Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 491: Lama Tsomo

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

Lama Tsomo, spiritual teacher and a truly wonderful person, joins the DTFH! You can find all of Lama Tsomo's books, including her latest title Why Bother?: An Introduction, wherever you buy your literature! She's also a co-founder and master teacher at the Namchak Foundation. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Everything 420 - Use promo code DUNCAN at checkout for 15% Off nearly everything in stock! Athletic Greens - Visit AthleticGreens.com/Duncan for a FREE 1 year supply of vitamin D and 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase! Shudder - Use promo code DUNCAN for a FREE 30 Day Trial!

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Oh, and thereabouts for kids. Super cute and extra affordable. Check out the latest in-store, and we're never short on options at jcp.com. All dressed up everywhere to go. JCPenney. Greetings to you, friends. It's me, Duncan, and this is the Dunker Trussell Family,

our podcast. It's interviews like the one you're about to listen to that make me feel like the luckiest person on Earth. Sometimes I find myself getting emails from llamas, not the creature, obviously, but the Buddhist teacher, llama. That's what it means.

Roughly, I think it translates into guide. Buddhism never stops blowing my mind. I just can't get enough of it. The more I study it, the more I love it. And the weirder it seems. I love its lists and categories. Buddhism has got a list for everything. You've got the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path,

the Three Characteristics of Existence, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, the Five Aggregates, the Five Hindrances, the Ten Perfections. And today, we talk about the Four Immeasurables, or the Four Boundless States. My first contact with Buddhism happened here in North Carolina when I was in college. I did an internship at a Zen temple.

And I took a class that was being taught by Tejo Munich, who is a brilliant Zen teacher. At the time, I really wanted lists. I would go to this Zen temple wanting some kind of, I don't know, exposition on Buddhism, some kind of easy method to realization. And Tejo would ask me to clean the floors. And she taught me a method of cleaning floors

that I still use to this day, where you take a cloth and you dip it in water and you push it with your hands across the floor of the temple. And she told me that in Japan, this is one of the ways that monks will clean the temples, running across the floor with these cloths. It really works. You essentially turn yourself into a human swiffer.

But at some point, I was getting frustrated. And I asked if she could recommend a book. And her response was to ask me, what was the Buddha doing when he gained enlightenment? And I thought about it and said, oh, right, meditating. Damn it. All those lists spring from this practice of meditation, something that is so infuriatingly simple

that for the longest time, I couldn't do it. I couldn't sit still for longer than a few minutes. And I can remember once saying to my meditation teacher, David Nickturn, who maybe you saw in the Midnight Gospel, whenever I meditate, it feels like I'm on fire. And he said, you know that's happening in you, right? That's not the meditation causing it. It's not like you're sitting down to meditate

and your nerves are suddenly getting inflamed. This is the odd thing about the practice of meditation is that it seems like it should be easy. You're just sitting still after all, not doing anything for 20 minutes. I can spend hours sitting on the couch, watching TV, playing video games, looking at my phone. But the moment you remove all of those distractions

from your field of awareness, suddenly you're faced with something that initially isn't that pleasant. And this is suffering. And all those lists spring from the recognition of that suffering and the possibility of ending that suffering, not just for yourself, but potentially everyone in the universe. And not just people.

In Tibetan Buddhism, there's a place for all kinds of interesting beings, gods, devas, demigods, demons, hungry ghosts, you name it, they got it. I think this is part of what draws me to this particular type of Buddhism versus some of the more austere forms. I like the colorful stuff. I like hearing, as you're about to hear in this conversation,

that they don't quite look at time in the same way we do, in a linear way. There's some possibility of communicating with beings in the past and the future and in basically parallel dimensions. That being said, as cool as all that stuff is, at my age when you got kids and you're married during a pandemic, the real miracle

is when you find yourself being less reactive to things that used to drive you up the fucking wall. Because let's face it, if a UFO landed in your backyard and invited you on board to go travel around the universe, at some point, maybe 1,000 years into your celestial voyage, you're going to get bored. You're going to get annoyed. Something's going to happen.

Maybe the chef on the UFO is going to cook a bad batch of space cakes or whatever the fuck you eat on a UFO. Something's going to happen. The toilets aren't going to work. Who knows? Maybe you're going to get space sick or something. Or maybe you're going to get in a fight with the captain

of the UFO or just get a general sense that you're the least liked human on the UFO. The point is, all the mystical stuff is really cool and interesting and fun to think about. But the reality is an asshole gets on a UFO in Los Angeles. An asshole gets off a UFO in Alpha Centauri. No matter where you go, you still got to bring your mind. All right, I'm done rambling.

We're going to jump right into this podcast with Lama Somo. But first this. Speaking of UFOs, today's episode of the DTFH was supported by Everything 420. Everything 420 has a wild assortment of glass and accessories from bongs to rigs to vapes to grinders, papers, trays, cleaning supplies, and more. You want a beautiful bong that looks like something

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They ship directly out of Dallas. And with a promo code Duncan, you can say 15% on nearly everything, excluding bundles plus the 420 and 710 stores. That's at everything420.com. And we're back. Friends, I must remind you, I'm coming to Zany's in Nashville the weekend after Valentine's Day.

Also, I've got some dates coming up in Portland and many other places. You'll be able to find those dates at dunkintrussell.com. Also, won't you please subscribe to our Patreon? It's at patreon.com. You'll get commercial free episodes of this podcast, along with lots of extra stuff. And if you subscribe to the video tiers,

you can hang out with us at our meditation group, journey into boredom, or our weekly family gatherings. And we're always making stuff together. We just finished a book, and we're about to start working on an album. And we love for you to join with us. Today's guest is truly a wonderful person. I feel so lucky to have had the chance

just to talk to her at all. She's a Lama spiritual teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and she has written three books. She's currently working on her newest book, which is going to be about the Four Immeasurables, which we're going to be talking about in this episode. And she also works with the Namchak Foundation. That's where she is teaching classes.

And if you're interested, all the links you need to find her are going to be at dugintrussell.com. So please welcome to the DTFH Lama Somo. Lama Somo. Welcome to the DTFH. I'm so happy to be here. I'm happy to be here, Duncan. So I, after the first conversation we had, I went home and I was giving my kids a bath.

And I said to the three year old, I talked to a llama today. And he laughed and goes, you llamas can't talk. And I realized, like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to talk to you. And I realized, like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to, at this age, explain to him the type of llama that I chatted with. But then I realized, I don't know if I know much about how a person becomes a llama or even technically what a llama is. So I thought it'd be a great place for us to start our conversations. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about what a llama is and how you became one. Yeah, so I think it's related to a camel. No kidding.

So it's slightly different depending on which llama has done the training of the llama. But usually there's a traditional three year retreat with four basic levels that the student studies very deeply and practices very deeply. In the many, many hours of retreat, you know, because retreat means total immersion. So when you're not eating or sleeping, basically, you're in session. And because, yeah, and because I had kids, I had to do it in like three month installments and two month installments. One advantage to divorce and we had an amicable divorce, thank goodness. Is the kids dad could take the kids while I would go off and do retreat and then he liked to travel. So I would take the kids when he wanted to travel.

So it worked out well for me, even though I was, you know, at the time a single mom. Wow. Where did you, where were you, where was this retreat? Well, a lot of times I went to Nepal and was at the small monastery he had there. It was actually a nunnery. He's one of the very few llamas who has lots of nuns under his tutelage. What's his name? It's Tuku Sanak Rinpoche. Okay.

And I will not ask you to pronounce that. Oh, I'm writing it down. Tuku Sanak Rinpoche. How did you, how did you meet this person? Um, yeah. So the real way I met him was, um, I had meditated for most of my adult life and realized that I needed instruction. You know, if you want to get good at piano, you find a piano teacher, you know, and then you take lessons in practice. Right.

