 22 side out, but eventually after may be spending about a cumulative year on Retreat. I you know sitting like one month to three month Retreats and you know, you know anything from one weekend to three months, but you know, mostly it was It was kind of longer chunks and once I had gotten to a better
A year of that. I got more and more frustrated in my practice that maybe there's a those kind of a logic of the Burmese style of mindfulness practice where it really was goal-oriented where you're as much as you're trying to just be in the in the present moment and and really in fact are just land in the present moment and accepting whatever your experience is like there. There's there was a an explicit logic to the
Practice which was seeking to to get to some state which was not you know currently present for you and that logic became more and more frustrating and ultimately just it was at odds with what I was cleaning was true from studying other traditions and just from you know, just thinking about and how Consciousness must be I mean that just must be some way to recognize the Consciousness is already free.
Free of the self for instance. It's not that you have a self and then you get rid of it through meditation. It's actually it's an illusion and presumably that you can cut through that illusion directly and you don't have to schlep up to the top of the mountain top to do it. You can do it right here at the mountains base. And so I started seeking out some other styles of practice after that and and that that was that was an important difference but I still think that the pasta is the best introductory practice.
Or anybody because it's unlike Mantra practice or any visualization practice. There's nothing that you're a strategically adding to your experience. If you're just paying attention to the next breath the next sound the next thought whatever is arising and so there's no there's no layer of religiosity or iconography or or any any cultural trappings that you have to have to embrace or think about or you know reason
self into is just just pay clear non-judgmental attention to experience. So I think it is the best place to start for certainly for secular rational people who don't want to take on a new set of religious ideas.
Yeah, when you were doing these you said up to three months these Retreats with these silent Retreats or what is a three-month Retreat look like like can you describe an average
day? Yes. It was it's a very formalized especially if you do it at some
Like the Insight Meditation society and Barre, Massachusetts, which is, you know, both IMS and and Spirit Rock. I despair Rock. I don't think has a three-month retreat but at the same kinds of Retreats whether it's you know, one week or three months, it's the same kind of schedule where you're sitting and walking by turns so that there's a sitting practice in a walk-in practice and you're just alternating hour by hour throughout the day and
and you know, when once you're into it, you know after a few days you you're really just the goal is to to continuously practice mindfulness and to really not, you know, not respect any boundary between the sitting in the walk-in and every other moment in the day, so you're trying to be as mindful as possible at lunch and and when you're drinking a cup of tea and when you're getting ready for bed, and so you're just linking all these moments together in silence.
You don't talk to anyone else on the retreat. I mean there might be a hundred people on retreat with you, but you're not talking and you're not not even making eye contact and it's amazing how you can just function in a common space with a hundred other people really perfectly. I mean, there's no as nothing awkward about it. There's nothing you just meet you can literally go three months without making eye contact with another human being and yet be navigating a common space with them.
All the while because you know that all the meals are just a buffet and there's nothing you never have to ask someone to pass the salt or I mean, there's just there's no they have it really they've created a kind of you know machine for contemplation there where it's just every completely taken care of. It's very intimate to to be in Silence with other people is really is quite a beautiful experience and then your each night. There's a lecture called.
A Dharma talk Dharma be in the word for the teachings and also for the the reality that one is uncovering. I mean, it's nice translated as the way or the truth or the teachings depending on the context. So you'll have a lecture about the practice each night and you'll have usually every other day or so depending on on the retreat and a very brief interview with a teacher just to check in
and that's the
You can talk right is when your one-on-one interviews.
Yeah, so for like 10 minutes, you'll talk to somebody. I'm have done some Retreats where I decided I didn't need interviews with teachers and so I was actually actually didn't talk to anyone for three months, but generally speaking at least in the pasta context you would he would have a periodic interview and just to kind of fine tune the practice and to make sure you're not going crazy and and amazed it helps to certainly in the beginning to get
You know all the guidance you can get.
Yeah, I'm curious when you when you go to one of these. I have not done one yet. My wife's to attend a silent Retreat and she loved it when someone is kind of getting to are beginning a new practice and I think you do this really quite well with your app. I just finished day 50 today. Actually. I timed it so that would be not a it's such great content. Well done. But you know, I think most people when they think about meditation they think about it in that.
If either heard about it, or they have gone in and tried, you know, one of the popular apps that are out there. We've probably sat for a couple sessions and it's still at that point like, oh I use it for relaxation, you know, I use it for its prescriptive in a way. So I have a fear of flying so I take my fear of flying pack today, you know when you're taking it seriously meaning that you really want to develop a deep practice here other than just the technique of
Of you know kind of following the breath what have what do people learn in terms of what the self is and what is consciousness. Can you can you go into that a little bit like what would how would you instruct someone if they wanted to learn about those things? And what a deeper practice looks like
Yeah. Well, yeah, so this is something I'm really trying to do in my app. And so I start with a fairly standard mindfulness curriculum, but as you know, who if you got to pay 50, you know.
Yourself? Yeah, 24-hour. Yeah, it becomes kind of non-standard and and non-dualistic and I'll guess I'll explain what I mean by that in a moment. There are two pieces to this one is that you ultimately recognize that meditation isn't something you're doing. It's not actually a practice. It's when you're when you're actually practicing your ceasing to do something that you're always tending to do.
and that thing is is identify with each passing thought so thoughts arise and you don't notice them as appearances in Consciousness and they seem to become you right they seem to be they completely subsume your point of view and that the feeling of being a self the feeling of being a subject behind your face the feeling of being an eye or me the feeling of being a thinker
Of thoughts who is kind of the author of your your intentions and your your moment-to-moment experience. All of that is what it feels like to be identified with thought helplessly in each moment and meditation is real meditation meditation and there are many different things that go by the name of meditation, but the the meditation that I'm talking about is a recognition that
That Consciousness prior to identification with thought doesn't feel like a cell. It doesn't feel like a subject in the head. It doesn't feel like there's someone behind your face looking out that it doesn't feel like there's a thinker in addition to the arising of thought and then when you recognize that and can become aware of that as your practice that then practice is no longer something. It's no longer.
