Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 64: Shinzen Young, Meditation Teacher

Episode Date: March 1, 2017

Shinzen Young first became fascinated with Asian culture as a Jewish teenager growing up in Los Angeles in the 1950s. Now a renowned meditation teacher, Shinzen is deeply involved in scientific research into what meditation does for the brain and has a new book out called "The Science of Enlightenment." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad. Where did memes come from. And where's Tom from my space? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. We're going to treat for you this week. This guy is one of the most interesting and idiosyncratic meditation teachers. I am aware of these Jewish guy grew up in LA who then lived for several years as a monk in Japan and is now deeply involved with scientific research into what meditation does to your brain.

He's worked with researchers at Harvard and lots of other institutions. His name is Shin Zen Young and he's got a new book called The Science of Enlightenment. And here we go. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. So I always start the same way, which is can you just tell me your story, how did you get

into meditation in the first place? Well, I grew up in Los Angeles, And when I was in my early teens, I got fascinated with Asian culture by seeing samurai movies. Now, I'm pretty old, 72 years old. You do not look 72. Thank you. I feel very young.

But I do come from another world, really. I grew up in Los Angeles in the 1950s. Eisenhower was the president. And no one in the mainstream culture was interested in Asia. It was not cool. Well, because we had just gone to war with Japan. I mean, I was born while my dad was off fighting Japan in the Pacific. Irony of history, I find, that it turned out to be the Japanese that saved my soul. And sort of conservative Japanese at that, you know, because in Asia Buddhism is sort of part of the conservative establishment. Here it might be part of the more liberal wing, but there it's quite a different thing.

So it was really all-line Japanese people that ended up making me who I am. It makes me think about just history and how things work out, but anyway, I can assure you that in the 1950s, the notion that something from Asia would be relevant and important for mainstream North American culture was completely inconceivable. So I've lived to see this incredible transition in my lifetime, that I never thought when I was a kid would happen. So I was a kid.

I saw samurai movies. No one knew about martial arts. No one knew about sushi or karaokai or any of the other gazillion things that have now influenced North American culture. But I was interested. I found out that they have ethnic Japanese school in Los Angeles. It's parallel to American public school. And just like Jewish kids go to Hebrew school, Japanese American kids, their parents make

them go to Japanese school. So I decided I was going to go to Japanese school. After your regular school. After my regular school. And yes, indeed, in addition to my Hebrew school. So I was lucky. I had a very, very enriched environment as a teenager, thanks to my parents that encouraged that.

So when I graduated from Venice High, I was a nerdy nobody. But that same week, I graduated from Sautel Japanese Language Institute, and I was the class valedictorian because it was very rare for a Caucasian person to know any Japanese, and I was essentially native by that time. So I'd grown up bilingual and bicultural in Los Angeles, not led to my going to Japan, and then in Japan I encountered real-life Buddhist monks, and they seemed to have a secret. They sort of knew something. And they wouldn't, I just got this vibe, they're not going to force this on me, but there's this hand outstretched that if I was interested,

they knew something about happiness that most people don't know. And so I thought, okay, maybe there's something to this. So when I graduated from college, I was gonna go into graduate school and I decided to do Buddhism at the University of Wisconsin. Now we're in the 60s, the Vietnam War is raging, and there's money to study Buddhism from all things, the Department of Defense, because it was

relevant to our interest in Southeast Asia. Buddhist monks were a political force. Yeah, they were letting themselves on fire. Yeah, lots of things were happening. So I got a three-year grant to do graduate school with an academic specialty in Buddhism leading to a PhD. And then in order to get that PhD, though, I had to go back to Japan and live in a Buddhist monastery. And I was going to spend a year, research, come back and become an academic scholar of Buddhism.

But instead I spent three years got involved in meditation practice. Realized I'd never understand this subject unless I had an experiential knowledge to believe of absence from my department. Never went back to Buddhist academic studies, but got interested in, is it possible to combine what I consider the best of the East, which is the technology of meditation with the best of the West, which is the scientific

west, which is the scientific perspective, I got the idea, wow, I've sort of lived my fantasy. I've reached the pinnacle of the mountain that is Asia, and I have found on the top of this mountain this thing that is universal for the whole world, the thing they did better than anyone, which was systematic cultivation and exploration of sensory experience, leading to spiritual experience. Now I ask myself, do I see a comparable peak, something equally universal, equally powerful and impressive to this, and I looked at the peak of Western civilization and saw science, logic and evidence and experience,

and experimentally based method using modeling from mathematics. Oh my god, what this has done. So a natural question is, well, what if we can mate these two worlds, is there a basis for that? And it occurred to me that there would be a natural basis, and I decided to devote my life to that. And that was in the early 1970s, and here we are. So there are many things I want to follow up on from that nice little summary. But let me get back into your personal chronology a little earlier because you went to Japan and you really threw yourself into learning Buddhism, not from a textbook standpoint but from

an experiential standpoint. And you did some pretty crazy stuff including this 100 days of solitude where you had to bathe yourself in ice water and talk to me about why you did that and what you actually did. Well, of course we'd love to tell these war stories, you know, about the intensities of practice that we've experienced and so forth. But I think it's also important for your listeners to know that you don't necessarily have to do industrial strength, a sedical practices or very, very intense practices in order to get a deep experience with your meditation. However, exposing yourself to those things can push the envelope because you're in a situation where you have a lot of forces that are supporting you. And now you're going through a certain intensity and you bring concentration, sensory clarity,

equanimity, mindfulness properties to that intense, challenging experience. And as the result of that, insight and transformation occurs. So it's a way of pushing the envelope. But it's important to realize that for the average person, life is going to present those challenges. Hard ships.

Yeah, stuff's going to happen. You're going to get sick. You're going to be injured. There's going to be emotional things in your life, behavioral things in your life, where you're facing really intense challenges. So if you can remember to do practice in those circumstances or if you have someone that will support you in doing that, then you'll get comparable results. But what some

people do is they don't wait for life to do it. They say, OK, I'm just going to take it on. And do the work now so that when the stuff happens in life I'll be vaccinated against future suffering. So that's the way you can look at it. It sounds intense, but relative to the kind of stuff that almost everyone will eventually have to face. It's actually not that intense. It's like getting a vaccination. It's a manageable dose of real challenge that's going to change the fabric of your consciousness so that when the really big stuff happens in daily life,

you'll be able to escape into it if you can't escape from it. So, I would just want to say, you know, before I go into saying, oh, well, they do this and they do that. And whatever it is, people think, oh, if that's what you have to do to get enlightenment, then I think I'll wait for another lifetime. So, it's not that way. Sooner or later, the monastery is going to come to everyone listening to this podcast.