And I thought that's what I need to do. By the way, I have piano in my background and so do you actually. Well, I need a teacher. I just like to tinker around on the thing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so anyway, um, I decided to get very clear about, um, you know, such a teacher. So I actually wrote down, here are the things I want in the teacher and here are the things I don't want. And, um, so, you know, among the things I wanted were, um, needs to be highly realized, uh, needs to be a gifted teacher needs to,

um, you know, really understand their tradition and so on and so forth, you know, just various qualities. Um, and on the don't want side, I said, um, you know, things like, you know, shouldn't want me for my body, et cetera, et cetera. Right. That's something you have to worry about. Right. That is a legitimate problem that happens out there. Yeah, it does. And so everything I didn't want on my list wasn't on the list of this llama.

Everything I did want, I got, but I forgot to put one thing on the want list. What's that? Must speak English. Right. That's important. He didn't speak English and he still doesn't speak English. So I had to learn Tibetan to be able to communicate directly with him. I have to say this is such an organized and specific thing that you did.

I think, you know, many of us, when we hear people talking about their teachers, specifically their meditation teachers, it has this exotic sound to it. Like the idea of, for a lot of us, even reading some of these books is exotic, much less imagining that we would try to make a real world connection with one of these beings and go so far in such a focused way as to figure out what we want and what we don't want in these beings. It seems like you had already had some kind of very powerful epiphany or that you had some, you must have been having some incredible pull towards this lineage to get to the point where you're sitting down and going through a list and really trying to find a teacher. It's interesting you say that. That's a really interesting question, Duncan. And I'll get to the epiphany. But first, I want to say a little bit more about this moment of sitting down and, you know, writing this list and that kind of thing because I did that in preparation for my morning meditations when I would sound the note in the world, you know, with my mind very clear from having done the list. Very clear about what it was I was sounding a note for so that I would, first of all, you know, know what to look for.

And second of all, recognize it when it shows up. And third of all, of course, hopefully attract those specific qualities. And I believe it helped. But then I was clueless when I met him. You know, when I first met him, I didn't realize, you know, this was it. By the way, what was not on the list was must be Tibetan Buddhist. I really care what flavor of spirituality. Did you think Buddhist, though, or was it any teacher?

Yeah, I mean, it didn't matter. I had studied a little bit of Taoism, but never had a chance to work with a teacher. I had already started studying and practicing Theravada. So, you know, the insight meditation folks, Joseph Goldstein and especially Sharon Salzburg. Yeah. So, you know, I was doing Buddhist practice at the time, but I wasn't attached to that, you know, in particular. When you say sound a note, what do you mean specifically by sounding a note? Yeah, well, that's hard to explain.

And so I was using a metaphor. And when you think of the metaphor, it's like, you know, if you literally like sing a note, then these waves go out in all directions, right? And they bounce back as any bat will tell you because that's how they find their way at night. So I was using that as my picture in my mind for what I was doing. I hope that. Oh, it does. I mean, what's fair to me, what's very impressive about this story is that is the confidence you had in doing these sorts of things. I think I have an intuitive, you know, in my sloppy meditation practice from time to time, you get this sense of connectivity with everyone who's meditating at that moment all around the planet, not in some ridiculous like mind blowing way, but just a simple intellectual sort of

realization that there's probably a lot of people meditating right now at this moment. And some of them are probably enlightened. If there's a lot of people on the planet, if they're enlightened, theoretically, I could reach out to them and ask for help. But generally, after that, I'll think, I don't know if you should get stoned and meditate, Duncan. You know, I'll shoot it down. My skeptical mind will shoot that kind of stuff down as a sort of wishful thinking or something. And so it's really beautiful to hear that you had not only experienced or intuited that, but that you are actually experimenting with it in a way that brought results. I mean, when you first met this person, you didn't know this would be your teacher?

Or were you saying that you weren't sure? Or did you ever sense, oh yeah, this is the llama I was calling? No, I didn't have a clue that he was it. I was partaking of the spiritual smorgasbord that we have here in America. And I was living in Boulder, Colorado at the time, so really a great smorgasbord. And then I went to, I found my way to Tibetan Buddhism a little while before that. And so was trying out those practices and finding I was liking them and they were just clicking with me, which is a sign that you're, you know, this is a good path for a person, you know. And so I decided to try doing retreat.

And the American llama who I learned these practices from, I had a little tiny center in the middle of no place outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico. And I was there doing my retreat and just when it was about to end to Cusangak Rinpoche drops in and he's about to do this whole retreat. And empowerment or transmissions on the very practice I was going to be focused on next in the group of practices I was studying. So the fact that I didn't get a clue from just that is, you know, interesting, you know, so you thought I had a clue, but actually not very much. Well, it's almost too much. I mean, that kind of synchronicity is so on the nose. It's outrageous, right? That it that weirdly, it would be easy to miss a thing like that.

I mean, it's because I think maybe our dreams train us to ignore synchronicities or ignore because in a dream, things like that happen a lot, you know, and in the dream state, connections like that happen. So when they happen in real life, it's almost like you go into your dream mind and don't it's invisible or ignorable or something. That's curious. It's really interesting. So that's a very interesting theory. And I almost wonder if it could be, I'm just, you know, brainstorming here. I wonder if it could be the reverse. And, you know, we think of this as real life, you know, which actually is just another longer dream.

Yeah. In a way. Right. And so we get really focused on the surface things. And we don't have any sense of what's underneath, which is why I think, you know, you're a little taken with the fact that I, you know, had confidence. I wasn't even experimenting. I just had confidence that there was this underneath level. Right.

You know, to continue with the waves idea instead of sound waves in the air. Now we can talk about being in this big ocean and I'm a wave and you're a wave and everything and everyone are these manifestations of this ocean that's constantly, you know, in this creative dance and making all of these unique waves. But there is the whole ocean and that's what we're all made of. So it's not even a question of am I connected to this? It's like, what do you think you're made of? You know, so that's how I already conceived of things. And, you know, you asked a question earlier, you know, did I have some kind of epiphany that I had this confidence? Yes.

And the answer is yes. Way back when I was in college, I was visiting my boyfriend and we were both the highs at the time. And he was busy doing homework and I done mine already. And so I was just kind of sitting there with nothing much to do. And so I opened up this behind prayer book. And as I was reading the prayer, my mind, you know, finally shut up the usual litany that it goes, you know, the constant radio that's on. Yes. It just was quiet and I, you know, just immersed in what the prayer was pointing to.

And all of a sudden I just like, it was like I switched channels. You know, it's like it gave me the channel change or something. I was I switched channels and I could feel that whole ocean experience and I could like see these different colored threads weaving reality. And so I realized, oh, you know, this is how it works. This is, you know, a fuller, truer vision of how reality is than my everyday mind. And, you know, I sat there watching it and I could feel this is real, you know, just know sometimes. And I thought, well, should I wait for science to catch up and figure this out? And I'm like, well, you know, I can't expect somebody else to believe it.

But I'm going to believe what I'm experiencing and seeing for myself. So then after, you know, that epiphany sort of quieted down. Oh, and I could see that things weren't really solid, you know, actually experienced that on some level. And so then, you know, after I sort of returned to my more normal vision of things, you know, the normal channel. Yes. And I still carried a little bit of that with me. And I was thinking, okay, so if this is how reality really is, then what could be more important than learning how to live from that place? All right.

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And so that, I think, was what launched me on a spiritual journey and had me, you know, trying to meditate, although it took a while to get instructed. A very long time, actually. So, you know, then fast forward to when I was like, I don't know, 38 years old or whatever I was, 37, and I was sounding that note or making those waves in the ocean, if you will. Forgive me if this is too personal to ask. But because of, I'm guessing that your marriage, obviously, it wasn't something was not working there. And so probably you weren't very happy. You know, it seems like, was that note that you sounded? How much of it was a cry for help?

Actually, I was happy at the time, relatively speaking. We all carry stuff from our childhood and, you know, I certainly had my stuff, including, you know, some pretty serious, ongoing childhood trauma. Right. You know, that kind of thing. And so maybe that, I would think that had something to do with my wanting to, you know, see this deeper level of reality. Right. And more of a driving force. I think we all, you know, have our pain from childhood as a driving force that directs us in one way or another.