technique you're applying strategically is no longer something you're doing its again in each each moment something you are you're recognizing and that recognition is made possible because there's something you're no longer doing which is becoming lost in thought and you know, and there's a kind of a there's kind of an energetics to this which is, you know to be identify with thought is to is I mean this analogy to kind of having a clenched fist, I mean you're sort of contracted
And recoiling from experience and you're trying to appropriate experience. You're grasping. It was pleasant you're pushing your trying to push away what's unpleasant you're reacting to everything and you can get a sense of that this when you imagine what it's like to become acutely self-conscious, right? Like imagine your you walk into a room and you feel like everyone's looking at you or your something awkward just happened or you just embarrassed yourself or and
and the feeling of sort of projecting your eyes outward and having everyone's you know, following everyone's gaze back to where you think you are that that feeling of heightened self-consciousness that kind of that cramp is really kind of always present in this feeling we call ourselves and we take this into relationship and we take the and this is the thing that we try to we're happy to feel it relax when
we're having a very pleasant Peak experience or when we're kind of in a flow State when we're working out or even just watching a movie. I mean one of the reasons why watching films or television is so relaxing is that it is a an experience of a kind of loss of self. I mean, you're sort of forget yourself you forget your you know, you forget you certainly forget you're sitting in a theater looking at light on the wall and you become absorbed in this in
Other thing and we seek this experience out and meditation is a way of recognizing that Consciousness prior to identification with thought is simply that way. I mean you can you can enjoy it directly without having to arrange anything about the world or about your behavior into to access it. And so that's I was curious would you
say when I think about this I'm always trying to think in certain analogies that I can wrap my brain around.
Cuz it's hard to unpack a lot of the stuff. I often think about since I was probably cuz I'm a technologist and built computers when I was younger, but I think of it as a just a functioning computer that is working. But with no like applications installed. So it's just like a base and I feel like in in crack me where I'm wrong here. But I feel like when there's there's certain things that get installed into us all throughout life. Meaning our belief systems ways that you know, someone might have cheated
On us when we were in a relationship when we were younger all these little things that occur that then when new information comes in if they hit one of these things they cause a whole chain of different events, you know, it's like the difference between enjoying a cup of coffee that single origin that's amazing that you love and handing that same cup of coffee to someone that's Mormon that doesn't drink coffee and all of a sudden sees it as a sin and like they're going to have a completely different experience than the coffee lover. Right? And that's all because of programming and programs that are kind of like launched inside of the brain and
that are stuck there. Would you see that Consciousness is it it is happening and unfolding in the brain and it is the fact that the brain is booted up and running. Is that kind of
correct? Well so we can talk about this from the first person side or the third person side and I think they're they require a different way of speaking so that it's so from the third person side. It's so talking about, you know brains out there in the world. There's every reason to believe that Consciousness is
Arising at some level based on the the information processing that's happening in our brains. Right? I mean that's a you're certainly on firm ground if you think that that's so although the truth is we don't actually know that that's the case. It means it's quite possible that something spookier is in fact true. I mean, it's possible that Consciousness is a more fundamental property of matter than that and you know, maybe even individual neurons or even
You know, even subatomic particles could have a kind of interior subjectivity that we just are not able to inspect. Well
that case a rock could be conscious at that point. If something that's through key is
true. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean that there's and there's a name for this view in philosophy is called Pants I Chasm and there's no it might be an unfalsifiable view. I mean, I wouldn't expect rocks to start talking to us if you know electrons were conscious, but it's just to say that if you're going to be scrupulous about
You know, it's only fair to admit that we don't actually know how Consciousness is integrated with the physics of things. We don't know at what level it arises and therefore we don't know how far down it goes in the phylogenetic tree. We don't know if crickets are conscious. It's you know, anybody's guess whether a cricket brain is sufficient for you know, the lights to come on. And and for this reason we don't yet know what would make our computers.
Aegis and so if we ever build computers that pass the Turing test and seemed conscious to us, you know, they seemed if certainly if we build super-intelligent robots that we can talk to they're going to seemed conscious. I mean, especially if we give them faces if we make them a tall humanoid and you know that we give them a motions that that make us comfortable with them and they become better Detectors of our own emotions, then even our closest friends.
And we will be massively persuaded that we're in relationship to beans that have their own point of view. But until we understand how Consciousness actually emerges we won't know that that's the case and that's just an interesting intellectual and ultimately ethical problem because if we're building machines that are conscious will then we're building machines that can suffer, you know, and then and then it's reasonable to worry that you know when you recycle your your iPhone
95 are you actually committing a murder? You know if your iPhone was was conscious so so it's you know, it's not make it these can seem act like academic ideas and debates. But the reality is that every ethical question turns on on whether or not some conscious agent can be affected by a set of facts and so you not understanding how Consciousness emerges is is a problem, you know as we as we move into a
Applause of all future where will be simulating world's on computers right? Maybe it's were building simulated Minds that can suffer. You know, I'm we could be inadvertently, you know creating hell's and populating them and it seems that would be obviously a terrible thing to do and if Consciousness really is at bottom just a matter of information processing which is a totally respectable thing to think then this is absolutely something we might wind up doing.
Mean to doubt that we might do it is really at bottom to doubt that Consciousness is just a matter of information processing, you know, there are reasons to wonder whether or not it is but it certainly might be and so anyway, that's all that's all just to talk about the world and and brains in the world. But and from the point of view of the world, there is no evidence of Consciousness anywhere, right? If you look at a brain, there's no evidence that it's conscious and
Likewise with any computer system, we would we would build you know, no matter how it behaves if you if you look at at its internal States or even Its Behavior and we just there's no is no behavior that necessarily advertises that you know, Consciousness had to be associated with
it. It sounds like we don't have a good definition. That's part of the problem, right? There's it's not really definable.
Well, there's it's not definable by reference to its external properties. It's always only definable. It's only
Lee in Kent it's only conceivable I would argue from the first person side, which is you know, what we experience directly in ourselves in and as our first person experience in each moment and from that side from the subjective side Consciousness is the one thing in this universe that you can't actually be in doubt about I mean you could be confused about every other thing you might be a brain-in-a-vat.
You might be asleep and dreaming right now. You might be in the Matrix, you know, you know our physics could be not at all in touch with any kind of base layer of reality. We could be wrong about everything. But the one thing you can't be wrong about is that something seems to be happening from you from your point of view? Right? Like the the lights are on in some way, you know, whatever the status of this experience is there.
Something that it's like to be you and that's that's the fact of Consciousness in your own case. That's what we mean by by Consciousness. And if you know, if you if you when you die, you lose all that. Well, then that's to say that you know Consciousness actually ends at death, you know, if something persists after death if the lights stay I have you everything could change but if the lights stay on in some way well, then that's not synonymous with saying that Consciousness persists.