The monastery is going to come to you. But some people go to a monastery. And in the monastery, yes, you may have sleep deprivation or you may have to sit through physical discomfort, your legs, or in the case of traditional shingon training in Japan, they do a lot with cold, like squatting under waterfall and winter and chanting mantras and things like that, or other kinds of practice. Now what they made me do is break the ice on this cistern. This is in the dead of winter.

And then I had to bail that cold to get a bucket of that cold water and squadently throw it over me a bunch of times and had to do that three times a day. And it was so cold that the water would actually freeze as soon as it hit the floor. So I'd be like sliding around on ice, trying not to fall. And in Japan, they don't use big towels.

They use little towels, like a little washcloth. That's how you dry yourself. So the washcloth is like freezing in my hand as I'm trying to dry myself with it. Did you get sick? You must have gotten sick. No, I did not get sick at all actually during that time. In fact, okay, I did something like that for a hundred days and yeah, it had a certain intensity, but after I completed that, my best friend said, okay, now that you've done a hundred days, you should go meet my teacher. My teacher did 12 years of that.

And I did. I met that man, and it was amazing. He was one of the marathon monks of Mount Heay. You can actually see them on the YouTube. They do 12 years in isolation, including things like sit for nine days without any food or water or moving. They actually do that, like humans, I never did anything like that, but humans do that.

What is the point? The point is the vaccination? Yeah, exactly. That's the only point. But you don't get, amazingly, typically don't get sick. And in that practice, the Mount Hea practice, they make a vow that if they do get sick and can't continue even one day out of the 12 years,

they'll take their own life. Now, OK, that's over the top, but I met a man who had done that. And who had done the 12 years of training. Presumably had not taken his own life. That's right. So, for me, I wouldn't have had to take my life, but I would have had to be very embarrassed that I failed, and I didn't want to do that. So it's very interesting.

You say, why would someone do this? Okay, I did something. This guy did something, an order of magnitude, more challenging. So what is the result of this? Well the result is that you become the kind of human being whose happiness is not dependent on conditions. Because you know that no matter what would become of your mind and body, you know the place that you will go to wherein that's going to be okay. But that's not the real reason

why people do this. If it was just that, it would, in a sense, be sort of selfish. I asked him, would you have actually taken your life if you could not complete the 12 years. And he said, yes, I would have, because the practice allowed that degree of intensity allowed me to become what I am now. And I would want future generations to be able to do the practice and knowing that that's the tradition allows for that to happen. Now once again, my big codisol on all of this is you don't have to do this intensity in order to get results. You can work smart. You can take it in manageable doses and use clever techniques

so that you can get the same results without necessarily doing this brute force algorithm that is the traditional training. On the other hand, I said they don't just do it to become a person who's happy independent of conditions. What do they really do it for? Well, I saw the pattern over and over again, in many different teachers, from many traditions, and even spanning different races. It's always the same pattern. They do a period of this intense practice. They become a person who has transcended their mind body identity to a certain degree. And then what do they do?

They just are available. They're available. I didn't just meet this man. I hung out with him. I stayed with him in his temple. And I saw what does he do day to day? What he does day to day is he's just there. And people come with their problems. And they come to talk to him. And they know that they're talking to someone who has seen beyond.

So whatever their problem may be, and they know that they're talking to someone who has seen beyond. So whatever their problem may be, his existence is a source of inspiration and hope for them. And that's what they do. They're just there for the general public to interact with. Maybe he gives advice or encouragement or teaches meditation. This allows him to be of optimal service

to his community. That's how the tradition works. So really, the reason that he would have taken his life is not for some weird religious fanaticism. It's out of a service from love to others. And this going through intense training and then making yourself available, this is, to my understanding, what you've done. You are very available, dude. I called you up a year ago because our mutual friend, Yanushu's in the next room, connected us,

and you just talked to me for like an hour. And then had me do a little meditation and then call you back, and you do this all the time as my understanding from people who are followers of yours. So I'll stop talking, but am I right that you have followed this model? That's my role model. That's what I saw over and over again. And so hopefully you take the good parts of what your teachers showed you, and if there are bad parts,

you don't take those. This was one of the important good parts that I saw over and over again in teachers say this is what you do You become that extraordinary person So that you can go into the marketplace and be available to everyone I think that's amazing. I want to linger if you don't mind for a little while Back on you on your personal journey before you got to the shins and you are now. Because in your book, The Science of Enlightenment, which I recommend to everybody,

you talk about a lot of interesting other interesting things that happen to you. You talk about a period of your practice, let me step back for a second. You talk about the fact that strange things happen and people's meditation practices when we get into the deep end of the pool. And for you, one of the strange things that happened, just one of them, was that you had a period of time where you were visualizing, you were hallucinating in real life. And the hallucinations were kind of horrifying. So can you pick up the story from there? Yes, not everyone goes through that kind of experience, but some people do. You can think

of the meditation journey in a lot of different ways. One way to think of it is it's a journey from surface to source. There's- Okay, let me just have you down that first. Yeah. Because you lean right into this in the introduction of your book, to your book, which is, you on the one hand, the book is called The Science of Enlightenment, you're into science, but you're also into enlightenment.

And so you kind of straddle these two worlds where you're also into enlightenment, and so you kind of straddle these two worlds where you're really into empirical facts, and also into, as you say, mystical, shmystical. And so source is a word you use quite a bit, and you capitalize the S, and for people like me who are congenital skeptics, that's a little risky. So what do you mean when you say source? Like they say, I'm so glad you asked me that question. Usually when people say that they mean that they're being backed up. That's why I'm being facetious now. But I actually have to ask me that question. Because I'll give you a little insight information about teachers.

We're creatures of habit, just like anyone. You just get in a habit of talking a certain way. And pretty soon it's just, you know, quite realize that it may have certain connotations that are weird, actually. So what I mean by source is not necessarily a theological entity. Neuroscience will tell us that any sensory experience that we have arises in real time, something that there's a beginning of a neuronal process, and then a few hundred milliseconds later something else happens, and a few hundred milliseconds later something else happens, and then at some point

there's a conscious experience. So there's an initial moment when the nervous system begins to process a sensory event such as a physical side, a mental image, a physical sound, a mental conversation, a physical or emotional body sensation, anything inner or outer that we see here feel, has to arise over a period of time. Maybe 2,000 milliseconds, okay, which would be like two seconds from the beginning of processing to the time you have a conscious experience, or maybe less, maybe 500 milliseconds. But there's that first 10 or 100 milliseconds of processing that occurs that for the great majority of human beings is unconscious. You're not yet conscious. That's pre-conscious processing. And at that level, the nervous system is just an event in nature. It's like ripples spreading on a lake. It just happens.