And the more we can be conscious of it, I think the better chance we have of actually hitting the target and feeling that satisfaction, you know, where the wires connect. Yeah, sure. Well, yeah, I mean, that, to me, I think in all of the wisdom traditions and in some forms of psychology, even anything that alleges, especially for folks who have childhood trauma, anything that alleges there is some possibility that that is not how you have to feel permanently. That in fact, that isn't normal or that isn't how everyone feels or that whatever, whatever it is, that it could actually end. I think a lot of us, when we initially hear things like that, or think, oh, that's delusional. No, that's, this is impossible. This weight I'm carrying has always been with me. Why wouldn't it always be with me?

And so there is something also incredibly, I think, exciting when the wires do touch, and you get a little glimpse, even if it's a tiny little glimpse that, oh, actually, that's not the case. You don't have to be completely devastated for the entire rest of your life. Yeah, well, so that brings me to something I've always thought of about the way we describe our emotions in English. We say, I am angry. I am depressed. Right? So it becomes like this idea that, you know, it's not only a permanent state, which is ridiculous because emotions are so fleeting, actually. Yes.

You know, we could be devastated about something that just happened and laughing the next, you know, five minutes. Right. Or something and then go back to the devastation and then something else. Yes. And so on. But, you know, the fact that we say I am depressed, that's taking it on as our identity. And so I think then what you're saying, you know, where we believe this is how it always has to be is because we identify with how we are in a moment, whether it's emotions we're feeling or, you know, the collection of memories that makes our personality. And, you know, what we take to ourselves and say, I am this way and that way. And, you know, I'm not this other thing and this other thing, you know, and that changes over time. You know, you've lived long enough to know.

Yes. Your identity isn't quite the same as it was five years ago or 10 years ago. No, not at all. Are you kidding? Oh my God. Thank God. No, I went through goth phases. I used to smoke clothes. I thought crows were cool. I still do. But you know what I mean? Like I went through a lot of embarrassing phases where those big raver pants thought about getting weird tattoos. I look back at all the tattoos I've contemplated. I'm so glad I didn't get any of them. So yes, the, the, the, but in yet, knowing all that somehow, I find myself completely fixating on as I am now. I'm a dad. I'm married. I'm a podcaster. The identity is, it's, it's an incredibly convincing thing. It's, it's, it's, and also seemingly, it's quite painful. Does it always have to be painful? I mean, is that, is the, I guess another way. I'm sorry. Let me rephrase the question. Is the price of the ticket, I'm sorry to use marketplace language, but is the price of this ticket that you have to give up who you are? You have to give up your identity.

You have to kind of like get to the point that most people when their kids get to Santa Claus, except it's not Santa Claus that isn't real. It's you that aren't real. Is that the price of the ticket? If you want this suffering to end that you sort of have to, in a weird way, I don't know how to put it grow up. So this is a really interesting question about ego. And in Tibetan terms, the way they talk about it, if I translate the term exactly for what you're giving up, it's ego clinging. They don't say ego. They say ego clinging. So I'm going to partly wear my psychologist hat here and say that our personalities have all of these different internal organs, like ego and shadow and, you know, our feminine side or masculine side, all kinds of things. And in order for the personality and the ego to be in service of the full greater self, which includes the whole ocean, self with a capital S, if you will. Yes. Okay. In order for that to happen, we have to stop identifying with the ego and saying that's me. Because, for example, you couldn't have reincarnated as a podcaster if you were identified as somebody who isn't a podcaster. If that was really solid in your mind, and I personally think it's the belief that's so solid, right? So that's what we really need to change is the belief.

Right. You know, in the clinging, if we can let go of the clinging to ego, right? Ego clinging. Yes. Loosen our grip and allow the ego to just be an organ that's in service of this greater self. That allows us to step into being a podcaster, or in my case, a writer or a llama. You know, I resisted being called Lama Tomo. I didn't mind the Tomo part, but the llama part, I was like, I'm embarrassed about that. You know, I don't feel like I'm like I've really mastered this stuff enough to be called that. And so I had these debates. Yeah, with Rinpoche about it and he insisted on it. He said, no, no, no, you need to be called Lama Tomo. It's important for them. And I realized, okay, when I go to a doctor, you know, it's good for me to think of them as doctors so and so who's going to treat my whatever, you know, give me a checkup, you know, assign prescriptions to me or something.

You know, I want to have confidence that they're qualified. They've been to med school. They've done their residency and all these things. Yes. Likewise, when somebody knows that I have this title, they have this sense that I went through rigorous training, which I did, you know, with lots of study and a ton of practice. And so really distilling my mind and going through, you know, deep transformative kinds of experiences before this name got attached to me. Right. Yes. Yeah, I totally would be freaked out if I went to a doctor and the doctor was like, you can call me Jason. You know, that would bother me if he was like, if the doctor said, yeah, I don't really feel like a doctor today. I'm not sure I've really earned the title doctor. I would definitely not feel comfortable in that moment. So I think there's a usefulness to some of these titles, particularly in the spiritual world, because it seems it seems it's ridiculously easy for anyone to just assign to themselves purely out of some ego state,

purely out of some power drive, purely out of just wanting to make money, this a title. I mean, I'm sure you run into that all the time. People who claim to be this or that, you know, I get on Instagram, I get messages all the time from people telling me they just got enlightened. You know, it happens all the time inviting me to follow them to Indian stuff. You know, it's like, yeah, I know. And sometimes I'm like, oh my God, did I just pass up the coolest thing ever because I'm skeptical. But I get it. I think that these, these titles are really important. And maybe it's worth before we have some some llama related questions for you. But before we go further into that, I think maybe it's worth people out there who aren't familiar with this style of this form, this lineage of Buddhism to hear some specifics about that what that training looks like. Yeah, cool.

So you have these great questions. So you should be a podcaster. I might try one day. So, let's see, before even kind of getting to the point of three retreat, one needs to have done some shamatha and vipassana. So just, you know, slowing down the mind getting it to be able to settle on something for a little bit. And vipassana, then is being able to see a little bit more of the actual nature of things. So that's kind of the first level of being able to do that. And so there's this interplay between those two. And then there's also the four immeasurables. And what the heck does that mean? So it means four different avenues of feeling your connection with all beings in that, you know, your fellow waves in the ocean. Yes. So the shamatha vipassana help you to be to slow down and get beneath your usual surface vision of things and, you know, see how we're not separate through those four avenues of connection, which are compassion, loving kindness, sympathetic joy and equally feeling

those for all beings, which is why they're immeasurable. Right. So those are all ways of feeling how we're connected. Once you already have a bit of that foundation and nobody's expecting, you know, absolute mastery, but as long as you have that foundation, then you're ready to do something called the preliminary practices. And they're preliminary. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You're, you're saying that before you can start the preliminary practices. Now, loving, you have to have some like experience of loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, and that what just to be clear, I'm like, you know, I'm lucky enough that I as a podcast, I get to chat with people like you, my teacher, David and other people. And sometimes I think, I don't know for sure, but I think you y'all, you all forgive me.

Y'all think you just casually saying loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. It's like talking to a high diver, an Olympic high diver being like, you know, triple backflips. We do a couple of like, you know, you have to be able to jump from hundreds of yards up in the air. And to people like me, this stuff is like some of it, I don't even, sometimes I don't even believe in, but, but my glimpses of these things are so fleeting, so flickering. How much of this are you supposed to be experiencing? And how do you even know that you're actually experiencing it and not just tricking yourself into thinking you're experiencing it? Again, good question. So, going with your analogy, I would say, you only have to be at the level of diving off of a typical diving board into a swimming pool. Okay. In order to start the preliminary practices, and they call those preliminary, not because they're considered kindergarten level, but because before at the beginning of any practice, you do these first because they're a set of five practices that can be done quite quickly in succession that are a microcosm of the entire Vajrayana path.

Oh, okay. Always come before, hence preliminary. Got it. Any practices. So that's what I mean by that. Getting back to the four immeasurables, and it's on my mind lately because I'm about to teach a retreat on the four immeasurables. Yeah. They are these four avenues of feeling our connection with all in a genuine way. And it's based on the fact that we already are connected. Actually, it's just we're so distracted with this surface level of the waves that we, it looks like we're separate. Yet, if we were truly separate, why is it that, you know, when I see you, if you talk about something that's sad, you know, and really like kind of heart-rending, I could have tears in my eyes.