After death, so from the first person side.
Consciousness is the primary datum, right? And then the question is what could be what can be discovered about it from the first person side and what and how can we use third person science and first-person introspection to develop a rational picture of what's happening. And you know, there are many Neuroscience lab studying things like meditation with tools of neuroimaging.
Correlating, you know changes in experience with changes in brain States and that's a totally valid thing to do. But again the cash value of all of this is ultimately on the first person side. I mean is you can't keep you can't actually drop the the what it's like to be you part of it because again, there's there is simply no evidence of Consciousness out in the world, and we know it's possible.
to have complex human behavior that doesn't seem associated with Consciousness and we know that it's possible to lose the capacity to do anything behavioral and to still be conscious means so you can have someone with locked-in syndrome who can't even blink their eyelids and we know that they're just they're trapped in their bodies at that point and you know, they can't signal that they're still awake and experiencing everything and yet they are and we know this because the another people
And this condition who could blink one eye lid and and they managed to Signal, you know, and even if you know the book The Butterfly and the diving bell, right? You know, where was it the diving bell and the Butterfly have forget the order there but it's an amazing book that was you know, you know blinked into existence by the author who could only move one eyelid and you know, but for that no one would have known that there was that they'll
lights were still on so we know that the Consciousness is divorced scible from any external sign of
it. Well, there would have been brain activity though. Right? Like they could have hooked him up young and and seeing the actual active brain activity.
Yes. Yeah, that's true. Again. The correlation there is is totally interesting and valid and you know, I think at some point we will arrive at what we what we have good reason to believe are the are the so called neural correlates of Consciousness, but
Again, the correlation game only makes sense. If you if you maintain both sides of the coin. It's like, you know, you take something like for which there is a clear correlation and we know something about I don't know the the the auditory voices that schizophrenic is here. Right was we know if you bring a schizophrenic into the lab and scan their brain while they're claiming to hear voices. You'll actually see
see activity in the auditory cortex that makes plausible sense of this claim. And so it sort of it's nice that that supports our view of what is in fact auditory cortex and it seems to support the claim that they're actually hearing voices. But if those two things broke apart, you know, if all the schizophrenic said, well actually no I'm hearing voices now and now was a point where there was no activity in auditory cortex. The activity was somewhere else and when there was activity in audio and auditory
Text they claimed it here. Nothing. Well, then our model would change and then we would say, you know, then we would you know auditory cortex wouldn't be auditory cortex and in quite the same way which is just to say that the cash value is always what the person is actually experiencing and their ability to report it to us is not to say that no one can be confused about their experience in any way but and obviously people can lie about their experience but it's the idea that we ever get rid of this.
Active side of the coin is actually an illusion and there are many scientists who are taken in by this and who think that you know, ultimately we'll just talk about neurotransmitters and and you know neurophysiology and drop the language of thoughts and desires and intentions and emotions and it just it can't be true. I mean, it's just because it's the only way we're finding those neural correlates is by correlating them with the actual experience.
That people are reporting
and then how does this tie back into into meditation? Like how do you add as this? How does a practice view Consciousness and in meditation?
Well, so introspection was fairly still born in the west maybe, you know about a hundred fifty years ago. There were psychologists who are trying to bring it into some into some scientific methodology and you had people like William James who were giving it a go, but it
Became a kind of dead end and this was largely due to the fact that that just they just didn't have the methods to you know, pay sustained attention to experience. I mean, they just everyone was lost in thought all the time and never saw an alternative. Whereas in the East you have very sophisticated methods of meditation, but there are rising in a cultural context that didn't have a
scientific picture of the world and they were reliable they were arising in explicitly religious cultures, you know Buddhist and and Indian, you know, now nominally Hindu and so the interpretation of the data of experience were didn't yield a scientific picture of reality but it is just a fact that you can train the mind to be a much better Observer of itself and
And you can notice things about the nature of Consciousness and about the nature of your mind that are totally in harmony with what we have every reason to expect based on how we study the mind in psychological science and in and in neuroscience, and certainly what we know about the nature of the brain, so you can you can bring your experience into closer Conformity with with a 21st century picture of what the mind.
Should be like and I mean for instance, you know, there's just no place in the brain for an ego and unchanging self to be sitting right? I mean, that's just that's just not what's happening in there is not what's happening structurally and it's not what's happening physiologically, right? I mean that's just there the brain is a is in terms of what's actually happening that is giving rise to your experience. It's a process. I mean, you're much more of a verb than an ounce.
Down and the idea that you are the same self that you know went to went to sleep last night and then woke up this morning and that you got this unchanging Center of of narrative gravity that just just passes through moment to moment. That's a that's a construct that doesn't actually have a coral it in in the brain. I mean just it would there's just there's no way to make sense of this.
Idea, and because the sense of self has got to be a process on some level. It totally makes sense that it is that process can be interrupted. Right and you can experience this directly yourself and there's an analogy. I sometimes use for this which is another another place where you can you can see how like a prediction from the third person anatomical side.
I'd indicates a possible experience that then people can confirm and this is the experience of seeing your optic blind spot, you know, some most people in human history didn't know anything about the blind spot. Then we started learning something about the structure of the retina of the eye and we notice we'll wait a minute. There's we got the optic nerve transiting through the retina and in that spot, there are no photoreceptors. It is God.
there has to be a spot in the visual field where you're not seeing anything in each eye because it just it would be a miracle if you were getting data from that spot because there are no photoreceptors and you know, lo and behold you can actually run the experiment you can close one eye and look at you know stare at a fixation cross on a piece of paper and and draw Mark, you know Elsewhere on that paper and you can move the paper into a spot where that Mark, you know the other Mark you've drawn will
Disappear and you know most people want to be doing this in school at some point and then forgetting about it for the rest of their lives, but that reveals that you can you can look at something in this case about the anatomy of the eye and predict something that must be true of your experience. If you could only pay careful enough attention to it and there's an analogous thing that that is true about the cell, which is you you look at the brain and you realize well, this is whatever this is.