And then a few hundred milliseconds later, we have the experience of a solidified self or world. So one of the important effects of meditation is that we become conscious of that primordial pre-conscious processing and it has a taste and it doesn't matter whether the experience is inner or outer, pleasant or unpleasant. Down there, initially, it always has exactly the same taste. And it is the taste of effortless, dynamic, fulfilling tranquility. So that's the source. They are an awareness of the primordial perfection that precedes each ordinary moment of experience for every human being, whether they're aware of it or not.

With respect, and I have great respect for you, I think some people are gonna hear that and say, what is that dude talking about? Probably. But just run through the process, okay? I'm talking about the fact that the nervous system a right process is things in time over a period of time. So if I'm sitting here right now, I feel my butt on the chair, I feel my arm moving as

I just did. That's right. I see you. We're all having this constant flow of experience super quick. That's right, but quick is a relative term. So if we start to talk about milliseconds, that's one one thousandth of a second. Before you have that conscious experience of a sound or a touch, there's maybe ten or twenty milliseconds where it's being processed below the threshold of awareness. In a

meditator, the threshold of awareness has been lowered so that you actually detect what that's like. You're seeing what happens between the arising of sensations? At the very instant of the arising just before it's conscious, in the average person, it's already conscious in you. Because we met it well, I am not one of the meditators who can see this type of thing because my telescope is not fully built, but highly experienced meditators can see, have a sensory clarity from years of practice and they can see with more fine grain.

And what they're seeing in between the horizons is the source. Or I have simply chosen to use the word source for that, but we could choose to use some other word we could use the void. Oh yeah, you could use many, many words, but they don't have to necessarily be spiritually. You could just say you are aware of pre-conscious processing and all pre-conscious processing has more or less the same taste, and it's the taste of freedom. But, okay, so what do you mean by that? Freedom from what? When you can't, to the extent that you can abide with that, to that extent, even uncomfortable experiences, they still hurt, but they don't cost suffering.

This is happiness without not dependent upon it. This is an important component in happiness, independent of conditions. The ability to experience discomfort, physical, emotional, mental, in a way that so fluid that it hurts and therefore is part of the richness of life and motivates and directs, but it doesn't cause suffering, therefore it doesn't obscure the perfection of the moment and it doesn't drive and distort. So the ability to have what could be called a complete experience of discomfort is, it's a paradoxical thing because sometimes you can't avoid

discomfort, sometimes actually you should not avoid discomfort, there are discomforts that we should be experiencing, but still we don't want that to drive and distort our behavior or obscure the perfection of the moment. So there's a way to experience discomfort where it fulfills its role in nature, but you're also okay at a deep level, and that's an important facet of happiness, independent of conditions. So anyway, to get back to your original question, I just throw out the word source, but you could just say the moment that precedes each conscious experience, it's where things seem to come from, right?

This is why I call it the source. But that's just a word. You could just substitute nature. Maybe you could use a word like entropy. I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being that in fact what I am somewhat mystically deciding to call the source is just the nervous system tasting its own free energy and entropy that is the what's behind

the spontaneity of everything in nature according to hardnose. Well, many things in nature according to hardnose science. It may just be that. So there's other very empirical evidence-based words that could be used. Unfortunately or fortunately, I just got in the habit of calling it the source. Now it is true that that's what is called in the Jewish mystical tradition. And I'm a little influenced by that.

But that's a whole other story. So anyway, if we say that there is sort of this thing that we can find, that's always there in everyone, and let's just call it the source. And then there's ordinary experience, which is what we're consciously aware of. So if we're making a journey from being only trapped in ordinary experience to the ability to have ordinary experience and then also have this experience of the source. So one way to think about it is that it's a journey from the surface to the source. And when you make that journey, some people in the intermediate realm

between ordinary awareness and this formless effortless doing that is that I call the source. Some people encounter unusual phenomena. And that happened to me, but it doesn't happen to everyone. So this is what you very skillfully brought us back to the original original question, which then led to a digression, which you pulled us out of, which was about hallucinations. So your hallucinations were giant insects, which you would see during waking life. Yes, it was 24-s, it was all my waking hours.

And we technically call this in Japanese maqyo, and the fact that we have a technical term for it indicates it's not an uncommon experience, although it's not a universal experience. By the way, Christian mystics called them Fantasmata, and they also had a term for it and knew about it, because the types of things that happened in Buddhist practice also happen in Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Native American, and other contemplative practices. So, these phenomena tend to have technical terms that are known

all over the world, but in whatever the language is. So in Japanese, it's called makyo. So in my case, it was very intense. It was giant insects that I saw everywhere. Whenever I would just be like walking to school and I was in graduate school and there would be these giant insects, right? And did you react to them?

Well, first of all, I had a conceptual paradigm to understand what was going on. I knew, hey, this is Markio, I've read about it, I've heard talks about it. It happens as a sign that you're getting closer to the formless, quote, source. So that's the good news. I also knew that what all the teachers say about it, which is that if you develop cravings and aversions for it, it will slow down your progress in this journey that you're trying to make, which is a plum line from, I'm going to call it surface to source.

It's going to slow down your progress, So you experience it as any other sensory phenomenon. If I make a note of it You just experience it like anything else if I see something in the physical world and I have an emotional reaction to it, okay there's see and then there's feel in my body if I have an opinion in my mental talk space then there's feel in my body. If I have an opinion in my mental talk space, then there's internal hearing. So now I'm seeing giant bugs. And yes, it caused fear and it caused sadness, fear because of course it's like scary.

Sadness because these were the insects that I killed when I was a little boy making my bug collection before I got interested in Japan. I was the Icommon of the entomology world. Yeah. So I knew it was karma. I was things I had done. So I had to, you know, I felt sad about that.

And so I had emotions. And I would simply untangle it. What part is visual, what part is mental talk, what part is fear in the body, what part is sadness in the body. So you just keep applying your meditation technique to whatever comes up, however ordinary or bizarre it might be. And in this case it was bizarre, but I had been well taught. I had a paradigm for what it is, a model, and I had recommended best practices, which is just deconstructed sensorially. And so, after a while, it went away

and just was never a problem again. Never anything like that was a problem again. Do you believe, because some mystics and Buddhists believe that between surface and source, in other words, when you start meditating and go deeper into your own mind, you can develop superpowers. Do you think that's possible? Objective powers that exist in the physical world that could be measured in a laboratory and that are prater natural, beyond what natural science says is possible. I suspect that is highly unlikely.