Why is that if we're not connected? Right. Why would you care when you read about something in the news or, you know, you see a, you know, sick, stray puppy, you know, by the road? Why is your heart moved if you're actually, you know, truly separate? You know, I think that these days, thanks to the pandemic, if it's taught us anything, it has to be how connected we are, how, whether you like it or not, you are just so connected. But I think maybe some people, if they, I would say, sadly, it's probably more of a common experience for people to have the opposite style of connection, not loving kindness, but hatred, not compassion but selfishness, not sympathetic joy, but jealousy, not equanimity, but a kind of instability or a reactivity or something like that. You know, I think so, but I don't know if when people are feeling these things, they're necessarily saying, wow, this is a, I'm connected to something, but you are. I mean, to me, understanding this stuff, sadly, is easier if I think about the opposite reality, you know, if I think about the opposites.

I think how many people understand loving kindness? You know, some people do in a fleeting way, but I think most people understand hatred. How many people understand compassion? I don't know. But I think a lot of people naturally understand selfishness. Anyone who's been around a toddler does. I mean, they just, they don't want to share most of the time or, you know, anyone like sympathetic joy. Wow, that is a sounds like incredibly ethereal and esoteric, you know, but jealousy. Oh, yes, I can understand that. But to me, in this conversation, what's enlightening is the realization that that too is a connection. That too is a mode of recognizing your connection to others. It's just a painful mode. Well, it's also a mode that's coming from longtime habit. You know, we're used to, very used to thinking in terms of being separate. And so all of the jealousy and so on are going to issue from this mistake of, you know, thinking, you know, I'm me, ego clinging.

Yes. And so everybody and everything are separate from me. Yes. And once you make that mistake, all the things you just described will issue from that. And so there are strong habits of coming from that mistake and perception. So, you know, without that, we could, you know, easily feel lots and lots of compassion and so on and so forth. But I think we have to build those habits. How can I say this? Learn to loosen our sense of being separate so that it makes way for these natural feelings that come from the natural true state of things to arise. Okay, okay. So to follow the logic here, if this sense of separateness is some kind of fundamental mistake, a very easy mistake to make, but a fundamental mistake that has as a symptom of making this mistake, the instantaneous arising of these unsavory qualities, then.

And so, you know, pathways that turn into highways in your brain and in your mind and so on. You know, you mean like, you know, you get baked in like neurologically. Baked in is the wrong, I would say it's like firmware. Cool, cool, cool. Okay, okay, that's it. Well, that's good to know. We don't need to like get a new chip or something like that. It's firmware. Okay, that's beautiful. Okay, but I have to ask this and it's something that I've brushed against in some of the Buddhist texts that I've read. And it's one of those things you brush up against and maybe skip over because it's so incredibly bizarre. But how literally are we to take the idea that we are not separate, that you are me and I am you?

How literally is, did the Buddha mean this? And how to understand this when you, there you are on my screen and here I am over here and we clearly are separate. How, so, two parts of the question, how literally is this? I mean, it seems almost schizophrenic or, I don't want to say psychotic, but wildly devastatingly counterintuitive if we've been born into a society based on separateness. And two, I forgot the second part. The first one, I can't forget, how literally am I supposed to take this? I'm me, you're you, you're over there, I'm here, my wife is home, my kids are home, there's people driving by. How literally am I to take this?

So from the point of view of one, you know, a wave on the surface, right, if we're from that point of view, and it's, you know, this little tiny point of view, we can't see the whole ocean. And it's easy to then look at the other waves from that level. Yes. And they all look separate. Yes. I mean, literally. Nevertheless, if we think that's the only point of view, that's where we make the mistake. So there's also the whole ocean, and then we would understand that I'm made of ocean, so is that wave I'm seeing at my level, you know, over there with air in between, right.

And so I, you know, it looks just like we're separate. So it's only when we can, you know, go to another viewpoint, literally, that we can see, oh, these are waves and the ocean is making these waves and there's this whole ocean. So that's what happened in my epiphany, that's what happens in really any epiphany in one way or another, right, that's kind of what they're getting at. Yes. And that's the whole thing. And that's hard to do with our physical eyes and, you know, we're identified with this body and, you know, really in it and so there are these deep, strong habits from birth and I would say from before birth, many, many births. They're very ingrained habits, but it's still just firmware. And so we can slowly but surely ease up our grip on that point of view and open up to a much bigger point of view and that's what all of the practices are slowly but surely helping us to do.

We call it practice because you need to do it every day. Right. And, you know, moment by moment 24-7, wearing these grooves in the selfish direction and the ego clinging direction. So it's going to take, even with very skillful practices, it's going to take some hours. Right. And regular time, it's like, you know, to learn a foreign language and, you know, get those grooves going in your brain. You have to do a lot of hours and you have to do some total immersion or you're not going to get fluent. Total immersion, what does that look like?

It's going to Mexico and speaking only Spanish for a while. Oh, wow. But you mean total immersion in the sense of like going to study centers, going to retreat. Oh, I see. That's what retreat is for. And so those 10,000 hours of mastery that they talk about, I have a friend who's a neuroscientist and he said, you can do 10,000 hours of daily meditation and it won't get you to the mastery level. He's measured it in brains, you know. You don't get those changes that are really remarkable unless you've done a bunch of retreat because of the total immersion factor.

That's when you really shift those habits and shift out of the old grooves in the brain and really wear those new grooves into highways. Okay. I see. And that makes sense. I have to. This is the last time we chatted, this question came up and it's related to what we're talking about now. Because I do think anyone who's got any kind of desire to not hurt other people or wanting their own peace or whatever it may be, they hear these things. Anyone, most people I think when they hear loving kindness or compassion or sympathetic joy or equanimity, they think to themselves, of course, yeah, I'd love to be like that.

But I don't feel like that. I'm pissed off. I don't like the way the world is right now. I'm not satisfied with whatever the thing may be. Something's completely, totally off here. Essentially, I'm in a bad mood. So is it better to just fake these things or and maybe take up a practice in the hopes that at some point a stable shift from wave to ocean will happen? Or is that inauthentic?

Does that make you a kind of spiritual phony going around pretending to be full of loving kindness or compassion or sympathetic joy and equanimity? When you really just feel rotten and generally disconnected? I don't think anybody's asking for people to go around being fake. I can speak from my own experience that I was a lot less happy ongoing before I did all these practices, you know, before I spent all this time with these practices than I do now. And my response to challenges from the outside, whether it's something a relative says, you know, that drives me. Yeah. I mean, how do I handle that now compared to how it was before? And my teacher took us on our grimpege talked about this because I said, you know, my mind is still distractible and I've been doing these preliminary practices.

You know, I'm almost finished with them and, you know, I've done some other practices and, you know, my mind is still wanders a lot. And he said, well, I don't feel like I've mastered them. And he said, well, in everyday life, do you notice that you're more motivated by compassion and less clinging to your ego? And I, you know, stopped and, you know, kind of looked back, you know, how was I five years ago? How am I now? You know, like you just did a little minute ago. And I thought, oh my gosh, yeah, I'm definitely, you know, I can think of specific challenges that I'm coming to very differently because of these practices over time. Right.

So I had to stop and, you know, reflect on that. And now, and it's been 20 years later, a huge difference, huge difference in my ongoing life experience of myself, of others, of life, because of having done all these practices. And the more you progress in them, which I still didn't finish about, the stronger the medicine, because one level does prepare you for the next sort of like, you know, learning addition, subtraction, division, and then you go to algebra and then you go to spherical trigonometry. Gotcha. It builds. Yeah. And so I, you know, have done these amazing practices and had amazing experiences and that epiphany I used to have, I wanted to find the channel changer so I could at will change channels.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I got to say, if you do these practices, you know, and really bring yourself fullheartedly to them and take them in, you can do that. Oh, and I want to get back to something else you said about, you know, whenever you're meditating that there's probably somebody else who's really enlightened meditating at that moment. Yes. So Tibetans take advantage of that very principle. And they also don't believe that time is linear. So, I mean, there are enlightened beings, both incarnate and discarnate, who, whose minds we can tune into if we decide, you know, whatever we zero in on, just like I did in sounding the note in the first place, right, whatever you clearly zero in on, you're making connection with.

