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10% Happier with Dan Harris
Is It Possible to Uproot All Anxiety and Anger? Steve Armstrong Says Yes.
01:06:46
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Foreign.
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This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, everybody. If you listen to this show with any regularity, the odds are incredibly high that you are interested in finding ways to get happier. Today we're going to talk about an ancient technology, not only for getting happier, but for becoming 100% happy, imperturbable, no matter what's happening. In other words, we're going to talk about how to get enlightened. Let me step back here. When I first got interested in meditation, I just wanted to be a little bit less stressed, to not be so owned by the voice in my head. But the deeper I got into the practice, the more I started to hear about enlightenment, which, of course, given who.
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I am, I initially wrote off as religious bullshit.
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Over time, however, I have become way more open to the possibility of enlightenment, while, of course maintaining skepticism, given that I can't pound the table for the existence of something that I have not personally experienced. Anyway, my guest today knows what he's talking about on this score. He has helped translate an influential text called the Manual of Insight, which is basically the operator's manual for how the mind works when you do high doses of meditation. What I find incredibly fascinating is that according to this tradition, the Burmese strain of Theravada Buddhism, if you meditate enough and in the right ways, your mind will pass through a predictable series of stages, including bliss, rapture, existential freakouts, and then allegedly, nirvana. Yeah. My guest is Steve Armstrong, who's a longtime meditation teacher who in his earlier years spent five years as a Buddhist monk in Burma. This conversation was recorded nearly 10 years ago, back in 2016. In fact, it was the 13th episode of this podcast. Just for context, we're now over a thousand episodes. So actually, at the beginning of this conversation, you'll hear much younger, much less patient version of your host peppering Steve with sometimes impertinent questions. So why are we running this episode again right now? First of all, because it's great, as you'll hear. Second, because Steve needs our help. Steve has been living with a brain tumor for several years, and his condition has progressed to the point where he and his wife, Kamala Masters, who, by the way, is a fantastic dharma teacher in her own right and has also been a guest on this show. Steve and Kamala need some in home care, support and other resources. Anybody who's ever been a caregiver for a loved one knows how all encompassing this job can be. So we have helped to put together a GoFundMe for Steve and Kamala There's a link to it in the show notes. I do hope you'll consider making a contribution, especially after you hear this conversation and you hear how amazing Steve is. My company has made a significant contribution and if you go to the page.
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You'Ll see that many others have jumped in.
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We'll get started with Steve Armstrong right after this. Owning a home is amazing. Until it's not. My wife and I own our first house. I've owned apartments before but never a house. And dude, one moment everything's going great, the next moment you got a broken heater or the AC is not working or a burst pipe and it's like lot of money to fix it. Repairs do not care about timing and they definitely don't care about your budget. So you protect your health, your car, even your phone. But what about your home? It's probably your biggest investment if you own a home, and when things go wrong, the costs can hit hard and it can hit fast. Regular homeowners insurance usually does not cover a lot of the day to day wear and tear, plumbing failures, H Vac breakdowns, electrical issues. You're often on your own for that stuff. And that is where HomeServe comes in. It's like a subscription for your home. For as little as $4.99 a month, they've got your back. So in a moment when you have an acute need, you could be searching in panic, or you could already be on the phone with HomeServe's 24. 7 hotline scheduling your repair. It's super simple. You choose a plan that works for your needs and your budget. And when something on your plan goes wrong, you just call the 24.7hotline and you start the repair process. They've helped homeowners for more than 20 years with a trusted national network of 2,600 local contractors with 4.5 million customers, a 4.8 out of 5 post repair rating, and an A from the Better Business Bureau. They're the real deal. I've been talking to my wife about this. This seems like something we could really use given the chaos we've endured with.
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Our home, which we love but also.
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Kind of hate at the same time. So you might want to check it out. Help protect your home systems and your wallet with HomeServe against covered repairs. Plans start at just 499amonth. Go to HomeServe.com to find the plan that's right for you. That's HomeServe.com not available everywhere. Most plans range from 499 to $11.99 a month for your first year. Terms apply on covered repairs. I've got a big trip coming up. I'm very excited about this. My family and I are flying to Washington to go to a Washington Commanders football game. As you may have heard me mention before, my beloved brother in law, Jack is pro scout for the Commanders. Love Jack. Love the Commanders, love their head coach who was on this show not long ago. Anyway, I'm excited about this trip and many of us are heading into a period of time when we're all taking vacation. It's the holiday season and I've got an idea for you. While you're away, you could use that as an opportunity to host your home on Airbnb. I love staying in welcoming homes that I book on Airbnb and it got me thinking my home could do the same for somebody else. I put so much work into this house. My wife put most of the work in, but we put a lot of time and energy into this place. So why not use it as a spot to help other people feel comfortable while they are away from home? And think about it. If you host your home on Airbnb while you're traveling, it's a great way to offset some of the costs of your own trip. You get paid for taking a vacation, and the extra income you make can be put toward an upcoming trip. A splurge. You've been eyeing home improvement projects. So if you've got some holiday travel or any other travel coming up, hosting is a pretty cool and unique way to make some of your money back. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much@airbnb.com hosting.
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So, Steve, thanks for being here.
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Thanks for the invitation.
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It's an absolute pleasure. We're going to get into the book in a big way in a minute, but I want to start by just giving people a sense of who you are, how you got here. So how did you start meditating?
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The story I tell is, after dropping out of law school, resorting to a commune.
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This is in the 60s. Recover.
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Yeah, mid-60s, late-60s. To recover from education. The focus of the commune was we were all fans of the Grateful Dead and Pink Floyd, partaking of the sacrament as often as we could. And this was our idea of a sacrament. Sacrament meaning recreational lsd, among other things. So that was our lifestyle.
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Where was this commune?
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Central Maine. And you grew up called Summit Plantation?
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Summit Plantation was the name of it, yeah. Does it still exist?
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It's an uninhabited territory in central Maine. Yeah. Now it's uninhabited.
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But just by way of background, you grew up in Maine, you grew up in Lincoln, Maine, which is north of Bangor, which is where I started my TV career. And you went to law school in Portland, Maine?
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Yeah, I went to the university in Orono and then law school in Portland, Maine.
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Undergrad at the university in Orono and then law school in Portland. University of Southern Maine.
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Yeah, University of Southern Maine. First year only first year earlier.
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So you hated it so much that you ran off to a commune and that's where you discovered meditation?
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No, I met someone who found a book called Beginning to See by Sujatha, had little one liners about mindfulness and wrote to the address in the back for more information and found out that there was a retreat being taught in Bucksport, Maine, just an hour and a half from where we lived. At that very time in 1975, Jack, Joseph, Sharon and another teacher since deceased, were offering the first three month retreat in an old Catholic monastery in Bucksport, Maine. And we went to the last two weeks of it.
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Can I just interrupt for one second because I want to explain who Jack, Joseph and Sharon are. Again, close listeners will know that's Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein, the three sort of prototypical jubus who brought really pioneered the practice of insight meditation which has turned into secular mindfulness to these shores after having practiced over in Burma, India.
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Burma, India.
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Burma, India. And Sharon has been on the show and Jack and Joseph will certainly, I hope, be on the show in the future. So anyway, carry on.