I don't know for sure. But if I had to shoot from the hip, I would say it is highly unlikely that there are such supernatural powers. Can one have a sensory experience of something like that that's very meaningful for a person absolutely? But whether we can confirm that by the rigorous canons of science, I'm fairly skeptical. You can also see from experiences like this why people would believe in multiple lives. I'm not, and by the way, I don't necessarily believe in that.

But I can see how these kinds of experiences would tend to make you think that way. For example, these were the insects I killed when I was a little boy. I can imagine that if I hadn't worked that through all those decades ago, that would still sort of be down there, right? And maybe when I was in dissolving at the time of death and the surface consciousness can't be held anymore. Who knows? It's not hard to imagine that that material would have presented itself.

And then one would extrapolate on that and say, well, then that's going to lead to, that's going to be the last thing you see in this lifetime, and that's going to lead to, that's going to be the last thing you see in this lifetime and that's going to now lead to 10,000 insect existences before you work off your karma. I am fatically want to say I do not necessarily believe that and I would never encourage a person to believe that, but I can see how these sensory experiences would tend to make you think along those lines. And thank you for that. As your practice continued, post-insects, et cetera, et cetera, did you achieve what you believe to be enlightenment and what is enlightenment?

If by enlightenment we mean a fundamental shift in paradigm about who you are, a kind of self-understanding at the deepest level that fundamentally and permanently changes your relationship to the notion of self versus other, that's what I mean by enlightenment. So if we mean something like that, yes. It was it. The answer would be yes. Was it one orgasmic moment of change? Or was it a gradual process?

Or was it a series of big moments? This is very interesting because the tendency is to think that it's going to be a big spiritual oh, okay, big spiritual orgasm. It is true that for some people it happens suddenly, but it has been my experience as a teacher for decades trying to lead other people to this, that in many cases it just sneaks up on people very gradually, so gradually that they acclimatize to it and may not realize how enlightened they've become until you sort of point it out to them. And there are some famous Zen stories about this kind of thing. So it can happen suddenly to sometimes, and there have been many

books written about that, people describing their experiences in the sudden paradigm. But I would say in my teaching, it more typically happens gradually. However, my personal experience was sudden. It was sudden and dramatic like in the books. So, can you describe it? Sure. I hadn't meditated all day that day, and it was like 10 o'clock. And I thought, oh, gee, I didn't do formal meditation today.

How old were you? How old? I tend to remember this by another criterion. I think this happened in 1974. So, I'm 72 now, so it was a long time ago. And you had been meditating for a while at this point? Four years. Oh, so not that long?

No. But you had done pretty intense stuff. Yeah, this was after having been in a monastery in in Japan. So I'm a little fuzzy about time, but I think it was in my fourth year of practice. But that was after three years in Amanastari. So I was probably back in the States about a year. I'm guessing. So I hadn't meditated that day, and it was in a form away, and it was like, hey, it's nighttime.

So you know what a Bzafu is, it's a meditation cushion. So I tried it out my meditation cushion. And so I sat down on the cushion, and this thought came out of nowhere. Where are my boundaries? And then out of nowhere came the perception, there are none. There is no boundary between inside and outside. And that was a perception. It wasn't a thought. It's like they're not there. They are not there. And it was so shocking that I actually stood up. I just stood up. And I just started to walk around the room. And there was just no separation between inside and outside. And...

But who's noticing the lack of separation? It's got to be you. Well, that gets us into a long and very interesting conversation. That's a little bit of the hypnosis of language there. If you want to go down that way, we can. But, and I would happily do so. But maybe I should finish this narrative. And then we'll do that. But it's an important question. It's a deep question.

And it's definitely one that I'm happy to talk about. But if we could, we would just like put a pin in that one for a moment, just to finish the thought. So I had this, see the fact that you use the word I, doesn't necessarily mean you're experiencing I as a thing. It just means you're articulating certain phonemes. It's flatus vosis, it's just error coming out. But anyway, that's a whole other thing. It's very hard. The Buddha talked about Tatogeta, meaning this process. But I don't want to say this process all the time. I just use the word I, because sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. So anyway, I had this negative thought, and the walls laughed at me for having such a stupid

thought. Now that sounds like maybe schizophrenia, but it wasn't. It was just that's how the oneness presented itself to me. I knew that the walls aren't sentient beings, but there was just no perceived separation. And it didn't go away just because I got up and was like walking around. I wasn't doing a formal meditation technique anymore. It was just like, whoa, it's there. And I just turned

on the television, watched some cartoons, and that didn't change it. And then I thought, whoa, this is amazing, but I'm going to wake up tomorrow and I'm going to be messed up again, you know. But when I woke up the next day, it was still there. It never left. But you, if I recall from reading your book, you had been smoking a little weed, right? That was a different occasion. Oh, it was. That was before this.

That was a little taste of something. Okay, so this was, there were no foreign substances involved in this. I don't think, and that's probably not in this case. Yeah, and it never went away. This never went away. So you still don't feel like you have any boundaries? Well, it just grew and grew and grew over the decades, just deepened and deepened.

But yes, so it's a permanent change in perspective. I'm still struggling to understand how that, I mean, you still have to put your pants on. You still have to make dentist appointments and all that stuff. So you're, there's still you there, right? And you still have to know when you're walking in a crowd, who you are as opposed to everybody else around you. Yes.

And I've had decades of driving an automobile and never got even one moving violation. So clearly, you can manipulate the material. We're all just fine. The activity of self is freed up when the somethingness of self goes away. It would be one way that you might try to put it. I know it seems like wordsmithery, like people playing with words to try to sound paradoxical. And I used to hate it when my teachers would stay stuff like this,

what I'm saying now. It's like, why do they have to talk in that weird way? Why can't they just be straightforward? And now I hear myself blabbering the same paradoxes. But at least now I know why. They weren't doing this intentionally. They weren't doing it to try to impress people or be poetic. It's just, this is the best we can do with words. You're just trying to describe something that's very hard to describe. Yes, exactly. So, it's a... I can only give metaphors. If you are in a certain traditional culture, you see a phenomenon which looks very much like a monster is eating up the moon. You can actually see it taking one bite after another, after another, into the moon.