Wait, just let me clarify. You're saying that it's not just that there is some possibility of connecting to the people enlightened, the enlightened beings who happen to be meditating at that very same moment as you. But in fact, according to the Tibetans, you can connect with people who have yet to be born, people in the past, and I don't know, people in like parallel universes or in other realms. Here's how. I mean, this is the way that makes the most sense to me. You know, if you realize that, you know, the depths of the ocean, what we're talking about there, that makes the waves, that's the source, if you will, source like with a capital S. Yes. And it's aware.

And at that level, it's just one thing before it, you know, divides into the many. It's just one source that's the taproot of all of us and everything. Yes. So that awareness is enlightened. And any master, past, present, or future, anybody who is able to fully open their sense of self to include all and everything, including that one big awareness. That's enlightenment. That's my definition. That's, you know, the definition, you know, in Judaism, in Buddhism, you know, I imagine in all the great spiritual traditions. So here we are then tuning into, you know, as we sit down to meditate, we can really, how can I say this, amp up our meditation or whatever, by tuning into that. One awareness, which is hard to do. And so we try to, you know, think of somebody who we know has achieved that level of awareness. So they've come home, if you will, and that's where they're coming from. So we tune into them.

We, it's hard for us to imagine an archetype as human beings. That's just tough. So that's why we use archetypal images like the Great Mother, you know, and so Catholics imagine, you know, the Madonna, Tibetans imagine Green Tara, Chinese imagine Quan Yin. Really, those are images for this one archetype that's the Great Mother. So if, you know, if you're Christian and you're, you know, trying to pray really well or meditate, you tune into Jesus because that's your image of enlightened mind. Right. Christ consciousness. Of that awareness. Christ consciousness, exactly. And that's this, you know, they're pointing at the same thing, I believe. Wow. So when you begin to meditate to focus in on that consciously and say, okay, you know, I'm, you know, calling on you, I'm tuning into you.

And, you know, I know that you're representing for me enlightened mind. That's really what I'm tuning into is enlightened mind. So Guru Yoga is the practice of projecting your own enlightened mind out there on somebody you associate with enlightened mind. Tuning into their enlightened mind. Right. And then you take that projection back in, in every Tibetan Buddhist meditation, you're doing that projecting and then, you know, bring it back in because we can't recognize it in ourselves. Why? Right. So we, well, because of those habits, you know, we don't see ourselves that way. So we don't see that aspect. But if we project it out, you know, like, so now we're singling it out and we're glomming it on to somebody we do associate with enlightened mind. Ah, you know, then we recognize it. And then we take it back in and we sit there in that state of unity at the end of the meditation practice, whatever practice it is. Wow.

That's amazing. Yeah, that I, it's so interesting, the doubting mind, how powerful that can be. It's how, you know, I think people who are beginning a practice, I always say people when I my experience in this regard has been I'll catch these just what you're talking about. And usually, well, in the beginning, when I when that started happening, I would be so startled by it that I would disconnect immediately because it would just be like this can't be this isn't real. What was that? And then the rest of the meditation might be an attempt to recreate that moment by will or something like that, which doesn't has never worked for me. I don't know if you've ever flown in a dream before, but my experience with flying in dreams is weirdly the more you try to fly, the more you go down. And the less you try to fly, the more you go up. And it's something like that in meditating. And the more that I attempt to do these spectacular things that you're talking about, the less it happens. But the moment I'm not trying anymore, it's almost an instantaneous connection. So it's very paradoxical in that it does seem to go against as the everything you're taught as a wave is a wave you're taught exertion. Is it you're taught this kind of, you know, brute force methodology or whereas this thing, it seems like it's almost, is it the is it the opposite? Is it the literal opposite of, I guess, I'm sorry, I'm just sort of connecting the dots.

Can we just start doing the opposite of what the wave wants to do. And then in that is that its own practice in that can we achieve connection with Buddha mind Christ consciousness green tar or any of the other symbols that represent this sort of consciousness we're talking about. Well, now I have to talk about the two truths of Buddhism. So one truth is relative truth, which is the truth from the point of view of the wave. Right. And so all the principles that normally apply, like, we can't fly, for example, absolutely, all these other things, they apply. But then there's absolute truth. And so that's more the point of view of the depths of the ocean and, you know, one great awareness. So as incarnate beings who are not fully enlightened, we can't let go of either of those truths, the relative truth, you know, where I'm over here relative to you. For example, my point of view looks like this and your point of view looks like that. Yes, that's relative truth, as opposed to absolute truth, where it's, you know, just one thing. So if we let go of absolute truth, then we're stuck in relative truth and you've described beautifully how, you know, that kind of feels like shit on go. But if we because it's not true. And so we're going to act from this untruth and act like jerks.

Right. But from absolute truth, there's no such thing as, you know, karma doesn't mean anything anymore, etc, etc. And, you know, there's no such thing as gravity and so on and so forth. But we can't fake that we're still, you know, pretty locked into this point of view. So we have to live by both truths and not go jumping out of windows, you know, because of gravity. And, you know, so on and so forth. So we have to somehow hold relative truth and absolute truth, which seem like opposites. But they aren't exactly we need to sort of step back and have this what physics called calls a superposition from which we can hold all of it. Okay. Okay, right. I know what you mean by superposition. And I have entertained the idea that that's what Buddha figured out is just a methodology for human consciousness to go into a superposition or something like that. Absolutely. Whoa, that's really interesting. But before we get into the that the superposition stuff, which I love, by the way, I'm not trying to be a bummer or a buzzkill here. But it's not often you get a chance to chat with a llama, who is also someone trained in Western psychology. And so to get back to the relative reality, the wave, the neurosis, the shadow, the all of that stuff.

Now that you've experienced like intense training in Vajrayana have become a llama, and you've also experienced intense training in Western psychology. Do you think that we can just disregard the therapeutic approach that this this other approach is somehow more valid or I ask this only because you know, Ram Dass, his teaching to me, he told me to get therapy, and I didn't listen to him for the longest time. Because it was such a disappointing thing to hear from a great spiritual teacher like that, you know, you want to monitor or something, not don't tell me to go please, it's not therapy. But now that I've been in therapy finally listening to him and working with my own stuff. I have really experienced a quantifiable positive change in my own life and the way I interact with other people that wasn't necessarily happening from my meditation and from my spiritual practice. Now, that being said, my spiritual practice has never been anything more than wobbly or anything like that. But I find myself wondering sometimes if sometimes we put the cart before the horse, so to speak, and go down these spiritual paths without dealing with like the, I don't know, the upper crest of the wave. You know, the, the, the constricted mind stuff that seems to be amazingly articulated and identified in Western psychology, whereas in, in, you know, some of the mystery or Easter, or I'm sorry, wisdom traditions, it feels like they do identify the same things, but in a more in such a simple way or something,

whereas, you know, look at the DSMR or whatever for, I don't know how many there are now, look at all the, there's so many forms of neurosis. And so, you know, is it pot, which is, I'm not asking you to tell me one's better than the other or anything like that, but it's part of our own personal training. For some people, does it make sense that even before starting a practice, we should just go to a therapist? Yeah, so that's a really important question that, of course, because I've had training in both, I've really, and I've experienced both, you know, I've been a beneficiary of both, I've really thought about. And I had dinner with Ram Dass once, and when, while I was busy cooking, he was saying, you know, in all of my experiences in psychology and, you know, deep spiritual practice and study, I have not actually completely erased one single neurosis. Wow. The relationship with these neuroses is completely different. And so my experience is completely different. Right.

He said, it used to be that these neuroses were like these big monsters that would be, you know, somewhere looming behind and then they would just pounce on me and I would be taken over by them. Yes. And I would act and feel from those. And he said, what's happened now after all I've been through, and he included psychology as well as the spiritual practices. He said, now, you know, this familiar neurosis will sort of walk by and, you know, I'll go, oh, hey, how are you doing? It's like this little shmoo, he said, you know, hey, what are you doing? What's going on? You know, oh, bye, you know, that's it. They just make an appearance on the screen. So his relationship with them is completely different. And therefore his experience and how he behaves are completely different. Here's a metaphor that I've come up with, you know, so. Right.