Is this is not a place where there's going to be an unchanging me that just rides around? You know that just like Bob's like a cork on the on the ocean of experience for you know, 75 80 90 years. So this is there some way of viewing my experience moment to moment moment moment. That's more in register with what we would expect it to be based on the third person facts and
And is in fact true to say that there is I mean you can actually notice that when you pay very close attention to the way Consciousness is in each moment the sense of self drops away and then there is no there's no Center to Consciousness. There's no there's no subject interior to the body. And this is one of the strange paradoxes we have is that we most of us don't feel
to our bodies me might just believe that you know, of course your your your body your your brain your the totality there and that's you the person but most people are walking around feeling like their passengers in their bodies that are like a kind of vehicle when they're kind of Common Sense Duelists where they think they're they've got a mind that is in their head and you know, they're they're riding around in the body and then when you tell them to meditate
And you give them an object of meditation like the breath. Well, then there they kind of feel like they're above the breath and they're they're aiming their attention down at it and you know, hopefully getting closer and closer to it and then they get lost in thought and they come back to the breath, but they feel like a subject in the head and if you pay close enough attention to it actually disappears and that does from it from the neurological side. It makes sense that it would because it just that just
Be the structure of things.
Hmm, one of the things that exercises that I thought was so powerful that you had in the app and I can't remember if it was a lesson. I think it was less than where you look in the mirror and try and find the Seer mmm. Can you can you talk about that for a minute that the practice
that was somewhat inspired by Douglas Harding's teaching the its first appeared in his book titled on having no head and this is Douglas.
ding was this English architect who kind of stumbled on he was a Zen student at first, but he kind of stumbled on his own way of articulating the the the inside here and he was at he was wandering around outside of Katmandu a place called nagas coat where has a great view of the Himalayas and he was looking at the mountains and on his account realized that suddenly realized that he had no head that he was just
Where his head was supposed to be there's just the sky and the in the mountains and steep this vast expanse moves just the world in place of where he knew his head should be and then the exercise he gives people his to look for their heads as they as is, you know gaze out on the world. Look for the thing. You think you're looking out of try to turn attention upon itself and you might discover the moment you try
Try to do that that for that moment there really is just the world and you're no longer separate from it subjectively. So, you know, he would he then, you know being an architect. He created a bunch of clever exercises by which to to interrogate this experience. And you know one is to notice that when you're talking to another person or In Deed when you're just when you're looking at yourself in a mirror
They're not two heads there. There's just one right you don't you know the old when you look in the mirror, the only head you see is the the only face you see is the one in the mirror and you're you as a matter of direct experience are simply this open space in which that head is appearing and that's that can be that can shift things for people where they just suddenly notice that yeah Consciousness is just
just this wide-open undefined condition in which anything that can be noticed is noticed and that's true for for everything, you know inside and out. It's true for
You know, what you notice in the out in the in the visual world is true of your your Sensations internal to the body is true of your thoughts. I mean people think that there's there's a there's two places. They think that when they're meditating with their eyes closed they're you know, they're sort of in themselves in their heads, you know paying attention to what it's like to be them then they open their eyes and then then the world comes rushing in and there, you know, and so the boundary between self and
And world is drawn at the skin in terms of their experience. Now again from the third person from a third-person side. That's it's fine to talk about, you know people in the world and you know, what's inside your skin is is you for the moment and what's outside your skin isn't and that's fine. But as a matter of experience what you're calling the world is just as much inside Consciousness and inside your brain if you like as anything
Else you're noticing. I mean you can and you can notice this if you look at your visual field and then just imagine just just visualize something with your eyes open and superimpose it on your visual field and muscle say you're still staring at your computer right now and just you know, briefly Flash and image of
I don't know the Eiffel Tower or Oprah Winfrey or a chariot. Right? I mean these things are like it depending on how clearly you can visualize things. This could be, you know, more or less distinct, but for most people something will be super imposed there as though seen with the open eyes. I mean, it's kind of the same space in which yours you're seeing the the quote real world and
I mean, there's no there's no other space for which for this to happen. And I mean your you've got you have one brain that is delivering you, you know every facet of your experience in this moment. And so what's happening in our Waking Life is very much analogous to what's happening when we dream. It's just it's much more constrained by sensory inputs when we're awake then When We're Dreaming, but it is a kind of vision, you know, or kind of user
interface where we're we're not
we're always in the same condition and and and the condition from the first person side is always a matter of experiencing Consciousness and its contents and somet it meditation just becomes a way of recognizing what Consciousness is always already like in the midst of that and that that becomes a an immensely empowering thing to do because
then you can kind of you can break the connection to so much psychological suffering and whether it's you know, all possible psychological suffering, you know, I can't say but when you look at the mechanics of your own suffering when you look at why you become anxious or afraid or self-hating or you know, anything, you know ashamed it is a matter of being identified with a thought. Are you
Arises in your mind that you just don't inspect you don't notice. It seems like you you know, and it's it's a voice in the head, you know, or an image or you know, you're reading you can be reading something from the physical world, you know, the look on another person's face, you know, you read that back onto yourself and your captured attention is captured in that moment and everything closes down into whatever the
the emotional or behavioral contents of those thoughts and and judgments and reactions seem to be and it's very similar to being you know asleep and dreaming and not knowing that you're dreaming, you know, and then and and the difference between a normal dream and a lucid dream is fairly impressive and certainly the difference between being asleep and dreaming and waking up and realizing you were safe in your bed. That whole time is is fairly Stark and there's something
About breaking the spell of being lost in thought with real mindfulness. That is analogously freeing you just you just are no it for that moment. At least you're not taken in by the thing that otherwise would have totally determined your state of being for you know moments minutes hours depending on how long you got on the ride and couldn't see any alternative for
yeah. It's
Just I think when you first start to practice or have a dedicated practice over time and you start to see these little tiny cracks or a little breaks where you're like, wow, I would have I would have not done it that way previous to to practicing. Its it really is a it's a shame that it takes quite a while to kind of get there. I think that one of the reasons why I really appreciate the years is a 50-day course is I you know, there's so many there's like a rush to the who can do the quickest.