You see it happening in the sky, and you freak out, because a monster is eating up the moon. If you belong to a different culture, you see exactly that phenomenon. But you have a different interpretation. The shadow of the earth is being cast on the surface of the moon. It's a lunar eclipse. But if you don't know what a lunar eclipse is, what that mechanism is, it very much looks like a monster is eating up the moon. And it's a source of huge consternation in many traditional cultures.

So what's the difference? There's a difference in paradigm, a difference in understanding. But the phenomenon's the same. It looks exactly the same. Nothing's changed. But your same. Nothing has changed. But your relationship to it has changed. There's an understanding and there's a reduction of suffering that is very dramatic. After quote, enlightenment, if we want to use that word, everything is the same. But there's an understanding. Self-horizes,

mental images arise, mental talk arises, physical and emotional body sensations arise. It's all the same. But there's a shift that is taking place and there's no going back. Because once you know that it's not a monster eating up the moon, then you could see the monster, but it's not your go-to perception. You'd have to actually, like, intentionally try to see the monster. Conjure the monster. So everything's the same, but it's different. Maybe that metaphor will be a little helpful. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards

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I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. The enlightenment you're describing, when one wears the walls or laugh in it's you or you have no idea where your boundaries are. Why would we want that? That sounds a little more than a little destabilizing. We would want it because it allows you to experience physical and emotional discomfort with less suffering. Because you don't take it personally.

That's the voice of insight speaking right through you right now, okay? That's a mini, mini-enlightenment talking, right? You don't expect much more of this. That's probably the end of it right there. Well, it's my job to hear when the wisdom function is speaking through a person and it just spoke through you. That's exactly why, but it's not just that.

If it were that, if it only delivered relief from suffering, it would be worth the price of admission. By the way, the price of admission is payable by anyone listening to this program. You don't have to go to a monastery and expose yourself to these things. There is a reasonable structure that anyone living in North American lifestyle could establish for themselves that would make it likely that this would happen for them. A little bit of formal practice each day, maybe 10 minutes or so.

A little bit of intentional practice during the day is your bobbin around in the world. Retreats, now most people can't get away for residential retreats, but I have something I call the home practice program Which is like telephone-based micro retreats four-hour retreats. Well, you can most people can do that So I mentioned three factors a little bit maybe ten minutes of formal practice each day a little bit maybe It's a formal practice each day, a little bit. Maybe half dozen micro hits of peppering the ordinary days. You're walking from place to place in the day. Then retreats, but if you can't do residential retreats, you can do four-hour micro retreats through conference call.

We do it through freeconferencecall.com. Now, there's one other important element though. You would have to find at least one competent personal coach, someone with a track record in leading people to this and there are hundreds of teachers that exist now that are competent to do that. So if you sort of line up those four ducks in a row and keep it up throughout your life, an ordinary person has not a guarantee but a good probability that somewhere along the line before they die, they'll come to what I'm describing. So I see it as feasible. But anyway, why you would want it is for one thing, reduction of suffering, because who wants to suffer?

Next time you are in physical, emotional, or mental distress, how valuable is not having to identify with this. But it's more than that. It's an optimal place from which to stand upon which you can stand, a kind of platform, upon which you can stand, and optimally improve your behavior in the world. How you carry yourself, your habits. It's very helpful in letting go of negative habits and in cultivating

new positive habits for just action and how you carry yourself in the world. So it's also, it helps optimize positive behavior change. It reduces suffering. So those are two huge things, and there's one more thing. It is not guaranteed, but there is a strong tendency, if the boundaries have fallen away for you, there's a strong tendency that you're going to become a more compassionate, caring person, because it sort of seems like you're looking to become a more compassionate, caring person because it

sort of seems like you're looking at yourself all the time. And so it means when you see other people you're seeing yourself. And so it is not guaranteed, but it will tend to facilitate a life of service. So that's why a person wouldn't want it for themselves, so they suffer less. And so that they can be a better person by the ordinary canons of their culture. And ultimately, so that they can optimize their ability to be of service to others. Okay, so I'll make no bones about this, that I want what you're describing for sure.

But let me ask you two questions, you can take them in whatever order you want. The question I was going to ask you as you were speaking was, okay, well, if I'm an ambitious guy, which I am, and I'm a family man, I have a baby and a wife, and I care deeply about both of those things. I would put the family above my career, and I want to keep them going. Is enlightenment, what you're describing, is the process of attaining it, and the life one lives once one has attained it compatible with a busy Life in the world that includes career and family that was the question. I was gonna ask you, but then you said

It's enlightenment is no guarantee of compassion and it got me thinking about your teacher Whose name what what am I teachers? Sosaki Rochi, had there have been allegations that he sexually abused his followers or harassed his followers. He's no longer with us. So, and here was a guy who a lot of people agree was enlightened and yet he did some things that a lot of people would agree were not so cool. So, how does that coexist with enlightenment?

That's confusing to a lot of people So I just threw two huge questions at you, but I they're inevitable outcropping of what you of the paragraphs you had uttered Before you stop talking so I'll let you take them in whatever order you want You have a remarkable ability to keep in mind Unlike almost anybody anybody I've ever interviewed to allow me to throw you down all these tributaries and then to always just come back. So I feel confident with you, but pretty much you alone and asking you two huge questions

and letting you find your way to answer both of them. One of my main paradigms is expansion and contraction, which actually I got from Sasaki Rochi. So expansion and contraction. Contractively, the answer to your first question is really short. Yes. Hell, yes. How so? Well, I actually tangibly outlined four things that a person would need to do in order

to make that likely. Yes. And they're all doable by anyone. So that's how so. Okay. That's as simple as that. I just keep thinking about the fact that the Buddha in order to get his enlightenment left his wife and child. Yes, but there are many examples of highly enlightened

householders that had highly responsible jobs. For example, there's a teacher in India. He's passed away also, Goenka, G. and Mr. Goenka. So he was definitely one of the very deep, mind-fullest teachers of the 20th century. But he also maintained an enormous financial empire. He was a multi-millionaire. And so he was able to have a large Indian family and have all the responsibilities that go with that and oversee a very large business competently and yet be a very deeply liberated person and His teacher was similar his teacher wasn't among

Uba Uba Ken was a high government official in Burma He was the accountant general of Burma and same deal. Had a family, had a big job, was able to do it, do all of that and be very liberated. So this is what a mathematician would call an existence proof. The fact that an actual example exists, in fact many examples exist, proves it is theoretically possible. So I would say, that's why, hell yes, you can do that and most of my students are in that category. Now, your second question is not a quick answer. As much as people would like a quick answer to these kinds of things, it is very, very complicated. And we could go

into the details happily, but it's going to probably not be in our time frame to really give this the attention it should get. So let's just try to make a first pass, understanding that I'm going to leave out a lot, a lot. I'm actually in a sort of bad position because I can see all the sides of this thing. I can see them all at once because of a lifetime of involvement and because of the fact that I grew up half Japanese culturally even though my race may be something else. So I just I see a lot and I see that people want simple quick answers that aren't nuanced and then start to get uncomfortable if you start to, try to give a big picture. So let me try to give a quick answer, a relatively quick answer.