There's Ram Dass and then there's me. So mine is that. Right now you seem like the same person. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to put that on you or anything like that. But I mean that. And the pot, I mean, you remind me of him right now. Oh, well, gosh, I'm really honored because I, you know, think so much of him. Anyway, so my experience of it is that it's like we're stuck in a dark attic and we're and it's all piled up with furniture everywhere and stuff. We're constantly crashing into the furniture as we walk around. And so, you know, cracking our knee on this, you know, table or chair and, you know, then we're cracking our elbow on a lamp or whatever. And we can't see in the dark. So Western psychology gives you a headlamp. And so now you have this focus beam and you, you know, can focus it here and there on pieces of your unconscious and pieces of your mind.

And you can say, Oh, there's a lamp. I'm going to, you know, kind of work my way around it. And actually, I can not only work my way around it. I can begin to arrange the furniture so it's not just all piled up and right here in there everywhere randomly. And now I can arrange all this furniture nicely. But once we've arranged the furniture enough, and you know, we aren't crashing into it so much. My experience of spiritual, you know, training is it shows you the doorway out. So you weren't stuck in the attic at all. You can actually, yeah, step out. Thank you, Shutter for supporting this episode of the DTFH. Not only is Shutter my go to horror streaming service. I happen to be very good friends with Rob Schraub, who has directed two incredible episodes on their incredible series creep show. I'm a horror movie nerd. I love creep show. When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to go see it. But my mom bought me the comic book, which actually was a million times creepier than the movie. Regardless, I have a sentimental connection with it. And so when I saw the creep show series coming out, I felt a great deal of nervousness hoping they hadn't destroyed this classic title and they didn't.

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Shutter.com code Duncan. One day I will make a movie for Shutter. I know I will. All right. Wow. Wow. Yes. Yeah, that okay. I love that. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. And I think it's what you just described does kind of present a step. It's not like, you know, I think the question was a little dumb because it's like, obviously you can go to therapy and meditate. It's not, one doesn't preclude the other necessarily. It's just... Yeah, but you're really asking what are their relationship to each other? How can we use these different tools the most skillfully and to the most benefit? So, you know, I think it's an important question. I took it, you know, that that's what you really were getting at. Thank you. To go back a few steps, you know, in your casual, the way you casually told us that we can, through the meditative state, enter into a kind of superposition where we can either merge or make contact with enlightened beings existing in all periods of space and time. I wouldn't be surprised if a few people listening who might not be so familiar with Buddhism were like, what? How come they don't lead with that in Buddhism? Like, in Buddhism, it can seem so austere or simple. There isn't this initial like, just so you know, you're living in this very, very vast, potentially immeasurable, very alive place where you're in just one realm. So to me, it makes me think, is that a secret that you just said, like a kind of secret? It's not a secret, obviously, because you said it. But I mean, are there secrets in Buddhism?

In the sense that there is a progression, there are levels that you're like, you're saying, you know, you start with arithmetic, then you're going to get into algebra, then at some point, God forbid, you have to study statistics or something. Calculus, you know, but so it's not like calculus is a secret, but there's no way you're going to be able to do calculus if you don't know how to add. In Buddhism, specifically Vajrayana Buddhism, would you say that there are secrets or levels of this system that aren't really put out in front, because they would be incredibly confusing, potentially, I don't know how to put it, damaging or potentially, yeah, damaging to folks who are initially hurt them. Actually, there are. The very word in Tibetan for Tantra is secret mantra. I mean, if you translate it literally song knock, which you notice was Rinpoche's part of Rinpoche's name to who sang Rinpoche. So yes. Can you tell us the secrets? Of course not. So here's why a couple of reasons. One is that would be a, you know, a spoiler, right? And, you know, you don't want to divulge the spoiler, because if the student has prepared their mind with these different levels, and then they get to the point of the next initiation into the next level. But they already heard the words before and they made something up around it because they didn't have all the experience they needed.

That is going to be misleading. And also, you know, sort of spoils the moment when it would be imparted. So there's two reasons not to do it. First of all, it'll be misleading and you'll then think you understand and that's in the way of your just receiving the actual transmission. So it's also, you know, then going to be, you're going to be off track. You're going to have something in the way to undo before you can do, you know. Right. So, yeah, those are reasons why you don't want to spoil that and talk about that stuff before somebody's, you know, readied themselves to where, you know, you say that and they just go clunk. Ah, I get it. Gotcha. But you know, it's like chiropractic adjustments or something like you're not ready to have that kind of adjustment until you're loosened up here and then that thing. Right.

So it's, um, well, that seems to Well, here's more of that analogy that right there is that you're instead your back will resist and it'll the muscles actually tighten up in response to the cracking. Right. Um, and, you know, that's kind of what's happening is your mind will grasp onto the, the concepts in the words rather than the, you know, the deep realization that's being conveyed as the master, you know, says the words. Cool. Yeah, that's not the important thing. But okay, so can you help people understand why they're like when you're looking at Tibetan Buddhism and folks who are hearing this now who maybe aren't familiar with it, but are more familiar with Zen, you know, or, or, um, you know, Tich Nad Han just passed and which is a very sad thing. And a lot of people have been transformed by his writings and teachings.

Uh, but are they, are there secrets in Zen? Are there secrets in Tara Vada? Are there secrets in the other lineages of Buddhism? And again, I think people understand when I'm saying secret, I don't mean like secret secret. I think you just described it perfectly. But does this sort of systematic holding back of something? Yes. And then the systematic revelation of that to the student.

Does this exist in all forms of Buddhism or is it specific to Vajrayana? Well, I didn't get far enough in Tara Vada to say from my own experience and I didn't study it so much. Um, I did, uh, get, I guess far enough in Zen and I have dear friends who are Zen practitioners that I get the sense that there's some of that that's held back until it's time for that student. You know, they're, they are prepared and ready and, you know, we'll receive it in a particular way. Um, but I can't say for sure. So my deep experience is with Tibetan Buddhism and I know that, you know, for sure that that's the case. Maybe the equivalent in Zen is the koan or something like that. Or the,

Maybe, you know, I, yeah, I do have some sense of koan practice and, you know, that is a sense that I have. But again, I just don't know enough about Zen because I didn't get to those levels there with Zen. This is just, and I forgive me. I, I'm sorry if that's just a weird question or anything like that. But to me, that is why I love this form of Buddhism is because it is so spectacularly strange and so it's so spectacularly cosmic. And, um, and most importantly, my own working with it. I have in some way, shape, or form experienced in a mild way, some remission of the. Those traits that I have that go completely against.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So getting a little less cosmic, strangely enough, I want to go back to the immeasurables, the four immeasurables, which sound cosmic and, you know, they're based in a cosmic view, but can be quite. You know, they are foundational because they're accessible to all of us. Yes. Again, you know, we've all felt compassion. We've all felt loving kindness.

And what I mean by sympathetic joy, we've also all felt so, you know, when your wife just had something wonderful happen and she tells you about it and she's all excited. You get all excited. Yes. You can help the smile. Right. That's sympathetic joy. Yeah. Okay.

I got it. Sure. Okay. So we have our underlying connection and we can take that, you know, wherever we are with that, you know, that basic capacity that we already have and expand that capacity and we can make it immeasurable eventually. So, and we do the practice in an immeasurable way to try and sort of lead our minds out of their usual limited view. And we can use any of these four immeasurables. These are four avenues of feeling that connectedness. And it feels wonderful.

And so the good news is, you know, you're already happy just practicing it. Also, I find helps me when I'm in pain, for example, to do the compassion one while, you know, using my own pain as the theme, I start with compassion for myself that you'd start with yourself with all of them. Because, first of all, I think we Westerners especially need that. Right. Very good at compassion for ourselves or loving kindness for ourselves and so on, even sympathetic joy. And so that's not equanimity. So I just named all four. So we start with ourselves and practice that for a while and get established in that because that's going to be the foundation from which we can step it out.