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Yeah, on the appointed day we drove to this monastery and now there had been 50 people or so had been practicing meditation there in silence for two and a half months. So we walked in and on one side is the dining room with a notice saying new arrivals, we'll meet at 5 o' clock or something. And on the right hand side was the meditation hall, a chapel turned into a meditation hall. We looked at the schedule on the door of the chapel and it says, you know, wake up 4 o', clock, do your yoga, sit, walk, have your breakfast, sit, walk, sit, walk, have your lunch, sit, walk, sit, walk, have some tea, sit, walk, 7:30, talk till 8:30. And we looked at each other and said, well, at least we get an hour a day to talk. But what that meant was we really get an hour a day to listen. So there we were. And prior to that time I had never met anybody that meditated. I didn't know anything about meditation, I didn't know anything about Buddhism. I wasn't interested in spirituality. I didn't know anything about it. And it was excruciating to sit in that hall and to just kind of watch the body scream in agony and the mind just all over the place was torturous. But one thing that happened that was noticeable and significant was when I heard the Dharma talks, the talks in the evening that was explaining the teachings of the Buddha and how it applied to our life and how to practice. I felt like I'd always known what was being said and I always had lived that way or agreed with that, but I'd never heard it before.
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That's kind of the way I felt.
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This is so natural.
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It's been called advanced common sense for a reason, right?
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I guess so, yeah. And that's how I started. Did the two weeks. And the immersion into the mind through mindfulness practice over the course of two weeks is so gradual that you don't really notice you're dealing with the day to day stuff, but you don't really notice that you're really getting quite deeply into the mind and out of your ordinary chatter. So that when we went back at the end of the retreat, went back to the commune, everybody was the same. Everybody was doing the same thing, and everybody was there. And it was all familiar, but because our perspective on our inner life was so different, it's like, wow, we saw the commune from a different place, from a different perspective.
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Who's the we? You and some friends.
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We and the woman who went to the retreat.
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Okay, so you and your girlfriend at the time or something. And so did that cause you to drop out of the commune?
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We gradually did more meditation practice and drifted away from the behaviors and the people and left the commune. Yeah. Took a few years, but gradually we did.
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And then what happened?
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We ended up at the Insight Meditation center as soon as it opened or soon after it opened. That's the meditation center in Massachusetts opened.
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By Jack, Joseph and Sharon.
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Opened by Jack, Joseph and Sharon. They bought it shortly after that retreat. They bought it in February of 76, and I showed up in 77 and stayed for eight years. Eight years I was on staff and I was doing retreats. And when I wasn't on staff, I did long retreat. And I was involved in the board of directors and as a board member, was overseeing and participating in the creation of the Dharma Seed Tape library, where all of the recordings of mindfulness retreats have been kept and made available online. So that was my home. That was my focus in life.
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And then you went off and became.
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A monk then I finally got the. Got my act together enough or got enough understanding or enough commitment to. Yeah. To want to really understand what mindfulness practice was about. I think the first eight years was repair work, emotional repair work, family of origin, healing, and stuff like that. And by 85 or 84 is when I made the decision to actually go to Burma. And then I went in 85 and.
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Spent five years as a monk.
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Yeah, five years as a monk.
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All right, that's a good background on you, Mr. Armstrong. Let's talk about this book, the Manual of Insight. It was actually written by a guy named Mahasi Sayada. And you were the managing editor of translating this. Who is Mahasi Sayada?
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Mahasi Sayada was a very well known, both scholar and practitioner in Burma in the last century. When there was a convocation of the Buddhist of the world in Burma in 1956, I think he was like the second in the hierarchy of monks to attend. He was like number two, very knowledgeable, and he was responsible for codifying and correcting the whole Pali canon, which is the basic foundation of Theravada Buddhism.
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And Theravada Buddhism is like the old school of Buddhism.
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And so he's very well studied. And when he went to do his own meditation practice, he got what instructions was available to him practiced, but made some adaptations for himself in practice, which ended up proving quite successful for him. And when he tried it out on his relatives, who wanted to know what he was doing and how he was doing it, he found that laypeople, householders like ourselves, could actually hear these meditation instructions and practice quite well in the course of a month or two. Whereas prior to that time, if you'd wanted to get that kind of instruction, you'd probably have to ordain as a monk or nun for life. And it would take years to get that level of instruction and that degree of instruction. So he made a very lengthy study and practice very succinct and available, accessible to laypeople.
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He wrote it all down, all the things that he experienced. And so I use this term, cookbook. You gave me a little bit of a look. Agreed to.
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What about an operator's manual?
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Okay, fine.
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Fair enough. Fair enough. I'll take that.
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It is. It's the how to Book.
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How to Get Enlightened.
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How to Get Enlightened, if you want to use that loaded term. But it is how to Get Enlightened. Traditional Buddhist enlightenment.
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Right. So traditional Modern skeptic. Me, I hear that. And I'm thinking, okay, that's gotta be a load of crap.
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Yeah, I can understand why, because, wow, we have this pretty outrageous, uninformed view of what being enlightened is. What do you think enlightenment is? We have all kinds of ideas that we don't know because we're not enlightened. Right. So we have all these ideas and he kind of reflects, reduces it right down to moment to moment. Life unfolding can be free of suffering, free of entanglement. Moment to moment can be known as. It really is the nature of being a human being. And when one wakes up to that very grounded, ordinary, this is the way it is for a human being or other beings too. Then we come out of delusion, we come out of illusion. We come out of the fantasies that we live in. We put aside our assumptions and beliefs that we've acquired through family of origin, cultural conditioning, educational system and all that that are. Excuse me, they're fantasies, they're ways of seeing that are not in alignment with our deepest experience of the way it is, the way reality is.
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So enlightenment, nirvana, liberation, purification of mind. All of these terms that get thrown around that are pretty grandiose and kind of interesting and mysterious at the same time. All of that you're saying is just. These are fancy ways of talking about something very normal, which is meditation practice at an advanced level shows you, allows you to see your actual life as it's unfolding right now. What you're experiencing without, to use your term, entanglements, without the suffering, without clinging to things that you want and pushing away things you don't want and being numbed out to the rest.
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That among other things. Yes, but I think that what gets in our way is that we have these beliefs and assumptions about ourself or the way things should be or what we expect or hope it to be. And when they aren't that way, we think somebody's to blame or it's wrong. Not my thoughts are wrong or my assumptions are wrong. But we often don't know what our assumptions and beliefs are uploaded into our tender little brains and minds when we're defenseless in our family of origin and schooling and things like that. And so we've got them, but they are some not very skillful ways of dealing with.
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Are you talking now about our resistance to enlightenment because we're taught to think that's fancy and foreign and weird? Or are you talking now about the obstacles to achieving enlightenment? Because of the latter?
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Both. Both, yeah. Because I think we have this. We have a grandiose idea. When you hear the word enlightenment or whatever we think that's for people way back then or beings that are some kind of special, somehow different than me. And that keeps it at an arm's distance.
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I don't think either of those things. I think it's just a sort of unproven religious claim.
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Okay. It's something out there, but when you have an idea of it, it gets in the way of actually experiencing it.
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Yeah. When you describe it, the way you describe it, which. And the way it's described in this book, it actually becomes less highfalutin. It's just about actually waking up to what's happening right now.
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Waking up to having the feeling, knowing this body and knowing this mind, and in infinite and intimate detail. Yeah. As it occurs.
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All right, so let's dive into the owner's manual operator's manual operator. Never henceforth to be referred to as a cookbook. So how does it work? This involves a high volume of meditation. Right. So do you have to be in retreat to experience these experiences that lead up to Nirvana?
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No, you don't have to be. But for most people, we need some guidance. And I always say that it's easier to learn to drive a car in an empty parking lot than on a freeway. So if you get meditation instructions just on the way to work in your hustle and bustle and hurry, you're not going to have much time to settle in, get familiar with it, Figure out the terrain of your own heart and mind and how it works. So you go on a retreat. You go on a retreat, and you got nothing to do except hear the instructions and try it hour after hour with some encouragement, some inspiration, get your questions answered and keep trying. And even over the course of a day, you can see, oh, yeah, something's happening. Over the course of a week or a longer retreat, as you know yourself, things happen. You get removed from the chatter of your own mind, and you get to experience things the way they are a little more intimately.