I can't address it from the issue of compassion because different individuals and cultures may have a different idea of what constitutes compassion. But I can address it from a broader perspective, which is... There is a dimension to this practice that is liberation from the mind and body. That is a dimension to the practice. And there is a dimension to the practice which is becoming an admirable human being in terms of how you carry yourself in the world. These are related. There is a strong trend for people that become liberated to also become admirable, but it's not guaranteed.

It's not guaranteed. And I know we would like it to be guaranteed, because we want the universe to be set up in such a way that enlightenment is some sort of perfection. But it isn't. It's just a shift in paradigm. Well, I shouldn't say just. It's like the most important thing that happens to a person. But it's still a shift in paradigm. And in order for that to be translated into a shift in behavior, other factors may be necessary. Other factors may be necessary. Sometimes that paradigm shift is enough. The person becomes, my phrase, is admirable by the ordinary canons

of society, of their society. Many times just happens, but not in my experience, not inevitably. Other factors enter in. What are the other factors? Well, you can have guidelines to behavior that you take seriously, general guidelines. You can keep the feedback channels open so that you can get information from everyone around you about how you're carrying yourself in the world. I call that keeping the feedback channels open, not just to some people, but to everyone. So you can get a consensus of how you are in the world. You may need behaviorally oriented accountability and support structure to help you make behavior changes, 12-step program or a therapist or a counselor.

So these are factors that are not practice factors. The fact that you are a person that individually has feedback channels open to you or that institutionally has feedback channels open to you. That's not a practice issue. That's how you structure your life issue. Whether you take certain precepts or guidelines for behavior seriously or not, that's sort of a personal value thing. So what can happen is that sometimes a teacher will become so good at the liberation aspect that they deemphasize these other aspects. And in my way of thinking, people would probably disagree with me some people, but I think that that in general is not a good idea, that that's a toxic combination. And so, when I've seen the scandals and the problems that have developed among

many teachers actually, I ask myself, okay, what causes this and what can we do to make sure it doesn't happen more or again? And I think it's caused by overly emphasizing one dimension of the practice. And it's caused by having a personal and institutional setup where you can't get feedback from a wide range of people in your world. So I decided that, okay, let's just make sure that we always talk about these other structures whenever we're teaching people liberation practices. And that should military against these kinds of problems developing. But in your book, if I read it correctly, you're of the view that enlightenment, whatever that means.

Well, actually, we sort of said what it means within this context. Within this context, right? So enlightenment, or any other word you want to use, could really help mend many of the world's big problems could be a very positive force in a world with deep problems, divisions. But is that really true given what you just said and given all of these Buddhist teachers and other spiritual leaders who apparently are highly attained meditators who act in abusive ways. The important thing is to see the big picture. If you average over all people that have done practice,

there will be, I'm relatively sure, a general trend that people become dramatically better human beings as the result of practice in general and enlightenment in the sense that we're using it here in specific. So there is a general tendency in all aspects of human culture for people with psychopathic tendencies to rise to the top. You see it in politics, you see it wherever there's a power situation. So we shouldn't be surprised that that general tendency also presents itself in the world of leadership among, you know, in spiritual teachers. But once again, I think if you actually took careful statistics over all teachers, you would find that most of them are dramatically better people than they would have been otherwise. But it's very easy to see the salient counter

examples. And I think one of the reasons is that maybe in general people with those kinds of tendencies tend to rise in organizations. But it's also true that the traditional organizations tend to be set up in a way to prevent peer-like feedback from students, so that they're sort of trapped in an institution where they have enormous power, but can't really get normal feedback. So I think there are a lot of reasons why these problems have developed, but I think that the mechanism of liberation by and large, big picture wise, is an enormous probably the biggest positive force on the planet. And just say a little bit more about how you think it could be how this force could be harnessed and whether you think it will happen. Because one of the things you also say in the book is that one of the you call it,

you call the sort of increasing adoption of meditation bittersweet because it's great that it's happening bitters because you think most people really won't do it because it's just kind of a pain. So do you really think enough people will do this thing that it could change the court, the arc of human history? Well, my bitter sweet comment was actually about myself, how life is for me. The sweet part is, well, meditation has been very, very good to me. Okay? The bitter part is, I realize that the same could be true for most human beings, but won't, probably, yet at this point in human history. But I would say that meditation delivers what religion purports to deliver.

Okay. It delivers it more intensely without the need for irrational beliefs so that you can have an evidence and logic-based life like a hard-nosed scientist and get profound spiritual transformations without having to sacrifice an evidence and logic-based view of the world. Now to me, that's the best of both possibilities. It delivers all the goodies of religion and more without you having to sacrifice logic and evidence. So it would seem to me that this is the better mouse trap that humanity will eventually adopt, if we're able to survive for a few more centuries. I would tend to think that, although in my lifetime, most human

beings won't meditate, it's now known and available, and there are hundreds of people competent And its results are being confirmed by the rigorous standards of clinical science and even basic science is being applied to it. So given that, if somehow we can hang on for another couple hundred years, which some people will say, well, maybe we can't, because we're going to hell in a hand basket quickly. But if we can just not have a catastrophic collapse of human civilization for a few hundred more years, I would suspect that the forces of diffusion would simply spread this, and it would be the new paradigm for humanity. Now you could say, well, but 200 years is a long time,

but not really, not by Darwin, not by evolution. It's nothing. But you could still say, well, 50 years given stuff that's going on. Well, maybe. But there could be a game changer also that would speed things up. Right now, science is turning its lens towards enlightenment. It doesn't have an answer yet, but the process has begun. If we were to have a scientific breakthrough that would reveal new things about enlightenment

that are deep and important that none of the masters of the past could have known because you need science to know them. I'm not saying that will happen, but if that were to happen, then technology might follow that would accelerate the process. So the reason that most people don't continue with meditation is they don't get a stunning dramatic effect instantly. They get a subtle effect that they like, but not like the whole world changes after 10 minutes of practice. But it's possible that with science, relatively quickly, the kinds of things that I call enlightenment in an integrated form could become democratized and fairly readily available to humanity. That can appeal or something like that?