Meditation, you know, I saw teaching up there the other day that was out there was like five minute meditations, you know, and it's going to be one minute or I feel that you need to give it time to actually see some of these these real benefits to shine through
got me certainly for most people it takes some training. I mean really it's a skill, you know, it's like anything else you you'll experience you that you're not good at it in the beginning because you just haven't you haven't trained this at all, and this is running against the grain of everything you've been
I'm doing with your mind for your entire life, you know, so it's it's just not you know, it's like riding a unicycle or playing the piano or something that you just have never done until you've done it you've attempted to do it and the first attempt can seem like just a stark failure which it which in most cases it is I mean in most cases people who attempt to meditate
And for the longest time may think they are successfully meditating. You know, they're really just they've just close their eyes and they're thinking with their eyes closed or they don't have enough concentration to even notice how distracted they are. You know, they may just come away thinking. Oh that was that was kind of pleasant, but they were just thinking that the whole time and so one of the virtues of an app is that it's actually the perfect technology to
Interrupt that I mean, all you need is an audio track that is kind of like a kind of mindfulness alarm that goes off that tells you that reminds you that you should be meditating and that can be it can be very helpful. Even for for very experienced meditators may even you know, even for the most experienced meditators. They're going to be more mindful having someone occasionally tap them on the shoulder saying hey, are you are you paying attention? And so it's it
It never until you're totally stabilized, you know, it seems Seems always useful to me but it's yeah and the beginning you can be very frustrating and what you have to realize about. The beginning is the practice really is just you know endlessly noticing that you're distracted and just coming back to the practice it coming in the beginning coming back to noticing the breath or sounds or Sensations in the body and and that willingness to come.
Back without judgment judgment is just another thought that's capturing you, you know frustration is another thought that's capturing you in that moment. So they all this is only one remedy ever which is to just notice that and drop back and be aware of the next thing that appears whether it's a sound or a sensation or
thought what are your thoughts on enlightenment? I know that that's like the you know, obviously we've anyone talks about it.
This is like a slang word these days. You know, it's like the hot thing or what's you know, what is it? How does one obtain it and then I know that you've had some some mixed feelings or at least I've read that you had on whether it is actually a lasting feeling or is it something that just arises from time to time?
Well, I have no reason to believe that it's not possible and what I think it would be would be just a full stable.
Ization of this insight into the the non duality of awareness just so there's just a weariness and its contents and there's no there's no subject in the middle of it all and and on some level the contents of Consciousness are our unified with it and they're kind of an expression of it's like waves on the ocean. It's not like it is not a give the ocean on one side and the waves on the other the waves themselves.
elves
are you know a modification of this underlying reality which is which is the ocean and that's the way it feels in Consciousness when you're recognizing the the non-duality of subject and object when you're simply just seeing and hearing and even thinking without this this sense of subject-object dualism and the fact that you can experience that for two seconds makes me think that you can experience it for 2
It's and two hours. And you know, why would you ever overlooked it again? If you could if you could get to the point of that kind of stability, and I've certainly met people who have been extraordinarily good advertisements for what it might be like to be very stable in this intuition. Right? And I've met people who've spent decades on Retreat doing nothing, but pay attention to this and come out, you know, extremely, you know,
Eyes and and radiantly good-natured as a result. Of course, we all know there's you know, horror stories of gurus mistreating their students and having you know feet of clay or worse and I think on some level that it demands an explanation and I think in most cases these are not purely conscious frauds. These are people who really did have genuine insights and real experience. It's just they weren't stable in it and they were still susceptible.
Able to you know, all of the normal human failings of greed and narcissism and and there's really is no circumstance where you can more fully exploit your your egocentric desire is however transitory. They are then being a guru. I mean, it's just it's like the ultimate rock star experience, especially in a traditional context where you're getting the sort of Eastern.
Therrien, you know very hierarchical structure imposed on the on the the relationship between teacher and disciple
you've seen the Ocho documentary I take it
here. Yeah. So show us a great example of it, you know. Oh shows I mean OSHA was very smart. I have no doubt that he had experiences of the sort that he was describing and so it's like he isn't he knows what, you know if he were around and listening to our conversation.
He knows what I'm talking about. Now when I talk about the nature of Consciousness, but he was also a guy who you know, clearly just you know, couldn't resist, you know, screwing all of his pretty female students. And I mean, the guy was a Madman right immediately
wild
wild wild country. Well, yeah, I mean, they're I mean, they're even crazier facts about OSHA that I don't even I don't think showed up in that documentary, but he was
He was really out there. I mean he was you know, snorting nitrous oxide and and getting a blowjob every 45 minutes and made his he was really just he had a he was living up the guru light. Yeah, he just went he went all in and you know, someone some you know, clever skeptic asked him, you know, why is it? Oh show that you you seem to be surrounded, you know only by large-breasted women like of all the you know you
you pretend to be fully enlightened and yet strangely, you know all the women in your retinue or attractive and have large breasts and he says something like, you know, I have been tyrannized by a small breasted women for many lifetimes in succession and it's not going to put up with it in this lifetime and whistles like once you cross over and her, you know, totally unimpeachably, you know, even when you're buying the 93rd Rolls-Royce or whatever it was here's just you're surrounded by a culture of
of sycophants and and it would get but again, it's somewhat paradoxical because you're also giving actually valid teachings to people who are having real peak experiences in your company. It's not like everyone was was lying right in there. They're all you know, there. There are a lot of them are doing real practice and having profound insights that are transformative and they're associating those insights with him and
You know, he's clearly a very mixed bag, ethically and there, you know the numbers of gurus who who flame out in this way or it's they really they outnumber those who don't you know, at least if I had to bet so it's I think it's a relationship that needs a modern rethinking. You know, where a teacher is much. I think you have to just lose the hierarchy and
of a teacher as someone who has a range as it has an expertise. I mean have more experience in something than you do and you want to learn this thing. But you know, this is like learning to play the piano or learning to hit a golf ball or you know, getting a life coach or something that it doesn't have the same component of projection and you know transference and countertransference and you know, the crazy dynamics of where that really caused people to.
Ignore starkly unethical Behavior or rationalize
it. Yeah, it's crazy how you know some of the teachings and Zen. I'm sure you're familiar with a lot of these where it's like, it's such a shocking act that happens from kind of Master to student that that that is that moment that that kind of like forces them into Enlightenment, right? You're at least that's what the stories will tell
you. Yeah, and you know that that tradition is generally described as Crazy Wisdom.