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What I find, definitely things happen when you go on a retreat. No question. A lot of them are terrible.
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So did I.
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But what I find fascinating about the progress of insight, other than the fact that it's controversial and we'll talk about why in a second, is that basically the proposition is that if you do enough meditation, certain things will happen to you reliably and predictably.
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Yes.
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And what does it say about the way the mind works? You will have a bunch of these experiences that, again, allegedly culminate in nirvana, which we will talk about that.
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That I just.
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And that people have been doing this for millennia. So there's. There appears to be something here, and I find that very interesting. But I've been. And again, I want to dive deeply into what these experiences and stages and insights are. But I've been meditating for, I don't know, almost seven years now. I've done several retreats. I meditate a couple hours a day right now. I haven't had any of these experiences. So what does that tell you? That I'm a complete idiot or that maybe one needs to do a high volume of meditation in order to experience these things?
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Well, you know, it took me eight years. So you got another year to go, Dan.
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Took you eight years before you did any of this?
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Before I really. The little samadhi, the little concentration effects that you've had, I've had. But before I really got to the practice where the mind could do its thing, that was in my eighth or ninth year. And that was when I was more continuously in retreat as a monk.
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Right. But. So I'm not going on retreat as a monk. I have a baby. That's not going to happen. So do I have any shot at experience?
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Oh, yeah, sure. You're building up your potential all the time. Your daily meditation, an hour a day, two hours a day, really is important. That's what keeps the thread of it going. And as you see, as you become familiar with how the mind works and you see how the mind works, it's not what you think about your life, it's what your life actually is that's important. And once you start looking at that and you start seeing how the mind works, then you can put aside some of the reactivity and some of the recreational distractions that you indulge in and actually see the mind. Now, there's many different spiritual traditions that have existed on the face of the earth and still do, and they've discovered some elements of this, whether it's ecstasy or bliss or oneness of mind, unification with the whole great loving kindness, whatever. There's just lots of different experiences that some people, some religions claim as this is it, it is the big it, this is the end, this is the goal, this is the purpose of life, of religious practice. And the Buddha practiced those practices and discovered those conditions, those experiences, and he realized this is not the end, this is not the goal. This is a scenic turnout on the route. So as you practice and the mind is allowed to just do what it does best, which is to know things as they are. Ecstasy will come. Bliss, joy, ecstasy, rapture, just pass out, indulge in pleasure.
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These are all things that happen during the progress of insight.
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They happen at a certain stage in this progression of insight and we call them the spiritual goodies. It's a spiritual goody phase of practice where effortless energy and soaring faith and unshakable equanimity. Things like that. Very attractive. Yeah.
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No question. Yeah.
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Coming up, Steve takes us through the numbered steps to enlightenment, including an intriguing stage called pseudo nirvana. We all know that building new habits requires strong foundation that starts from the brain and goes all the way down to your toes. That's why I love Ultra running. Because they actually have reliable, intentionally designed shoes that make every step feel supported. It's not just for hiking or crazy long distance runs, even though they work great for that too. The Ultra Fit is designed to let your toes spread out naturally, which provides comfort, balance and strength wherever you are. When you're not bothered by cramped feet, you can get back to what matters, like building new healthy routines. Free your mind and your feet with Ultra Running and the Ultra Fit experience. Check them out now by visiting ultrarunning.com I wear them very comfortable and I work out a lot and they really hold up. I love the fact that there's more room for my toes. So go check them out. That's a l t r-running.com ultrarunning.com and remember, stay out there.
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C
It's getting cold.
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B
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C
Before we get too deep, let's just go step by step. So what's the first? So if I've done enough meditation and I start to enter this progress of insight, Right. What's the first thing I will experience?
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The first thing that you're going to know clearly is in every moment I'm experiencing something. Something's being known. I'm feeling the body, I'm feeling, I'm watching, I'm hearing sounds, I'm seeing sights. And so there's this knowledge called knowing of the nature of the mind and the body.
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C
Each of these stages has a pretty elaborate. I love it. I've said this before, but it's really something out of Dungeons and Dragons, but I love it. So, okay, the first knowledge is called the knowledge.
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It's called nama rupa, but it means the knowledge of mind and body.
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Okay. The first knowledge is you know that you have a mind and a body.
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Yeah. And you know that in every moment something is being known. This is basic awareness.
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C
Okay, so maybe I've hit this.
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Yeah. Oh, yeah. For moments. But there's a lot of time we're just living life and we don't really pay attention to what we're doing. We're on automatic pilot.
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Yeah. Most of our lives.
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Yeah. That's when you come out of automatic pilot and you Realize, oh, this is what I'm doing, this is what's happening to me. Oh, I'm breathing in, breathing out, walking down the street, oh, hearing sounds, getting excited, getting angry, feeling, feeling bliss, whatever.
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C
So you're aware, basically the first knowledge in this progress of insight is just, basically just waking up to the raw fact of existence that you're experiencing things, that things are happening and you are experiencing, experiencing them. Okay, so what's stage number two that.
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Seems to appear because of your actions? I'm meditating. This is what's making it happen. But later, as you keep paying attention, you're going to realize that, hey, things happen because of causes and conditions. They're not just happening randomly. And the way we train people to see this in retreats is we say, when you sit down, just have the intention to sit still. And inevitably you'll find yourself moving, scratching an itch, adjusting your posture, opening your eyes, swallowing and doing all sorts of things without having noticed that you had the intention to do it. Right. So the body doesn't move unless there's an intention. So what we do is we start paying attention to intentions and then we see that, hey, the body is dependent on the mind, the mind is dependent on the body. So this is the knowledge of conditionality. Things aren't happening randomly, they're not accidental. Whatever happens to you mentally, physically, is not accidental.
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C
Okay, so I might have experienced two of these.
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Okay, good. Now this is how you evaluate your own practice. Someone talks about the progress of insight and you can say, oh yeah, I've had that experience. Or I might get to some place and you'll say, no, I haven't had that experience. And you'll realize, oh, okay, I'm just.
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Far apart from that. That's what I'm shooting for next. So what's the third knowledge?
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The third knowledge is you begin to.
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C
What's it called? First? I love the names.
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This one is called comprehension. The knowledge of comprehension. It's where you start to recognize the qualities of your experience. Primarily that things are changing all the time, things are coming and going, that no matter what it is that you experience, it doesn't last very long. So you begin to understand the characteristic of phenomena is that they're impermanent. Everything is impermanent.
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C
Okay, I've had this experience.
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Yeah, sure. But along with it comes the second characteristic or the second knowledge, which is the knowledge of dukkha.
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C
Now suffering.
- [30:36]
A
Suffering. It's both. Dukkha. Dukkha is suffering. Obvious physical and mental suffering. But there's this Other thing called vipari nama dukkha, which is the dukkha of change. You might have a good sitting for a while and then it changes and it becomes painful. So the pleasure of the good sitting really isn't stable. So when you begin to see that things aren't stable, even if they're pleasant, they don't stay pleasant. So when they change, then you're left with this dukkha.
- [31:11]
C
Let me just jump in there for a second. Just for the uninitiated, dukkha D U K K H a is the Pali, Pali being the language that the Buddha spoke, ancient Indian language. It's the Pali word often translated, often mistranslated as suffering. The Buddha's principal pronouncement or most famous pronouncement was life is suffering, life is dukkha. But that really is a simplistic way of understanding it. It really is that life is going to be unsatisfying if you cling to things that will not last would be one way of saying it. And so you said before, dukkha, Dukkha is like that double dukkha is straight up raw suffering when things suck. But then there's the other kinds of suffering, which is you see that something that is right now good, eating a bowl of ice cream could make you sick later. And that is, that is this suffering that is inherent in everything in life.