Well people often think pill, but I have no idea how it would be, but I would more imagine that it would be, you already know how to meditate, you've been taught a technique, but we find some sort of non-invasive and relatively simple neuromodulation that allows for dramatically accelerated growth. So that what normally would take 50 years might take six months, something like that. So there's still, I don't quite see an enlightenment pill, but I could imagine that there could be techno boosts that would dramatically accelerate a standard meditation practice. So what is your life like now? You've been living without boundaries for all these years. Like what's your daily life life? Is it all rainbows and unicorns?

Well, there's still suffering. There's uncomfortable experiences and there's challenges that go with that. But at least I know I have a tool that I can always pull out to help with that. I still have challenges in becoming an admirable person in terms of my behavior. So really? Like sometimes you're a jerk. A lot. Really? Yeah.

But not nearly the jerk I would have been otherwise. What kind of jerk do you have in the basket? Oh, irresponsible, mostly just lazy. I procrastinate a lot. Yeah, I read that you went to go see a shrink over. Yeah, 18 months of therapy. And that plus the meditation did help. It made a, well, hey, I got a book. I got, you know, I wrote it, it happened,

and it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't somewhat overcome my procrastination thing. I had a cherry contract. What? 30 years ago Simon and Schuster came to me, a senior editor, with like a $50,000 advance to write a book. There's a lot of money back then. Clot of money now.

Couldn't freaking do it. Could not freaking do it. Could not freaking do it. Even though you were enlightened. Yeah, because I was still struggling with my procrastination behavior. So, it took more years of practice, and remember I said, behaviorally oriented accountability and support structure. I didn't go to a psychiatrist in order to find out more about myself Or to be a happier person. I went for behavior mod. He gave me small manageable doses of

Assignments and I either did them or didn't do them. I used the practice to help me and it dramatically Improved my procrastination habits. But, you know, like, hi, my name is Shinson, and I'm a recovering alcoholic. I know I'll always be a recovering procrastinator, but the combination of therapy and a behaviorally oriented therapy, not like talk therapy kind of stuff. That I'm not denigrating that. That could be useful for a meditator also, but I need to behaviorally

oriented. So the combination of the practice and that really made a difference. So I would have been such a procrastinator that I might have been a street person or you know I would be miserable okay so yeah I still struggle but there's vast improvement as a result of the practice and other factors. And what about relationships you married? I was married and we're still best friends we talk all the time. We didn't have kids. We weren't interested in that, but she's also, oh, she's amazing.

Shelly Young is her name. You can find her website. She is a kick-ass psychotherapist who uses my techniques plus therapy and just gets incredible clinical results. So what your meditation technique, why, you got divorced? Yeah, we got an ennormate, not an ennormate, a summary dissolution because this was back in the crazy days when it was an open marriage and we discovered that actually doesn't work very well. So we decided that we would just change on paper but we didn't really change in our relationship

all that. But you don't live with her? No, no, because I'm too busy with other projects. So we talk and I'm very proud of her. So I guess what you're doing is kind of knocking enlightenment a little bit off of its throne and putting it into the real world. You're a guy who owns his flaws and still has had this experience that continues to grow for you. And I think you'd find that most people that are willing to talk about it

and a lot of people with it won't talk about it for very good reasons. Then some of us just don't mind talking about it. People that talk about it, you'll mostly find they'll tell you a lot about their struggles and failures. And the good reasons that you mentioned that people don't want to talk about is because you'll mostly find they'll tell you a lot about their struggles and failures. And the good reasons that you mentioned that people don't want to talk about is because, um, well, let me count the ways. Go ahead. I'll let you count. Well, first of all, everyone already has it. So one of the signs that you're enlightened is that you sort of see everyone is that.

And so really, there's not that much difference. What do you mean everybody's already has it? Well, I said it's just being aware of the first 200 milliseconds of every ordinary experience and everyone has those 200 milliseconds. They may not be aware of it, but there's always that primordial perfection that precedes each ordinary moment in everyone. And light in person doesn't just see it in themselves. They see it in everyone.

So there's not really that much difference. I mean, there is, but there isn't. And sort of, it seems weird to talk about it as existing on this side and not on that side. When you see it on all sides, if you see it at all. And then it's not so much you said attained or achieved, I think. And I said yes, but achieve is not exactly the verb I would use. It's more like a losing of something, than a getting of something. I was struck and I've brought it up a lot in my podcasts.

Tibetan teacher was on who said that the English translation of you would know this better than me. The English translation of the way that Tibetans talk about enlightenment is an uncovering and a bringing forth. That's right. So you've just noticed what was always there. So you know, and then it makes it sound like another thing that you're adorning yourself for status. And it doesn't really give you status. It gives you the opposite of status. It gives you primordialness. It doesn't seem like a status thing. But as soon as you talk about it that way, then it's

like, well, this one's more enlightened than that one, and my teacher is more enlightened than this other teacher. And, well, I'll never be able to get enlightenment because I've never been able to get my shit together in any way at all, et cetera, et cetera. So it just sets up a whole misconception about the nature of the thing. So you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. If you play your cards close to the vest and don't talk about your experiences,

then there's not a real Frank dialogue. If you do talk about it, it sounds like you're bragging. I see your point. This has been amazing. I just want to look at my geeky little list of questions that I drew up for you and make sure I didn't miss something that I wanted. I know I'm going to miss a lot of things.

All right, let me just ask you one last question. This may be a fun place to end it. Your book is filled with paragraphs that, just, I read them and I would write on the side of the page, okay, I need to get him to translate this. So, let me just give you one of these paragraphs. I'm kind of picking it at random here. When a body worker massages you,

that person's fingers move through the substance of your muscles and transfer energy into them. This works out the kinks and lumps in the substance of the muscles. This is a good analogy for the flow, capital F, flow of impermanence. When you let impermanence work on you, the energy in its waves and vibrations softens the substance of the muscles. This is a good, sorry, I'm really, when you let impermanence work on you, this energy and its waves and vibrations softens the substance of consciousness, works out knots in your soul.

It breaks up the coagulated places in all your senses, visual, auditory, and somatic. This is impermanence as a purifier, something that breaks up blockages, cleans out impurities, where finds the ore of who you are. As this is happening, it may seem as though consciousness is becoming porous. Within that porosity, you can feel a Nietzsche, which is another word for impermanence.