When you say practice it, what do you, what do you mean? Like how specifically do I practice any of these? Yeah, so with compassion, for example, I mean, it's the practice of Don Lynn sending and receiving. And I mean, I could teach it right now, but please do you have time? Well, we can try just to describe it very simply. And, you know, again, I'll be teaching this in not this coming weekend, but the next weekend. Is this an online course or in person? Yeah, via Zoom.

Oh, cool. Oh, great. Yeah. Yeah. So anybody can take it. It's a weekend retreat. That's so wonderful. Where can people, where can people do that just since we're talking about it?

Yeah. So it's at nomchok.org. So N is in Nancy. A, M is in Mary. C, H, A, K, nomchok.org. Okay. Great. I'll be at DuncanTrussell.com if you can't remember that, nonchok.org.

Maybe a little easier. Okay. Okay. Okay. I mean, I'm sorry if my, if I'm asking for something that takes longer than the amount of time we have here to describe Tong Lynn, maybe before that, can I just say, what's the difference between having compassion for yourself and feeling sorry for yourself? And is there one?

Well, we'll get to that because there's this whole understanding of the near enemies and enemies of each of those four. So let me just start by, I mean, yeah, describing a little bit how we work with compassion. So let's say I'm just going to, you know, pick, I don't know, feeling misunderstood. Let's say, you know, today I had an interaction with somebody where obviously they were projecting on me and not really seeing me. And it was really painful. So I'm, I'm sitting there, you know, trying to do my meditation and rather than ignoring

that painful experience, I can actually use it and I can start with compassion for myself, for the painful experience, you know, I'm feeling pain. So the, what compassion is, is feeling with compassion, somebody who's suffering and you naturally want to take away that suffering and replace it with happiness. Sure. So that's what we do in this practice. And we use visualization because, you know, we always have mental conversations with people, right?

We do that all the time. Absolutely. So we take that human habit and tendency and replace it, you know, or how can I say this, do this practice that's going to be a little more productive and beneficial and you're going to feel a lot better. Right. So you're going to start with yourself and then step it out. And when, you know, in all the stepping out parts of, you know, sort of the concentric

circles that go out, it's easier to describe those. So let's say you imagine now somebody else who's been misunderstood and we can all think of just about anybody. Sure. This experience being misunderstood. We don't want them to suffer. We start with, you know, people we care about who we naturally are going to feel compassion is easy for us.

Yes. We've primed the pump and we're going to step it out slowly to people we easily feel that for and love and so on. And then we'll step it out to people we don't really think much about. We're kind of indifferent toward. Okay. And now we're kind of on this tide of, you know, feeling compassion. So it's easier to feel compassion.

Well, they don't want to suffer either. Right. And we don't want them to suffer being misunderstood and we can start to think of whole categories of people who have obviously been misunderstood because of the color of their skin, for example, or their gender or all kinds of reasons. And so, you know, we step it out to them. What does compassion feel like? You know what it feels like.

But is it, is it, these are four immeasurables, not four undescribables how sometimes when I'm wondering, you know, I'm so neurotic. And so sometimes when I'm experiencing anything remotely good, seemingly good or like compassion, whatever, I'll get stuck in my head thinking, is that even compassion? How do you know that's compassion? So I'm just curious if there is a definition of the feeling or a visual way to, you know, what you could say, you know, in in Tonglen, what I do understand is the description of poison, thick, sludgy, smoky, dark, hot.

Yeah. Okay. But compassion, if you had to describe it, what does it feel like? So I think maybe already the problem is you might be in your head too much because it's an experience and a feeling direct. And the thinking about almost separates you from the natural feeling. So if you just stop and think about the students of Thich Nhat Hanh right now, the close in students who have, you know, so deeply connected with him and relied on him for inspiration

and so on. And imagine how they feel right now. How do you feel? I know, I know, that's how we felt. No words, no words. Just stop and feel that. Of course. Yeah.

So you're feeling along with them. And the natural response is, wow, I wish I could take that pain away from them and replace it with happiness. And so we get to do that in the practice of Tonglen by breathing in that, you know, thick, dark, you know, all the things you've described of their suffering. We breathe that in to the doorway of our hearts and our hearts are connected to that whole great ocean of being. That's where we feel the compassion, right?

Yes. So that's where we know our ocean-ness. And so we're connected to the ocean through our hearts. So through that open doorway of our hearts, we breathe in the compassion. It goes into the whole ocean. We don't keep it. We don't have it stick to us. It just goes through us to the ocean and from the ocean is vast.

You know, how can I say? You know, never ending joy. There's no, you know, it's bottomless, right? Wow. And so we breathe that out in the form of these spacious, billowing, bright clouds. And we see those soaking into those students, for example. Wow. And, you know, then, you know, they're soaking that in and their pained faces in our minds

turn to smiles and they're kind of glowing. So that's the practice of Dong Lin. And we step that out and out and out until it's all in everyone we're breathing for. Why is it so sad? Why is it so sad? What is this? You know, is it always, is compassion always, does it always have this quality of sadness to it?

Does it always have this very sweet yet sad sort of aspect to it? Well, it has that aspect. But in Dong Lin, we don't leave it there because after, you know, breathing in and through us, the sadness, we then are a conduit of joy, vast, complete, you know, utter joy. And we breathe that into them so that there's this satisfying conclusion, if you will. You know, we make up these dramas in our minds all the time. And now we're making, we're living out a very specific drama that's actually much more wholesome and bringing us, you know, toward an enlightened mind and enlightened state of mind rather than

our usual, you know, mind movies that are taking us away from it. So that's the brilliance of Vajrayana practices is they're based on our human tendencies and habits and just shifting them a little bit. So now with that turn of the kaleidoscope, we're now bringing ourselves closer to the true way of seeing things and experiencing rather than farther away. Yeah. So I think there's so many interesting things about that experience of compassion. One of them being, it doesn't, though I, I does, for me, at least it shows up exactly in my heart.

And for, but when it does show up and when I have this, I think the stability to experience it for longer periods of time, it doesn't seem like it's me. That's the odd thing about it. It doesn't seem like it's in me or in anything. Or it's got this very, I'm not saying it's not real, but it has this quality of like, where are you wonder? Where are you? Where is this? You're unfamiliar with that aspect of yourself, I would say.

And your definition of self has been, you know, tip of the wave. Yeah. Rather than your whole self. And so this is introducing and eventually, you know, having you get used to this other aspect and getting stronger and stronger and almost living then more and more, well, yeah, living more and more from that aspect. So the word in Tibetan, Gom, is the word, you know, that they use for practice. Yes. And it literally means getting used to.

Wow. He meanings of it. Yeah. Wow. That's so wild. I thought it meant self-knowing. I didn't know it was getting used to. It's like, this is the practice of getting used to your heart, getting used to this ocean, getting used to that.

Because it's not like it's easy to get used to that if you've been living up in the crest of the wave all the time. It's not like it's some, it's weirdly undesirable from the crest of the wave's perspective. So unfamiliar. You know, it's like, what is this? Just like you said, you know, it's, we haven't been there before, but more and more than we live from that. And then it's like, oh, yeah, here we are again. And it feels more and more like home. So I want to come back to something you quickly talked about when I first mentioned the four

measureables, you were like, well, how do we know we're not fooling ourselves? And you can fool yourself because, for example, with compassion, you can go into the near enemy, they call it, which is pity. And that is not the same thing. So remember, I said the point of the practices is to feel your connection, deep heartfelt connection with everybody. Yeah, he does not do that. In fact, it does more separation. Wow.

So yeah, good to check yourself and make sure, oh, I hope I'm not pitying somebody. And we can feel it on the receiving end. We can feel when somebody is genuinely compassionate and when we're in pain or when they're doing pity. And then it's like, you know, the worst. Yeah. So, you know, just to name. So for example, with loving kindness, the near enemy would be sentimentality. Oh, yes.

Yes. Wow. That's so cool. Yeah. And another one I noticed with a boyfriend once was clinginess. You know, he said, I love you so much. And it was actually just, he was using me as his teddy bear. Yeah.

It didn't feel like actual love. Yeah. And so jealousy came out of that and clinginess, you know, all that stuff. So that was a near enemy and he couldn't distinguish the difference that I sure could on the receiving end. Yeah, you know it. You know, absolutely. So for sympathetic joy, it can be hypocrisy where somebody feels like they should, you know, sharing your joy, but actually the far enemy is jealousy and you actually even mentioned it. Yes.