No, massive kind of Tibetan framing of it. But the idea that at a certain point, you know, a teacher is so free of of cell, you know, and certainly a fully enlightened teacher is entirely free of self-concern and and grasping and and also therefore shame and a capacity to be anxious or afraid or and then this person can operate in a way that is
totally novel and creative and not at all constrained by normal cultural norms and taboos. And and therefore this person is free to break all of the taboos all of the time if it's an expression of wisdom and compassion and can skillfully, you know, wake people up to their true nature. And so and so that's the kind of the ideological underpinnings of it and
It might in fact be true in some cases or in in in certain moments. I mean, there's just there's no reason why it couldn't be true. But what I just what I've seen in practice is that it only seems to be true in the literature doesn't seem to be true in real life when you have to spend time around these teachers and they're they're behaving like lunatics. Right and and it also just seems like it's not an accident that all of this taboo breaking
And Chaos tends to run in the direction of having a teacher. Usually a man gratify his all too predictable desires. Right? I mean, it's just not it's like it's you know, it's not especially Crazy Wisdom. If you know this man simply just wants to sleep with the prettiest wives of his students, right, you know, like all its it would be crazy if he was doing something far less predictable than that, but
It's it often it often doesn't surprise you what happens under the ages of Crazy Wisdom, but it's but again, it's not it's not impossible because in this is why it's it's always somewhat paradoxical and difficult to argue against because it is in fact true. Like, you know, if your if your Guru wants to sleep with your girlfriend or your wife, you know, if you're a man, you know, why do you find that?
Threatening, you know what? You know what they put let's put the onus on you. What's the problem with that? And I mean don't you want her to be fully enlightened and don't you see that? It's all about, you know, this really is no zero some contest between you know, her being happy and delighted
and just your attachment to a physical object and it's
just your attachments just your hangups is just yourself concern and your jealousy and your own and and and so putting the onus on you the the imperfectly enlightened student it that
That blow always lands. It's always true. Right and then it's true even up to the point of you know, like why don't you want me to cut your finger off right now? Well just because you're attached to your fingers, right? Like you're just you're somebody who you're afraid of pain and your your you don't want to go through life with nine fingers. You want 10 and you have this model of who you're going to be in the future and now you don't want to relinquish it and you're you you're just you're captured by thought in this moment. You're not free you're not
You're not resilient enough to just open to this next moment where you're going to feel, you know, this transitory albeit excruciating pain and then you'll be without a finger right but you don't think you can be happy with nine fingers. Is that really the limitation of your practice that the Zen master or the you know, the the Tibetan Lama or the Hindu Guru could always take that line with you and it would always be true but I would argue it would also be unnecessary.
Like there's nothing there's no need for True wisdom and compassion to ever be communicated in that way. Right? There's there's there's another way to get through to people which is to actually just give them the clear description of the nature of Consciousness. And if you really have their best interests at heart to communicate, you know as compassionately and honestly and patiently as possible these these truths and to give them a practice that
That helps them uncover it. And so I just don't see even if you could say that. Yes, it's true that people are only suffering on the basis of their own attachment and egocentricity. And you know, it's possible for some Norm breaking Juggernaut of a guru to behave in all kinds of surprising ways and have that be an expression of Enlightenment is still just in the general case. It just never seems necessary and always seems to
Signal something on the teacher side that is that is a little
fishy. Maybe it's just brilliant marketing like it's a good story
right again it when you look at when you look at the mechanics of your own suffering, it's true though. I mean it is like, you know, you can experience states of meditation where extreme play extreme pain and extreme pleasure or equalized where you just say, you can't even tell whether it's pain or pleasure anymore. It's just extreme.
And you know so that like there are there are there experiences where the the boundaries between what is acceptable and what isn't disappear? I mess up my take one example and and to some degree get becoming free in even a conventional sense is a matter of being able to transcend these boundaries. So for instance I once I used to live in for a period I lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico
And I once had my house infested with deer mice and you know, this was at the peak of the hantavirus scare around deer mice and you know, I completely panicked. I was just like, oh my God, there's no deer mice in my house and you know their news reports of people dying from hantavirus and this is the indicate how bad this was. I calmed the whatever, you know, the Bureau of Health somebody from the government to come deal with this.
And for me and the person, you know, I got said listen to is there's nobody who's going to come, you know from the government to help you here. You can have to find some private contractor to exterminator and some you know, clean up person to deal with your with your mice. But let me just tell you what you should be thinking here. You you're tempted to think that there's just some mice in your house. I want you to know. I want you to realize how you would you would be.
Bonding emotionally if you woke up in the morning and came in to walk out into your living room and saw a man there standing with a bloody ax right? How would you how would you be disposed to respond to your present situation? That's how you should be motivated in this situation is this is not this is this is going to sound like an abstraction to you. You can't live with deer mice in your house, right? So that is someone from this from the this is again, this was a
At the absolute peak of this before your time, but I think I'm like 10 years older than you but this was you know, I was I think one T5i this point 22, maybe somewhere around there. But this was just, you know, made international news what was happening with hantavirus and and the epicenter was in the four corners area in the southwest and so I wasn't too far from that and I had the same kind of mice in my house and it was so it was so bad. So then I found
And a this is a long backstory, but I'm just giving you the context of my mind here. I found a company whose job was to clean up, you know toxic spills and even there the company you would call if you if you had a dead body if like they come in after the police to clean up a murder scene, right and the deal with like, you know, blood aerosols and meals like, you know HIV aerosolized. I mean they just did they would come into any if I had called them and said listen, I have a headless
Torso in my basement and you know, you got to come clean it up. They would have come for that job. And I said I said to them listen, I got deer mice in my house. I need someone to come and just clean clean up my my storage room in the basement and they said no of what it is. There's no price. We're not going to do it. Yeah. I said I said name your price and I said this there is no price we won't do that anyway, so this is the kind of this is in my back story and some years later. I'm on a
Taoiseach Retreat and I'm staying in a room. It's like the only reason there's a the Retreats full. This is the only room there is for me to stay in and I go to sleep the first night and I hear you know, the pitter-patter of Little Feet around my head and I switch on a on a flashlight and I see, you know a deer mouse, you know, scurrying away into the closet and you know,
It takes me a second to just to figure out what's going on here. I see, you know droppings. I see a little bit of a piece of paper that they've been eating and so I have a room that's completely permeable to deer mice and they're now living with me and coming out, you know, the moment I turn out turn off the lights to go to sleep. And this is the first night of attend a retreat and then you know, this is what it's going to be like and you know, this given my experience and given what I just understand about, you know, the the risk of you know, you know
Born, you know contact with with things like hantavirus. I mean just just breathing the the aerosolized urine of deer mice is just not a good or any rodent is just not a good idea, you know, especially in a confined space. This is not the you know, and I'm a bit of a hypochondriac. Anyway, this is just not the kind of thing. I'm disposed to let go of write like this is this is this is why this is where you just get up and leave the retrieve but but the reality is is I just wanted to
work with this and you know, I realize it was just a calculated risk. I mean, what are the chances that I'm going to get hantavirus from these particular mice, you know, I you know, I I don't know but it's it's probably not one in a million, but it's probably not one in ten either and so I just decided to let go of it and the truth is I could absolutely let go of it it like at the most basic level let go of it so that it was just no longer a problem now.