You can feel a Nietzsche's waves and vibrations turning up, gunk from the depths of your soul. They push, gunk up, digest it, and excrete it from your being. You can feel your senses being scoured by the flow of impermanence. The cleansing of the doors of perception is not a poetic metaphor. It's a palpable reality. That's pretty heavy stuff. And as you said before, when you talked about your frustration with some of your teachers, wondering whether they're trying to sound poetic, I got a little bit of that. I mean, I admire the writing. It's good writing, but I have a little trouble penetrating. Sure. In your own practice,

have you sometimes had an experience where things get sort of wavy or vibratory that kind of thing? Is anything like that ever happened? Well, I don't know what exactly what you mean by that. Oh, it's like your body seems to sort of be like seaweed in a tide pool or maybe your Visual experience sort of pixelates and scintolates a little bit. Here's what happens to me a lot and I don't know if it qualifies.

About a year and a half ago I started to do a little laboratory experiment on myself where I went up to two hours a day of meditation. Wow, that's terrific. Thank you, it's been a pain in the butt, but it's been cool. And sometimes I'll do a long sit, you know, like 90 minutes or something like that at the time. And I'll start with really just doing a body scan where I intentionally sort of soften and relax parts of the body over and over.

And that will often create really good waves of physical feeling. So I don't know if that's what you're referring to, but I get that quite a bit. A sense that sensation is sort of moving through you. Yes, but positive sensation, because it's a little bit like taking the drug ecstasy. I don't know if you've heard of that, but. That was after my time. I definitely tried everything we had in the 60s. I don't know if you've heard of that, but. That was after my time. I definitely tried everything we had in the 60s.

But that was after my time. Okay, so there's this experience that has two characteristics. It's pleasant, and there's a fluidity. That's what I, yes. And is it found only in your body or when that's happening in your body, if you were to sort of close your eyes and look at the darkness or brightness, might there be some waviness there? You might not remember. Don't know. Next time it happens now. Next time, look for that. You might notice that that same wave equality

will tend to infect the other two senses. The visual sense will tend to get a little bit that way also. And even the auditory sense. Now, let me ask you another thing. You've probably noticed in your own practice that you can have mental talk. Most people report a lot of that. But you may have also had experiences where the surface mental talk became muted and there

wasn't really incessant conversation, but just sort of an undercurrent of stirring. You ever had an experience like that in your meditation? I think so, but it's pretty rare. But you have some experiential sense of what I'm talking about. No question when I get concentrated to the extent that I get concentrated, the chatter slows down. And then, but then you might notice that it doesn't completely go away. It's just sort of an undercurrent or a whisper or a kind of, I would call it a subtle stirring in mental talk space where you would normally have heard your mental talk.

There's just sort of like shimmering going on. I'm not sure that I could see what you're describing as clearly as you're describing it. Right. Next time the mental talk comes to a relative quiet, listen and you you may hear something that is like a whisper but it's not really formed words. It's more like just a stirring in mental talk space where the mental talk had been. So, you could parse that as course mental quiet, or you could parse it as a kind of vibration in what had previously been an ordinary auditory experience. So you've already experienced some fluidity in your body as the result of longsits. I'm going to have you look and see if it infects your visual experience

at all. It does tend to do that. And that sort of undercurrent of subtle stirring and mental talk space, that some people report as a problem. It's like, I can't get it to be completely quiet because there's still this sort of, well, you can interpret that as, oh, I can't get it really quiet. But an alternative interpretation is that it's a subtle, vibratory auditory flow experience. It's just sort of shimmering down there. So you know what positive feedback is. The more you focus on something, the more prominent it becomes

is one form of a positive feedback loop. Well, at first you get these little hints, little hints in body experience, visual experience and auditory of something that's a little more wavy or a little more vibrating than what you had previously experienced as the rock solid stability of the inner and outer senses.

It's just a hint of movement. The more you focus on that, the more pronounced it becomes. At some point, it becomes so pronounced that you find yourself jibbering the kind of thing that I wrote there. I don't think it's gibberish is intriguing. That's why I asked you about it. Well, I can see how it would sound like gibberish to someone. Once again, my defense is, I'm just trying to call it as I experience it. That's how it comes out. I'm sympathetic to you. I'm envious and call it as I experience it. That's how it comes out. I'm sympathetic to you.

I'm envious and sympathetic at the same time. Well, I gave you four factors that I say, if you keep them up for your whole life, you have a high probability of success. And I think you have all those factors in place. So that envy will turn into just an understanding at some point. It's like, oh yeah, okay. That'll, that, it's highly probable at some point in your life that's going to be your ongoing reality. Now, I'm not the first person to poetically jibber about this experience. We call it technically Bunga, B-H-A-N-G-A, which means dissolution.

And it's known in other traditions. For example, DS Eliot got the Nobel Prize in literature in 1944 for writing a poem called The Four Cortets, which is amazing to me considering that I sincerely doubt that any of the judges that gave him that prize understood what that poem was actually about, but they still recognized it was a monumentally important poem, but you would have to be a meditator to really understand that, well, it's four quartets, it's many voices, but the deepest voice in that poem is a description of the awkward intermediate stage as you're starting to dissolve, but Elliot was a Christian. So he gave a Christian metaphor. The wounded surgeon plies the steel that questions the distempered part beneath the bleeding hands we feel, the sharp compassion of the healer's art, resolving the enigma

of the fever chart. Our only health is the disease. If we obey the dying nurse whose constant care is not to please, but to remind of our and Adam's curse, and that to be restored, our sickness must grow worse. The chill ascends from feet to knees, the fever sings in mental wires, if to be warmed that I must freeze and quake, infrigued pervatorial fires of which.

The flame is roses and the smoke is briars. He's talking about the three persons of the Holy Trinity because he was Anglican, sort of Catholic, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God the Father, okay? Them, the Trinity working on the human soul by dissolving it, back into this energy and the quaking and the freezing and so forth. So, that's actually a poem from a completely Christian perspective about the soul being purified

by this dissolution into shaking and quaking. What a pleasure to sit and talk to you. This was really fun, my pleasure. Okay, there's another edition of the 10% Happier Podcast. If you liked it, please make sure to subscribe, rate us, and if you want to suggest topics we should cover or guess we should bring in, hit me up on Twitter at Dan B. Harris. I also want to thank Hardly the people who produced this podcast and really do pretty much all the work. Lauren, Efron, Josh Cohen, Sarah Amos, Andrew Calp, Steve Jones, and

the head of ABC News Digital Dance Silver. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad- with 1-3-plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey

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