You know, if somebody has something wonderful happen and we feel jealous, that's because we're coming from ego to clinging. Right. And if we're coming from the more full heartfelt self with a big S, then we naturally feel happy with them. But if we aren't feeling much of that, then we might just sort of fake it and say, oh, yeah, that's wonderful. You know, Wait, that's what you're saying? That's hypocrisy? What is that?

Yeah, if we're, we're faking it. It's fine. Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah, hypocrisy. So those are, you know, some of, and then obviously with equanimity, the far enemy, the opposite is preference. You know, Oh, right.

Yeah. But here's the near enemy that people get fooled by quite a bit. We can feel like, oh, yes, I'm equally feeling, you know, love for all beings when actually it's indifference. We actually, Yeah, right. Oh my God. Anything. We're equally.

Numb. Yeah. Indifference. Numb. You're just numbed down. Completely numb. Dangerous. That's what, it's got to be one of the most dangerous of all the near enemies is indifference.

That's the spawn of every rotten thing that happens on the planet is like the other stuff. But indifference is dangerous. That's, It really is. Well, and I knew a guy who was a, you know, very advanced Zen practitioner and he had fallen into that. And as a result, he did some stuff that was really not cool. And it was because he mistook indifference for equanimity. Wow.

Wow. That's so, I love that. I love that it's detailing these modes of tricking yourself into thinking you're any of these things are happening. But what do you? Okay. So let's say I identify that I am indifferent. Let's say that I, or I identify, oh, no, I am jealous or identify that like, no, I'm legitimately feeling sorry for this person. It's not like I'm, you know, asking to feel sorry, pity for someone or asking to feel indifferent or trying to be that way.

But let's say you identify that this is happening. What is, is there some antidote? Should you realize that you have been living in a, in a completely indifferent way for a long time? Well, the first thing is recognizing the problem, right? That's huge because they're near enemies and it's, you can be fooled. You know, you can honestly think I'm practicing compassion when actually it's pity. So having that realization is the first big step. Then, you know, I find these practices, because you start, you know, from a genuine place, you know, where it's easier to feel that and you prime the pump, then you have more hope of stepping out those genuine feelings of compassion.

And you just, you know, keep watching yourself and seeing, oh, you know what? I need to apply these myself to these practices better and aim better and, you know, really open my heart and be coming from my heart. And, you know, if you're practicing with theme for the day, that's something you yourself are feeling pain about, and you start from there, you know, and a genuine feel of feeling of compassion for yourself. That's why I think it's going to more surely step out, you know, from yourself to those who might meet my people to my, you know, neighbors, you know, to categories of people, et cetera, et cetera, and it can move out in a genuine way. Ultimately, if we're all the ocean, is there really even any difference in these categories or are these categories an afterthought? Well, they're a practice, you know, so they're used as four different entry points, getting at the same thing. We're trying to get at this feeling, the whole ocean and the fellow waveness connection to all of our waves on the ocean. So that's why it's a Buddhist practice.

It really across all of Buddhism is so that Brahma Vihara is what they call immeasurable in Theravada. You know, it's across all of Buddhism because it's just a great, you know, collection of four sort of entry points at this avenues for practice. And by the way, you know, if you find yourself slipping into pity or hypocrisy or sentimentality or whatever, you know, if you beat yourself up, that's not practicing compassion or any of the goals, because your ascension being too. You just start over. I mean, just like you do when your mind is distracted in meditation, when you're doing shamatha, and you go, I caught myself. Hey, you know, that's something to celebrate. I was aware enough to catch myself. Now I just bring myself back.

And you just keep bringing yourself back. And that's what the practice is for. These four immeasurables. Where do they come from? The Buddha is the original source. Well, but he was reporting in or sort of articulating this, this, I don't know, these forms or these entry points. Where do the entry points come from? Yeah, so I would say it's that, you know, great awareness, you know, that is the whole self with the capital S, you know, it is the whole ocean.

You know, that kind of thing. So the in Tibet and it's Gongba, which is enlightened intent and enlightened mind, you know, and from that can issue all of these different, you know, just, you know, thousands and thousands of practices that have happened over the millennia and insights and, you know, sutras and tantras and, you know, all of those things. They're issuing from that. And when you say issuing and maybe I'm sorry, I love chatting with you. Do you have a second longer? I know I've kept you now. Okay. Yeah.

When you say issuing, it feels like you mean this isn't, it's not like this is something dead or like, in other words, like, if you're reading this, the scriptures, you know, you're reading something on paper, but you almost, you don't need to read those. In the sense that you could just as easily tune in to a sort of eternal reverberation that when it makes contact with the human mind, it looks like these scriptures. Yeah, that's a great description. Yeah, yeah. And it's going to look different in different ages coming through different conduits. Wow. You know, different masters. Yeah.

Or profits or whatever we're going to call them over the ages. Thank you so much for giving me so much of your time and for teaching me today about the four measurables. I really appreciate it. It's been quite enlightening and thank you. Can you please remind us about not just the upcoming retreat that you have, but other ways that people can connect with you? Well, yeah. Actually, I'm just thinking, so we're about to print up a book on the four measurables that I wrote. And it's called Deepening.

How did I finally decide on the title? Deepening fashion. Gosh, I'm blanking on it right now. I can't remember the names of books either. It's something very liberating knowing that you can't remember the name of a book you're writing because I just remember the authors. I never remember the names. Well, so what I did was I just, I always say book one, two, three, because it's a series. So it's book three in the series and the series is Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times.

So this is book three and it is on the four measurables and it's also including a section on forgiveness because how can we really have immeasurable equanimity and compassion and so on for everybody except so-and-so who did me wrong, right? So we, you know, we want to take a look at that and so I do because we've all got that stuff. And by the way, it gets in the way of good shamata as well. Anyway, so that's one thing people can do is to buy the or right now it's pre-purchase the book, which will come out this fall. Okay. And then there's also, if you don't want to wait, there's this retreat and I will read excerpts of that book in the retreat, but also teach the practices and we'll do a bit of each of the four measurables over the course of the weekend. And there are e-courses. We have online courses that are free. So again, nonchalk.org, you can, you know, just noodle around on the site and find your way to the practice section and the, you know, learning and so on.

And, you know, just start up if you haven't started a meditation practice before. You can do that. We also have online classes that are, you know, very, very affordable and are based on the book and the e-courses. And it's fun to learn together. So, and you, you tend to show up for a class, right? So it's just a good discipline. So do you think online retreats count as immersive retreats? It's not as good as, you know, full on in-person retreats, I think, because there's also the spirit of togetherness and so on. And it does feel more like you're fully immersed.

And, you know, we can tend to kind of sneak off and make tea and stuff like that, you know. Yeah. Or, you know, sneak in emails and I don't know this kind of thing. I did, you know, real strict retreat where I wasn't looking at my emails. Right. You know, I wasn't just calling right and left and all this kind of thing. I just stopped all that, made a full container, you know, because then it was very rich what happened inside the container. So the more you do that for yourself, the better.

But yeah, a zoom retreat still is immersive because you do, you know, these sessions all through the day. Right. So it's pretty. Look, we'll take what we can get right now. I mean, it's like, it's not like it's the best time to go traveling around the planet to monasteries or temples. So this is great. And I hope lots of you will take this course. All the links you need to find it are going to be at dunkitrustle.com along with Lamasimo's books.

And thank you, Lamas, so much for this. Hari Krishna, thank you so much. Thank you. And thank you for the service you provide to the world because a lot of people, I'm sure, get informed and inspired by this podcast that you offer. So thank you. And thanks for having me. My pleasure. Thank you.

That was Lamasimo. Everybody, all the links you need to find her will be at dunkitrustle.com. A tremendous thank you to our sponsors. And much thanks to you for listening. We'll be back at the end of the week with an awesome conversation with Marcus Henderson, my friend, and a brilliant actor. Until then, Hari Krishna. Step with brands like Liz Claiborne, Worthington, Stafford, and Jay Farrar. Oh, and thereabouts for kids.

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