That's something that so it's like it's kind of a binary choice. You know, it's like it's a it's the kind of thing that would have bothered me. You know, it would be like it would be a 10 on the scale of you know one to ten in terms of something. I just do not want to be dealing with on a moment moment to moment basis. I want it's a situation in you know, objectively. I want to get out of and yet I could just decide to let go of it and that's what a teacher.
Who's behaving like a you know, a colossal asshole could be trying to show you from an enlightened perspective. It's always possible and it's always possible to let go of it. I mean it is possible to just be the guy who said all right sleep with my wife. I'm actually fine with that and to actually be fine with it and you can actually let go of your jealousy and and all of your hangups around that totally at some basic level, but the question is
Why is this particular teacher asking you to do that and you know the answer in certainly in most cases if you follow these these people's careers long enough seems to be well because they actually were, you know far too ordinary and just wanted to sleep with with you know, everyone in sight and and yet it is a paradox because it's just a psychological fact that you can transcend these things and and the purpose of meditation ultimately is to have them.
And that is that resilient and they can just I mean we're on some level. We're all just getting ready for the worst day of our life. Right and we're all good. We're all getting ready to die. We're all getting ready to be the kind of person who can let go of this life gracefully and to have it all have been beautiful, you know, even in the end and you know, either that's possible or it isn't and it certainly seems to be possible. But if if that's possible, you know, you want to be in
bracing that more and more in every moment and it's certainly possible to have a teacher who would make you know, fairly unconventional demands on you or seem to make those demands to get you to realize that and so that's why it's all this is always somewhat paradoxical thing to evaluate.
Yeah, one of the things that that I was I remember being a teenager and was kind of pulled into wanting to learn more about just meditation and monks in general. There was monks always had this kind of like cool Factor.
And Analyse where I was growing up, but there was a album cover on Rage Against the Machine which was like kind of a not indie band but you know kind of metal Rock style. I don't even know what genre you categorize them as but I don't know if you remember this cover, but it was a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who was protesting remember this cover? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and they're actually it is, you know a bunch of photographs of this monk sitting down.
They were being gasoline poured on top of him sitting in lotus lotus posture. And then another Monk or handing him a I don't know if it was a lighter what it was matches. He lit himself on fire and didn't say a word just engulfed in flames and eventually tipped over and burned out no pain. No screaming. No nothing. How is that even possible?
Yeah, well, it's you know, it's not surprising that it's possible. It's a you know obviously takes a lot of equanimity to be able to deal with that kind of you know, what is undoubtedly the most intense sensory experience on offer, you know burning alive and to not flinch it is I mean points to a on some level the promise of
station practice and an underlying truth about the nature of Consciousness, which is it's possible to recognize that Consciousness transcends its contents in some basic sense. So that your that which is aware of an unpleasant sensation or emotion is exactly the same thing as that, which is aware of a pleasant one and it's not actually it doesn't actually take the shape.
Of what it knows or at least it it supersedes or or transcends what it knows and it's and therefore it's free of it in some basic sense. I mean you can you can fall back into this position of merely witnessing experience so much. And so resolutely that yeah you can you can make a there can be an immense amount of space around even very
Experience and and that's a you know is quite a bit. So quite a refuge to find because then you you know, you can be equanimous even with you know, in 10 states of sadness or intense physical pain and you know, the there's no question that the sadness and the pain are coming right and the time to train to get better at that to get more equanimous to be more flexible is now, you know, it's not it's very hard to get a strong.
Long meditation practice in hand when you really need it, right. It's just the time to do that is when you when life is great and you know, the you don't have your not just plunged into any chaos, and and then you know, it's a because again, it's like this is this is not hypothetical. You know that if you no matter how good your life is, you know, if you may forget about physical payment, let's
We cure physical pain. Maybe there's you know some day there's a there's a pain pill that just works perfectly and we don't have to worry about physical pain. I think you know that's certainly conceivable and and you know, I hope it I hope we will live to see it but there's still the reality that you know, however long you live you're going to lose people who are close to you, you know, you can lose every if you live long enough, you're going to lose everyone right? So you'll be the last
Man standing in your life. So you know that dealing with the pain of loss is something that you have to get in hand now, otherwise, you'll be the mirror victim of loss. And so if it's possible to have a mind that can actually, you know find a state of Tranquility even in the midst of that kind of sadness which it which is inevitably going to arise.
You know, why not begin to find that now?
Yeah, one of the it's not as hard course gasoline and being lit on fire, but you have a meditation as one of the first 50. I can't remember what number was but it's it's where you challenge the individual not to move during the entire meditation even even if there's discomfort and then looking at that and feeling that discomfort as just an object and Consciousness your and examining it that way.
And it's crazy how when you start to examine these things how they just cut dissipate in a way.
Yeah and and peopleÃs it Retreats often begin to experiment with this where you're sitting for you no longer periods of time, you know, you're sitting for an hour you're sitting for two hours. You can sit in some people sit for much longer than that and they can they can vowed not to move a muscle for that time and the amount of pain you can experience no matter
Comfortable you're sitting if you just wait without moving is really impressive. What's amazing about as you can know for sure that it's not a sign that something is is wrong with you. I mean, you're not you're not getting injured really but it sure can feel like you are right and and it's worth experimenting with because it's it really is possible to get surprising degrees of equanimity with that.
And it's you know, it's just good. It's good to practice with. You know, it just ordinary levels of pain in ordinary headache or an ordinary injury, you know, just see if you can get if you can really be at peace with it even just for a few moments before you decide to pop the ibuprofen that you were going to take. Anyway, just to see what that's like because you know, eventually there are pains that just you know that you despite whatever drugs you have on offer. You have to be with to some degree.