- [32:05]
A
Things don't stay the same. We live with this insecurity, we live with this instability. No matter how much you put into your relationship, your job, your finances, your house, your kids, whatever, no guarantee, things are unstable, things are insecure. We live with a level of insecurity all the time, but we mostly try to keep it out of sight. But in mindfulness practice, we turn and see it. We look at it like, wow, this is going on, this is going on all the time.
- [32:35]
C
One of my favorite Buddhist writers, Stephen Batchelor, talks about how Buddhism, commonly misunderstood in my view and in his view as a religion actually is a rejection of all these death defying dogmas and in fact is a turning toward all of the stuff that's going to destroy you. And that's a really interesting to me, that is really the heart of what's interesting about Buddhism or one of the areas that makes it so. So this, all this stuff that we're talking about with dukkha and suffering, this is what you understand in the third knowledge?
- [33:03]
A
Yep, you start to understand there's one more thing.
- [33:05]
C
So there's several components to this third knowledge. Is that what you're getting at.
- [33:09]
A
Yeah. There's three characteristics that we're going to begin to see. Impermanence, unsatisfactoriness. And the third one I'm going to call conditionality. Conditionality means that things arise due to causes and conditions. And when you see that, you realize everything is made up of other things and there's nothing that has an inherent existence within itself. Heavy. Heady. But what this means is our mind is out of control. We can train it, but we can't prevent certain thoughts or feelings from arising in the mind. They just come, don't they? Due to causes and conditions. We don't control all the conditions of our life externally or internally. And so that coming to see this and to recognize this in our experience can be rather unsettling.
- [34:01]
C
First, knowledge is knowledge of mind and body.
- [34:04]
A
Yes. Second knowledge is knowledge of conditionality.
- [34:07]
C
And third knowledge is a knowledge of the three characteristics.
- [34:11]
A
Impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and I'm going to call it conditionality.
- [34:15]
C
But sometimes referred to as selflessness.
- [34:17]
A
Yeah, selflessness. But that's a scary word. It's like selflessness. Who am I if I'm selfless and Right.
- [34:22]
C
But in selfless in this context doesn't mean generous. It means that the you that you think exists doesn't exist. The little inner you, the little inner Dan, doesn't actually exist.
- [34:32]
A
Yeah, yeah. Every moment is just a conjunction of conditions giving rise to an experience which we identify with as me.
- [34:38]
B
Yes.
- [34:38]
C
But if you break down life from the solid movie of experience to the 24 frames per second that the little Dan is just a story you're making up every frame as opposed to actually what is happening in every frame is something is happening and somebody is knowing and it is being known. But there is nobody doing the knowing.
- [34:58]
A
That's right.
- [34:59]
C
But this is heady stuff. So we'll maybe not. We'll get into it a little bit deeper as we progress through the progressive insight. So what is the fourth knowledge?
- [35:06]
A
The fourth is a significant stage in practice. It's called arising and passing away.
- [35:11]
C
Okay.
- [35:12]
B
So I think I've had the first.
- [35:13]
C
Three and I've heard of the arising and passing away, sometimes referred to as the A and P. And this is the fireworks.
- [35:19]
A
These are the fireworks. This is where the fireworks come. But what happens is at a rising and passing away is the speed with which you can notice the moment's experience start going by very rapidly. You just see stuff is just going by and you're not stopping the flow of experience to have a emotional reaction to it or have a relationship or have a cognitive story about it. It's just like the mind is just seeing things as they go by moment to moment, very rapidly. And this is when the mind can do its work. The mind's work is to know what is. And when all of our stories about ourselves and reactions to I like it, I don't like it are put aside. And that's what happens in the first three knowledges. We slowly begin to put aside all our reactions, all our beliefs and assumptions, and we just see this is the way it is. Then the mind is able to do what it does and it gets just really lit up. And then there are these phenomena called pseudo nibbana.
- [36:21]
C
Pseudo nirvana or nibbana would be the Pali pronunciation of spiritual goodies.
- [36:25]
A
We can call them spiritual goodies.
- [36:26]
C
Pseudo nibbana, meaning that people mistake the experiences they're getting in the A and P for nirvana.
- [36:32]
A
Yeah.
- [36:33]
C
Or nibbana. Nirvana being Sanskrit, nibbana being Pali. Like what?
- [36:38]
A
Ecstasy? Yeah. For example, there are times when the mind just gets lit up and it is just. It's not like the ecstasy of oh boy, this is so much fun. It's just like the whole mind and body is just in orgasmic bliss. Just like full body orgasm for hours.
- [36:57]
C
What's the bad part of this?
- [37:02]
A
It's exhausting. It's exhausting. No, but while you're experiencing that and when it first arises, you say, wow, finally I'm out of knee pain and I'm out of restless, wandering mind. It's just blissful. It's just joyful. It's wow. This is ecstasy. This is great. You know, we say this has got to be it.
- [37:17]
B
This is.
- [37:17]
C
So you think you're enlightened at this point?
- [37:20]
A
That's right.
- [37:20]
C
So you read the chapter in my book about being on retreat?
- [37:23]
A
Yeah.
- [37:24]
C
You were one of the teachers on retreat? Yes.
- [37:26]
A
Hey, you didn't name me on retreat.
- [37:27]
C
I didn't name you because we didn't actually meet until till today. But the retreat was in 2010. And there's a moment in that chapter where I describe having a very heightened experience for about 36 hours. Is that A and P territory or is that just like a terrible beginning? Meditator has his first bout of clarity and feels pretty good.
- [37:47]
A
You had a lot of samadhi. Samadhi, which is continuity of mindfulness and purity of mind. Purity of mind brings. Opens the door to all these spiritual goodies. So you'd get some taste of tranquility and joy and ease and clarity and A lot of confidence. She had a lot of confidence during that bout. And these are all manifestations of some of the pseudo nibbanas or the spiritual goodies.
- [38:11]
C
But you don't think technically I was in the fourth knowledge there.
- [38:14]
A
You can't say you go through a door and then you're there. It's more like as a cutting edge. We could say you step through the door, you fall back into third knowledge, and you don't stay in there all the time. So you're gradually learning how to access that fourth knowledge. Yeah, passing away. Don't take that as a confirmation of anything. But just as we're talking, it's.
- [38:34]
C
Why is it so touchy to confirm?
- [38:38]
A
Because we're really. The whole process and the whole progress of insight is self knowledge. It's about self knowledge. And if I can say to you, poof, Dan, you're enlightened, if you believe me because of your faith in me or your wish to be enlightened, I or whatever, you can walk around full of BS for a long time before you realize that's a delusion.
- [39:00]
C
So is this why we're taking a bit of a detour here from the progress of insight? But that's fine. Is this why Western meditation teachers have been so reluctant to talk about this stuff explicitly?
- [39:09]
A
Partly. But I think it's more that most of us who started practice in the early years, very driven in some ways, either spiritually called or karmically called and just really on the fast track to get to our spiritual life. And when we were told, here's the map, check it out. Some people just get really overbearing, obsessive, and strive too hard or with too much effort, which actually impedes their evolution, I should say, of the knowledges.
- [39:47]
C
Right. So the weird thing about this map is trying too hard, you can't make any progress.
- [39:52]
A
No, that's right.
- [39:52]
C
So you have to put yourself in this weird kind of neutral position of trying without trying.
- [39:57]
A
Well, it's like, you know, if you said, hey, I've heard of this town called Paris, I'm going to go find it. You could wander a long time before you'd ever hit Paris. So it's good to have a map. Here's the map of where Paris is. Boom. Okay, so you can wander around till you find what looks like Paris, and then you say, I need a map of the streets of Paris. So you get a map from someone who's into famous authors that lived in Paris, and you follow that map to all these locations that famous authors lived you might be obsessed with getting your checklist done, but in the meantime you're seeing the rest of Paris.