And and the question is how much time are you going to spend being miserable and how much time are you going to actually be, you know free and that in the presence of that and so meditation can be can be very useful there
a hundred percent agree in Sam. Thank you so much for being on the show and I want to direct people to download your app. I think that you know having just finished the 50 days that for people that are out there that are looking to really take meditation.
Ali you know, I know we've talked about that before but I feel I worry that there are other products out there that I'm sure are doing great in terms of reducing anxiety. And you know, if you if you have very prescriptive needs they probably have the content for you, but I really love how you're actually I feel like really teaching people to build a real respectable practice and the lessons are phenomenal. You have a great section of gosh. We probably have a couple dozen lessons now, right?
I think they're like 40 or so and and we're actually restructuring the app in this next build where I was I'm bringing on conversations with other teachers and other kinds of content and even some some other teachers content as well. So it's always under developers, you know with an app. It's never done. So it we're continually expanding it. But yeah, it's generally speaking. There's the the meditation track which has you know, this introductory course and then
Then you know after that a daily meditation that keeps changing and then there's a kind of a theory section that has lessons and conversations and and in a more discursive instructional content and you know, it's just it's continuing to grow but I'm really really happy you found it
useful. Yeah, and once you get past the 50 days you go into a daily meditation that refreshes every day. I've seen that I just checked it out immediately after I finished my session today because I didn't have access yet actually have to unlock it up to the 50 days it.
To be a 10 minute meditation. When do you recommend that people spend more time meditating like going even if you even deeper?
Yeah. Well, you can toggle between 10 and 20 you can set it for 10 or 20 and then it's just it's the same meditation just with more silence always that in the setting somewhere. I didn't see that on. Yeah. It's in the player. Yeah. Okay, assuming you have a fairly recent build. Its you can just toggle between 10 and 20. It's really, you know, everyone to their
Taste and I view it not so much as a linear relationship between the amount of time you sit and the amount of insight. You have all my other, you know, there's probably some correlation there, but the truth is it's you know, it is quality over quantity and I think that repeating, you know, many times short sessions repeated. I think that's the better formula than just a kind of a longer a single session Maybe.
so it's and ultimately it's you want to erase the boundary between formal practice and the rest of your life you want you want to find clear moments of of recognition in every kind of ordinary experience, you know, just as you're reaching for a door handle as you're taking a first step on a staircase or as you're starting your car or like all of these moments can be moments where you you clearly cut through
through to the same kind of mindfulness you experience in the clearest moments in any formal session and that's and that's the way that you begin to punctuate your your ordinary experience with with the the the freedom that you begin to taste in informal practice.
Awesome. Well Sam, thank you so much. The once again the app is called waking up you can get on IOS and Android as well, right?
Yeah the and we're Android has been a wonky rebuild and weave
We're doing a total rebuild of it that should be available in about three weeks or so. Awesome.
Well thanks to him. Appreciate your time.
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks so much Kevin. All
right that is it for this episode. But as promised in the beginning of the show, this is a lesson from Sam's course. Hope you enjoy
it. I'd like you to take a moment to think about all the things in this life that you will experience for the last time.
Of course, there will come a day when you will die. And then everything will have been done for the last time but long before you die, you will cease to have certain experiences.
Experiences that you surely take for granted now.
If you're a parent, when is the last time you will pick up your child or tuck her into bed or read her a story?
Our youngest daughter still says aminals instead of animals. And though I'm a stickler for words. I am not correcting her each. One of those is priceless. Now thinking in this way Allen's a poignancy to everything even to things that you don't like again. Let's say you're a new parent and you're getting woken up several times a night by your baby. That's brutal.
But there will be a last time and knowing that can change your experience in the moment.
There's something sweet even about this experience.
It's possible that you will miss this.
We do everything a finite number of times and yet we tend to take even Beautiful Moments for granted and the rest of the time we're just trying to get through stuff. You're just trying to get to the end of whatever experience you're having.
Tim Urban who writes this wonderful blog titled wait, but why often touches this topic? He actually publishes a poster which represents 90 years of life in weeks. Each line has 52 squares and there are 90 lines on a single page and the scale is frankly a little alarming to contemplate each week is a significant piece of 90 years and you can put your finger on the current week in your life.
You can see where you are. And then of course you realize you have no Assurance of how many weeks you have left assuming that you have 90 years. Certainly 90 good years is generally not a safe assumption.
What you can know, however, is it each time you do something pleasant or unpleasant that is one last time you will do it and there will come a time when you'll have done something the final time and you will rarely know when that is.
I used to love to ski and I know haven't skied in well over a decade will I ever ski again? I've no idea but I can assure you that the last time I took off my skis I was not even dimly aware of the possibility that it might be the last time right that I might live for many many more years and yet this stood a good chance of being the last time I would ever ski
When is the last time you swam in the ocean or when camping? When is the last time you took a walk just to take a walk?
As you go about your day today consider everything you're doing is like this everything represents a finite opportunity to savor your life on some level everything is precious. And if it doesn't seem that way, I think you'll find that paying more attention can make it seem that way attention really is your true source of wealth.
Even more than time, right because you can waste time being distracted. So this is just to urge you to take a little more care when you meet someone for the first time and you shake their hand pay a little more attention when you thank somebody for something mean it a little more connect with your life and mindfulness is the tool that allows you to do that because the only alternative is to be lost in thought.
And every time you notice that you're lost that you're distracted by a thought about the past or the future.
And you come back.
You are training your mind and it may feel like an effort at first, but eventually it's like continually waking up from a dream.
And ask yourself how much effort does that take?
All right that is it for this podcast. I hope you enjoyed that. I really loved that course that that we just listened to its it was one of my favorites. There's probably at the time of this recording 30 or 40 different lessons when you sign up for the waking up course and go through those I think you'll really enjoy them. There's a lot of new things that I'm learning in each of those different little lessons and he's
He's really done and spent a lot of time creating them and they're really high quality as you can tell so check that out. One thing that you could do to help me out is heading over to the iTunes store or the Apple Store. I don't know what they're calling it anymore, wherever they host the podcast. I think it's within iTunes. Although we just got a new operating system. So maybe they hit it. You know what I think it's in the podcasting app on Catalina the new operating system from them. Yeah it is it's the podcasting app. Okay, so go on the podcasting app on Mac OS and
and find this podcast if you would the Kevin Rose show and just give us a 5-star review that would help us get recommended more people get us more downloads will have even better guest on this show. So thank you so much. Hope you enjoyed the show and I'll have more episodes out soon.