- [40:36]
C
And missing.
- [40:36]
A
It, a lot of it, because you got to focus on that and you're missing what goes by elsewhere. So same thing with having the map of a spiritual journey. If you've got a map and you're obsessively just trying to get it, well, that's just the wrong attitude to begin with in the first place.
- [40:53]
C
Did you go through some of that?
- [40:54]
A
Yeah, of course. When I first started meditation practice, I thought it was to have drug like experiences. I thought, you get high, that's good. That seemed like the goal when I first shared that mistaken belief with Sayda Upandita, the first time I was practicing with him.
- [41:11]
C
Sayda Upandita was Mahasi Sayada's successor in Burma with whom you practiced. He recently died. Yeah.
- [41:18]
A
And when I, you know, he said something about what do you think happens? And I said, well, you know, you have these kinds of experiences, you just be mindful and you have some drug like experiences and then poof, you get enlightened. He just burst out laughing. He just burst out laughing. I mean, I wasn't offended. It was just, I was naive. And so he spends a lot of time instructing, offering the teachings of what the path is, at least the beginning path, how to get onto the path so that you're not wasting your time looking for pseudo nirvana. It'll come. Anybody that practices is going to definitely experience pseudo nirvana. It's pseudo.
- [41:53]
C
But just to get back to why you and your ilk, you and the other meditation teachers have been talking about this. There's a lot of weirdness around this progressive insight. You're one of the first teachers who's. I've been able to sit here and just talk about this and talk about the names and then. But even you got a little, you were like, don't take me as confirming anything. So there's a guy named Daniel Ingram who you and I were discussing before, who wrote a. He's a Western guy's amazing ER doctor down in Alabama. And he wrote a book about how he sort of went all the way on the progress of insight. That book was very much a cookbook, a term that he's okay with. Yeah. And that caused an enormous amount of controversy within the tiny world of American Buddhism. And the reason why that's controversial. There are about 7,000 reasons why it's controversial, but one of them is that if people know too much, American teachers, yourself included, have had a lot of Hard experience personally and with their students of seeing people get obsessed with making progress, which of course impedes progress.
- [42:49]
A
Sure. And that was the danger. You'll know too much. And we're very heady. We're great thinkers. We Westerners are great thinkers. And we don't have a lot of faith for practice. If you can think yourself into a blissful state or akin to believing that you're enlightened, great, good, don't have to do the work. Excuse me, That's a cynical view, but.
- [43:08]
C
Cynicism is fine here, just so you know.
- [43:10]
A
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, right. I know we're in the same club, but, you know, I think that, you know, the introduction of a lot of what came in with the teaching of mindfulness and insight in the west, primarily the Western psychological understandings that help a lot of us get through the first years of practice and kind of become normal and then suitable for really intensive practice of insight, I think has been a great blessing. And to have gotten the fast track to enlightenment early on could have derailed me and others. I heard about it a little bit, but didn't pay much attention to it because it didn't seem real to me, frankly. It wasn't until I got to Burma that oh, it became apparent that this is what's happening.
- [43:59]
C
Gotcha.
- [43:59]
A
Yeah.
- [44:00]
C
Okay. So we're at the fourth knowledge here, the arising and passing away, which is where you see very clearly that everything is arising and passing away. And that can feel really good. And you can have these pseudo Nibbana or pseudo Nirvana experiences.
- [44:13]
A
Now let me just say about pseudo Nibbana, because we think this is it, we get attached to it, we take delight in it, we take delight in bliss, we take delight in joy, we take delight in clarity, we take delight in strong faith, we take delight in effortless energy, we take delight in non reactive equanimity. And we just feed a sense of self until we can see those experiences as just ecstasy being known, bliss being known, great faith being known, clarity, piercing clarity, just being known. So what? Until we can have that level of equanimity towards those spiritual goodies, we don't progress beyond rising and passing away. So it's a big step.
- [44:55]
C
I could see worse things than being stuck in a state of ecstasy. That feels like a pretty good cul de sac to me.
- [45:01]
A
Well, it's a scenic turnout on the route, Dan. As Upandita would say, there's better things.
- [45:07]
C
Ahead, but before you get to those better things, you got to go through some tough things. So let's progress through the other knowledge.
- [45:15]
A
Mature, arising and passing way where the spiritual goodies are arising but you're not indulging in them. That's great. You know that the path is just noticed is like the best practice you've ever could imagine. It's just, it's so effortless and it's so clear and it's so continuous and so at times blissful and you're not indulging in it and you don't care if it comes or goes and it's just very easy. A lot of equanimity. It's really great. And so the next phase of practice is where I guess we'd have to say we purify our understanding of dukkha.
- [45:47]
C
What's the name of this?
- [45:48]
A
It's called bhanga. It's the opening to the dukkha Jnana. It's what are called the knowledge of dukkha.
- [45:54]
C
Suffering.
- [45:55]
A
Yeah, suffering. And this is one of those, I didn't mention it before, but this is the second, what we call the rolling up the mat stage of practice. This is where practice is so hard.
- [46:05]
C
People freak out and roll up their mat and leave.
- [46:07]
A
Yeah, we just want to roll up our mat and go home.
- [46:09]
C
So this comes immediately after the awesome.
- [46:11]
A
Yeah, the awesome stuff of A and.
- [46:13]
C
P. And again, the name of this.
- [46:15]
A
Knowledge is it's bhanga, the knowledge of dissolution. Dissolution.
- [46:20]
C
Sometimes this knowledge is called the dark night.
- [46:22]
A
Yes.
- [46:23]
C
People don't like this. Some people don't like this.
- [46:25]
A
People don't like it. Some of it say it's the dark night of the. Similar to the dark night of the soul. I don't know what the dark night of the soul is, but there's some of the similar characteristics. But I'll also make a distinction if you want me to. When you begin to open to the fact that everything is rising and passing away and everything is unsatisfactory changing and it's out of control, suddenly or gradually you begin to recognize. Up until this point I have to use three dimensional objects are arising and they're being known. Another object arising is being known. Object arises being known and it's very fast. But all along up to this point the knowing has seemed to be steady, stable, like it doesn't arise and pass away, but at mature arising and passing away, you start to notice that the knowing itself is not steady.
- [47:16]
C
So the dan that's knowing is actually not there.
- [47:19]
A
Yeah, it's like the object and the knowing arise at the same time and they both pass away at the same time. And they arise again, an object and another knowing. And it passed away.
- [47:29]
C
So that's dissolution.
- [47:30]
A
Another. Yeah, because the sense of a permanent enduring knower of changing objects dissolves.
- [47:39]
C
And this is scary as hell for a lot of people.
- [47:41]
A
This is very scary. Yeah, it's unsettling because you can't keep track of one moment to the next. The you that was mindful a moment ago isn't here to be mindful this time. And you really feel. It's visceral. It's like you feel that. It's like, you know, where am I?
- [47:55]
C
Let me tell you about an experience I had when I was young. A younger guy, much younger guy. Who.
- [47:59]
A
Were you ever not younger?
- [48:01]
C
I'm. We'll be 45 this summer, so I'm super young. So when I was very young, I had a recurring panic attack when I would smoke weed. And the contents of this panic attack were. It was like my brain was turning over in my head. Everything that was happening was happening right now. Oh no, this is happening right now. No, no, now it's now. Now it's now. And it was terrifying. And it felt like dying and waking up in every moment. And I know a little bit about the progress of insight and in this stage, which is sometimes called the dark night or the knowledge of fear or whatever, I sometimes think that maybe I was having an experience like this as an immature weed smoker.
- [48:39]
A
It does sound like you access that understanding, that knowledge. But the difference between doing drugs or having a mental illness where one would access that kind of stuff is that you can't integrate it. You can't integrate that knowledge into an understanding that you can live with.
- [48:54]
C
No, I didn't integrate it at all. It was like a vampire being confronted with garlic. I was just impulse by it and freaked out instead of just leaning into it and seeing it with some equanimity.
- [49:03]
A
And that's what happens. We get afraid and we have to work through the fear of objects and dissolution. And then there's another phase of this dark night. There's both the fear and then there's what we would call disillusionment where you start to see that all that has appeared and that we've been fascinated by in our life is just really not very. Doesn't really offer the goods. We get disillusioned with more experience.
- [49:33]
C
Nothing does it for you.
- [49:34]
A
Nothing does it for you.
- [49:35]
C
So this is another knowledge and another skill.
- [49:38]
A
Yeah, it's scary because to think nothing does it for you and there's no you that it's going to be done for anyway. It's kind of what's it all about. You can really fall into a deep confusion and nihilism and just like you disappear and you don't, it's scary.
- [49:49]
C
So this progress of inside is a real adventure. But that's another thing I like about it. There are great things that happen and then all these obstacles you have to navigate. It's back to my sort of Dungeons and Dragons comparison coming up.
- [50:04]
B
Steve talks about the last few steps on the path and then stubbornly refuses to answer a few of my annoying questions. This show is sponsored by Better Help. The holidays are a time of tradition. Some people have many traditions in their family, while some have none or are just beginning their own. So now's the time to reflect on what these traditions mean to you, or to rewrite your own traditions or make your own traditions, like perfecting a new hot chocolate recipe with the kids or continuing your great aunt's sweet potato pie. We've got lots of traditions in my family. We do a big Christmas celebration every year at our house, even though I did have a bar Mitzvah. I'm only half Jewish, so we did Christmas growing up and I married a non Jewish lady named Beyonkas. We do a big old Christmas at our house. Huge tree, tons of kids. I think there will be like nine or 10 children, 30 adults and going to be. It's a big one. We do this every year and I love this tradition. I love hosting, I love seeing the same people every year. I love watching the kids open their gifts. Of course, family can be complex to say the least. So one way to make your traditions as healthy as possible is to incorporate some therapy into your life at this time of year, which can be joyful but also hectic and for some of us, very lonely. So therapy can really help. If you go to BetterHelp, they've got quality therapists who work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the US BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. They give you a short questionnaire that helps you identify your needs and your preferences. They have more than 12 years of experience and an industry leading match fulfillment rate, which means they typically get it right the first time. They are one of the world's largest online therapy platforms and They've served over 5 million million people across the world. So this December, start a new tradition by taking care of yourself, which will allow you to take care of other people. During this holiday season. Our listeners get 10% off@betterhelp.com happier that's betterhelp.com happier. In just a few years, Ozempic has gone from a diabetes drug to a global phenomenon. But behind the miracle claims, another battle is raging. Demand is exploding and supply cannot keep up. And as drug maker Novo Nordisk scrambles to produce more, its rival Eli Lilly, who is racing in to take the crown. Meanwhile, a darker market is emerging. Shady online sellers are offering cheap, unregulated knockoffs. Now millions are injecting mystery vials with no FDA oversight. In their latest season, Business wars is diving into the race to Ozempic and a billion dollar showdown between Big Pharma's biggest players. Can they close the supply gap before one bad vial destroys everything? Follow Business wars on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Business wars early and ad free right now on Wondery Plus.
- [53:17]
C
I don't know which knowledge we're in anymore, but we've gone from fear into disillusionment. And then what happens after that?
- [53:22]
A
Let me just say, when people get into that stage, we recognize that this is the dissolution. This is the Bhagnanas, this is the knowledge of Dukkha, the Dukkha Jnanas. And people want to go home. And so we have to just say, okay, just settle back. Just notice what you can. Don't look for the kind of experience you had last week that's going backwards. Just keep noticing what you can. Just settle back, be comfortable, don't push. No expectations. And eventually people will get through it. Their pace of noticing gets even faster. But there's a knowledge, there's something that has to transpire in the mind. And that is as bad as this is. I got here through the knowing that I just had to recognize something is being known in each moment. Something is being known in each moment. This now is being known in each moment. Disillusionment is being known in each moment. Fear is just being known in each moment. Terror is just being known in this moment. Okay, and when you really remember that and you kind of recommit, this is the next level of insight. It's called re observation. You determine the way forward is to just keep noticing things are being known one after another.
- [54:33]
C
This is called re observation.
- [54:34]
A
Reobservation.
- [54:35]
C
That's the name of this stage.
- [54:36]
A
That's the name of this stage. Yeah.
- [54:38]
C
Okay.
- [54:38]
A
Because you reaffirm again, you're just observing. You're not judging this as if we were judging our experience as good or bad. And Saying this is skillful or not, you would go home, you would not practice. You wouldn't know how to practice. You'd need a teacher. You need a teacher, a skillful teacher at the Duka Nyana's to help you navigate it skillfully. If you don't have a skillful teacher or you don't have a teacher that you can have faith in, to trust, to guide you, you'll end up really disturbed.
- [55:03]
C
And again, the dukkha and jnanas are the knowledges of suffering that happen after the fireworks of the arising and passing away. So that's like the valley. One has to.
- [55:12]
A
Yeah, the valley of death.
- [55:14]
C
Literally, because you're seeing everything dies. Okay, so we're in re. Observation. We're starting to emerge out of the valley of death. And what's the next. What happens? What's the next stage?
- [55:22]
A
There may be a. There may be. I haven't got it quite in my mind right now. But you're on your way towards more equanimity.
- [55:29]
C
And that is the stage equanimity.
- [55:30]
A
This is the stage that we're headed towards. And gradually we haven't seen it because we've been so fascinated with the variety of objects that we've been noticing. We've been so fascinated with the spiritual goodies, and then we've been so obsessed with the. Or preoccupied with the duka jnanas, we haven't noticed that the stability of the mind to be with these changing objects has gotten stronger and stronger to now where it's just so equanimous. Anything can arise and we don't react. Anything can arise and we don't react. The best possible spiritual goodies can arise. No indulgence in them. The worst terrifying, fearful dukkha that you can imagine arises. No fear of that equanimity, unshakable, steady observation. This is the way it is. Moment to moment.
- [56:20]
C
Okay, so here we are, we're about to get to the sort of culminating experience in this adventure. Start out with some basic understanding of the way the mind works. And during the progress of insight, the mind is steadied and concentrated and seeing things clearly. And you hit these. The fireworks of the arising and passing away. Sometimes spiritual goodies, pseudo nirvana, or sometimes, I love this term, corruptions of insight.
- [56:44]
A
Let me just explain what that means.
- [56:46]
C
Okay.
- [56:47]
A
The spiritual goodies arise because you have good practice. But as soon as they arise, they become an object of indulgence or feeling gratified. It's that gratification with those experiences that is the corruption, joy, is not a corruption. Tranquility is not a corruption. Faith is not a corruption.
- [57:06]
C
Clinging to them is the corruption indulging.
- [57:08]
A
In clinging to them.
- [57:09]
C
So we started with the basic understanding of the mind and the body and conditionality. And then we enter into this A and P where we have the pseudo nirvana. Then things get scary. We're in the Dukkha Nyanas, the dark night, the valley of death, whatever. There's a bunch of stages of this. And then you start to emerge with re observation where you fall back onto the. The real anchor, which is that mindfulness, which is just seeing things clearly. And then you get to this really cool area called that. And again, I've had no experience with any of this. This is just my understanding from talking to you and reading, you have equanimity, which is. Everything's cool. You're just cool with everything.
- [57:41]
B
Yeah.
- [57:42]
C
And out of equanimity, this is where we get to the big N word here.
- [57:46]
A
Okay, now let me just prep you a little bit.
- [57:49]
C
Okay?
- [57:49]
A
Okay. When the mind is in this equanimous, it's not a state, it's like moment to moment. It's just not reacting, it's just there. It's there. Things are going by extremely rapidly and even the sensations of the body are going by so fast. You don't stop the flow of experience at all. For myself, when there was strong equanimity, it just. The tangibility of the body feels like mistakes. That's as heavy and as thick as the body is. It's like mist. And so the mind is very light too. It just doesn't get entangled in anything. It doesn't miss anything either. It just doesn't get entangled. It doesn't pick up. It often doesn't even pick up the ideas of what's being presented to sees, but it's not picking it up to massage it into. I like it. I don't. I should do this, I shouldn't do that. The mind doesn't do that. And so the equanimity tends towards long periods of time of just sitting quietly observing the flow of phenomena. Time gets distorted. You sit down, you seem to take two or three breaths. In a couple of hours has gone by. You get some real time distortions that are just phenomenal. Okay. Now what's happening is the objects are being seen quickly and recognize quickly. And when they have no reaction to them, but what's being seen about them is one of the three characteristics. We're seeing that they're impermanent. We're seeing that they have the characteristic of dukkha, which means they're either painful themselves, not at this point, they're unstable, or they're not controllable.
- [59:24]
C
Unreliable.
- [59:25]
A
Unreliable, yeah. And then the third characteristic is they're conditioned and they're not self. They're not stable. You can't control them. Okay, so we're seeing objects. We're seeing these characteristics of all objects. And so think of it this way, Dan. Imagine that you were seeing, you were understood. Everything that you're experiencing is painful. You wouldn't pick it up, you wouldn't deal with it. You just, nah, I don't want to deal with that. Or if you realize this, that I'm looking for to make my life 10% happier is unstable. It doesn't last. It might be 10% happier today, but it's going to be 10% less happy tomorrow. Why do that? So you don't pick it up. The mind doesn't reach for what it sees, doesn't offer what it looks for. So the mind is not reaching for to hold on to anything because it's impermanent. It doesn't last. It has the characteristic of a dukkha. It's not controllable, it's not yours. It has no essence even. And so the mind doesn't reach. Now, when the mind doesn't reach for anything, it might fall into the unconditioned.
- [60:36]
C
Okay, so no, the unconditioned is another way of saying nirvana, or in the Pali word, nibbana. Unpack that for me, man. What is the unconditioned and how would one fall into it?
- [60:50]
A
Well, as Trungpa Rinpoche so aptly put it, he says, enlightenment is an accident. Practice makes us accident prone. Okay, so it's like it's unconditioned. It's not conditioned to buy anything. It's a reality.
- [61:04]
C
So we live in this world as this vast soup of causes and conditions, but nirvana is the unconditioned. It is this.
- [61:12]
A
Yeah, it's its own reality.
- [61:15]
C
And when you fall into it, do you spend a lot of time there or is it like a zap and. And you bolt out of your chair? What is what happens?
- [61:24]
A
The texts say it's just a momentary visit by the mind to this reality. And some people recognize it instantly and some don't. But if you continue to practice and develop what's called the fruition, not just the initial path of nibbana, but the fruition of it, then it can last for a longer period of time.
- [61:45]
B
What's the difference?
- [61:46]
C
Between the path and the fruition.
- [61:47]
A
This first visit to the unconditioned is a profound experience, and it permanently transforms the mind. Okay? And some people experience it and it's just like, wow, they're just done. They're just done. They don't need to practice. They don't want to practice anymore. They just have done all they want to do. Some people just ride the wave of bliss and dharma joy for hours, if not days. Just, wow. Relief. It's a kind of relief that's just, like, unbelievable. Okay? So what happens is that all along in our practice, up to this first taste of the unconditioned, is we've been purifying the mind, purifying our understanding, and we're becoming more confident that this is the path to the end of suffering, clinging. The end of clinging, at least suffering. And that at some point we have looked at all of our doubts, looked at all of our Is it possible, really? Is it me? Does it work for them? Does it work for me? Can I do it? All that stuff had been seen as just another moment experience arising and passing away. And it is said that at the point of first accessing the unconditioned, that doubt about the teachings of the path, the Dharma, and the ability to practice in this way is uprooted. Meaning it's not just suppressed through concentration, it's uprooted from the mind, never to appear again. But also it is said that this belief in this, the little Dan or the little Steve that's in here, that this is all happening to that belief, is also uprooted from the mind at the first access to the unconditioned.
- [63:40]
C
But what is it? But you've had this experience, clearly. So what does it feel like? What is it like?
- [63:49]
A
Not supposed to say.
- [63:50]
C
Why are you supposed to say?
- [63:51]
B
This is where things get weird.
- [63:52]
C
Why are you not supposed to say?
- [63:55]
A
It's not that we're not supposed to say. It's in the book. It's a non experience, if you will. You could have to say it's a non experience.
- [64:03]
C
What's so great about it if it's a non experience?
- [64:05]
A
Because it has this powerful effect on the mind.
- [64:08]
C
But what's so great about it in the moment you're having the experience, if there's nothing to experience.
- [64:14]
A
That'S the greatness of it. Because at this point, you have seen that every moment's experience has this characteristic of dukkha suffering.
- [64:21]
C
Nothing's going to do it for you.
- [64:22]
A
And so now there is this experience of no dukkha I see.
- [64:27]
C
I see. No doubt a weight has been lifted or something like that. So it's like nothing's going to do it for you until everything does it for you.
- [64:35]
A
No, I wouldn't say everything does it for you. You still realize that nothing is going to do it for you like you had thought before. But now your sense of, your understanding of what happiness is is forever changed.
- [64:48]
C
So switch seats with me mentally here. If you were in my chair and you just listened to somebody describe this adventure that culminates in a non experience that permanently changes the mind, would any of this.
- [65:00]
A
No, probably not. I would be skeptical. I would say, yeah, but so why would I want to do that? And can you prove it and tell me about it and show it to me? Can't do that. But the experience of it is real.
- [65:16]
C
You're just saying that based on your own experience.
- [65:18]
A
Once you taste the experience of the unconditioned, you know what it is. Okay.
- [65:23]
C
But there's a lot of controversy around this because we're talking about the understanding of enlightenment from one school of Buddhism. And there are many schools of Buddhism.
- [65:30]
B
That's right.
- [65:31]
C
And so if you sit with a Tibetan monk and talk to them about the unconditioned, they're going to look at you like you're crazy.
- [65:36]
A
Oh, sure, yeah. Oh. In fact, one of my colleagues who does practice with Tibetan teacher described this kind of experience to his Tibetan teacher and his Tibetan teacher. There's nothing in Tibetan Buddhism that would value that. Okay. It's just different. Probably a great Zen master from Japan and a Chan master from China and a Tibetan master from Tibet and Ajahn from Thailand and a Sayadar from Burma, if they all got together and talked about their most liberating experiences, wouldn't be able to understand each other. But that doesn't mean it doesn't actually work. There's some cultural stuff there and there's some how you frame the experience. But when you take the Buddhist teachings on the Four Noble Truths, that there is this experience of suffering, and once you come to know suffering, really what the suffering is that he's pointing to, then you begin to understand. You begin to get an idea of what the end of suffering is going to look like. And when you taste that end of suffering, then you confirm for yourself, oh, that's it, that's it.
- [66:38]
C
So you have all of these different schools and they have differing maps of enlightenment. We just talked about one map, but there are other maps. Do you ever have a student who starts studying under you and starts showing Landmarks on other people's maps, other traditions, maps.
- [66:58]
A
Well, I don't know too many details of other maps, but I do know that when students from other traditions come to me and they talk about their experiences, I can locate them on my map. So I can say, oh, that sounds like, you know, this is what we would. This is how I would understand it from my perspective, from my map. And having talked with a lot of students who practice Tibetan teachings, there's a lot of overlap. But there are places where it goes dissonant and fuzzy and you can't overlap. You can't lay them over as a direct fit.
- [67:31]
C
There was an effort here in the west to form something called the Contemplative Development Mapping Project, where they would lay the maps over each other and see if they could hear what the common goalposts are. But we're we. So we finished the progress of insight or one part of the progress of insight with the Nirvana experience. But the fact is that actually this is just the beginning. It's called stream entry. You enter the stream and then you actually go through this progress. Yes. And then the second time you have a Nirvana experience, it's.
- [68:01]
A
Let me just correct. Let me just correct. It's not the second time you experienced Nirvana. Because remember I mentioned the path of fruition.
- [68:08]
C
Yeah.
- [68:08]
A
The path is the first moment of experiencing or realizing nibbana. But then with training, you can develop the capacity to enter this state or enter, we'll call it a state, the state, or this reality of Nirvana or nirvana for extended periods of time. But this is a special training of the mind. So you might stay in this experience realization of nibbana for a minute or two or five, an hour more.
- [68:37]
C
Okay, so those are fruition moments.
- [68:39]
A
Those are fruition. That's not second path. No, that's not.
- [68:42]
C
That's not the second experience.
- [68:44]
A
So we can experience or kind of realize Nibbana many times before one moves.
- [68:49]
C
On to second path and then the second path. And I don't want to get too deeply into this because we have a lot of. We don't have that much time left. But second path, you are at this point a once returner. And then the third path moment is a non returner. And the fourth is an arhant, which is a fully enlightened being.
- [69:04]
A
Yeah. What's that all mean?
- [69:05]
C
Yeah, Yeah. I want to ask you, so can you even say, are you allowed to say where you are in this progress? And why can't you? If you can't?
- [69:12]
A
This whole lineage comes from the monastic tradition. And the rules of the monks were not to. They weren't prohibited from sharing their personal realizations and attainments. But if in the process they deceptively led others to believe their attainments, it could damage others faith. And so monks were very cautious and just don't talk about their attainments.
- [69:42]
C
So you're not allowed to say.
- [69:44]
A
Nobody's preventing me from saying anything.
- [69:45]
C
But you don't feel comfortable saying I'm a once returner, I'm a non returner or whatever? No, but don't you see how that's a little like there's like this queer silence like mafia thing like you can't tell me where you are on this map.
- [69:58]
B
Why not?
- [70:01]
A
I'm still on the map. I'm still trudging along.
- [70:03]
C
I asked you, Joseph Goldstein, who was referenced before, who's my teacher and has been a teacher for you for many years, I once asked him, where are you? And he said something like I'm somewhere between the first and the third or something along those lines. But basically people feel there is this omerta. You just really are not supposed to say where exactly you are on the map.
- [70:26]
A
I respect Joseph's hedging, if you will, and clarity without specificity. I think that's probably as skillful as we can get.
- [70:36]
C
Are you comfortable talking about this with your teacher or among other teachers or are there backroom conversations where you guys sort of figure out where you are?
- [70:44]
A
Something like that. When I first started teaching the three month course with Joseph, Charon and a couple of other senior teachers, we did take one year of teacher meetings during the three month course where we all spoke about what we considered our best, clearest, most liberating, whatever experiences, both practicing concentration or jhna as well as practicing insight or liberation. And what was really instructive to me, Dan, was that we were all practicing in the same tradition, the Mahasim Saydha tradition. And we all had very distinctively different experiences, but we all had a similar understanding.
- [71:22]
C
But was that public measuring of where we are on the path?
- [71:29]
A
Well, it was just very. We were sharing with each other what our.
- [71:34]
C
But don't you get into comparing mine? Oh look, Joseph's so much farther ahead of me.
- [71:39]
A
That's for people who haven't got to the first stage yet.
- [71:42]
C
You can't understand this conversation.
- [71:45]
A
Comparing mind is one of those grabbing things. Conceit.
- [71:47]
C
I see.
- [71:48]
A
Comparing mind. So by the time you get the first stage, you've done a lot of. You've uprooted a lot of that. Comparing mind. It still hangs in there till the end, but.
- [71:55]
C
Gotcha. Yeah, but that actually leads to my next question. I have two final questions I want to ask you. One is, you've gone. You won't say how far, but you've gone pretty far on the progress of insight, I would imagine. Do you retain the capacity to be a jerk ever?
- [72:08]
A
Oh, I practice that daily.
- [72:11]
C
How? If you've gone through this adventure many times and you've experienced nirvana, how can you still be a jerk?
- [72:17]
A
Sometimes jerk is an evaluation, usually from other people's eyes.
- [72:22]
C
No, I know when I'm being a jerk. Yeah, absolutely.
- [72:26]
A
I think it's being human. I think of it as being human. And in some ways we become more human. Maybe not careless in being a jerk, but there are times we just. We still have our conditioning. We still have a lot of personal, family, cultural conditioning, which just comes out in carelessly saying things, doing things, that coming from a place of delusion. We're not free of delusion.
- [72:48]
C
So you're not fully enlightened yet?
- [72:49]
A
No, we still have a lot of aversion, still have desire, still have conceit and pride. And these things come out in ways that harm others or hurt others or shock others or shock ourselves even. None of us like to think of ourselves as a jerk all the time, but we do. We all have some relapses, I'd say, from our most mindful and ethical and wise place that we've visited.
- [73:15]
C
So here's my final question. So I've been playing the skeptic, but the fact of the matter is, while I am actually genuinely a skeptic, I'm really curious and want to experience some of this stuff for myself. But is that really possible given the reality of my life? I have a crazy full time job. I've started a company, I write books, I have a baby. I will be able to do a retreat a year and a couple hours a day of sitting, which is pretty good. But it took you eight years. You had to become a monk before you started really getting down the path. So that makes me feel a little dispirited.
- [73:49]
A
No, don't. I'll tell you why. Because all that you're doing, the practice that you're doing, the retreats that you do, even if it's once a year, the daily practice and keeping yourself informed, talking about Dharma with other people, it's inspiring. It keeps your mind headed in that direction a lot of the time. And it's not only silent retreats that's going to mature the mind, mature the Param. The paramis, the paramees are the forces of purity in the mind. Generosity, loving, kindness, understanding, truthfulness, energy, resolve.
- [74:23]
C
Yeah, but all that I understand is all to the good and it does prepare the mind for this. But don't you need to build up some concentration? Like really?
- [74:30]
A
Yeah. I mean mistake. If you build up the parames and in your daily life, you always have. Every day you have ample opportunities to practice paramis. Patience, generosity, loving kindness, non reactivity. You got to practice that every day. If you make it a conscious practice, you are preparing the soil of your mind for liberating insight. And there are those among us who didn't get enlightened, didn't get their first stage on retreat. Household.
- [74:59]
C
Yeah, they hit stream entry. Their first path. Experience whatever lingo you want to use. Not on a retreat.
- [75:05]
A
Yeah.
- [75:06]
C
Okay. So this could happen in my bedroom.
- [75:07]
A
All depending on what you're doing.
- [75:09]
C
I didn't mean that in a boudoir type of way, but I meditate in my bedroom so this could happen in my bedroom.
- [75:13]
A
Yes, if you inform yourself. Read the book, study the book, whatever. Find out what's involved. Practice the paramis daily. Do your daily practice. Do a retreat when you can. You're gradually. If you haven't gotten first stage yet, you will.
- [75:32]
B
Thanks again to Steve Armstrong. And don't forget that there's a link in the show notes for the GoFundMe for Steve and his wife Kamala at this difficult time in their lives. Finally. Just want to thank everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.
- [76:07]
C
Foreign.
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A
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