I'm Mary Sweeney.
I'm Jonas
Kaplan.
Welcome to float today on float. We talked with Sam Harris. Sam is a public thinker, a neuroscientist and author, philosopher and a podcaster. You host the incredibly popular making sense podcast and he also has a successful meditation app called waking up. Sam has written several best-selling books including waking up a guide to spirituality without religion. Sam and I have worked together on functional brain Imaging of belief and I think he has a
Way with words, a way of explaining things related to difficult Concepts, like Consciousness at mindful awareness. That is truly unrivalled.
All right, Sam. Thanks for joining us today.
Sure. Happy to do it. Welcome.
There's so many things that I think would be interesting to talk to you about that are related to the topic of this podcast. But the one I want to start with sounds kind of strange in the context of what we've been talking about. And so it's going to take me a little bit to set it up. But what I want to ask you about is advised to vedanta just a relatively obscure.
Indian philosophy of non-duality. Yeah, love it. Yeah, go ahead. And the reason I'm interested in this is because you are one of the things you are as a scientist. We actually met when we were both at UCLA training to be neuroscientist. So you have that background as the legitimate scientific researcher, but it doesn't seem like you think that the scientific method is the only way to get insight into the human mind and you've been very
made in eastern philosophy and these contemplative Traditions that come out of the East. And one of the reasons that Mary and I started this podcast is because the conversations that we were having, we realized that many of the same things about The Human Experience and human consciousness that we were exploring through Neuroscience in the lab. We're also being explored in thought about by filmmakers things. Like, what is an emotion. How do we make meaning of the world? How do we understand things? Like,
Div, and how do we have empathy with people? And it seemed like, what people were doing in cinema was very similar in many ways, was just another way of trying to understand the human mind. And you had this sort of unusual path to becoming a scientist before you ended up doing this PhD at the brain, mapping Center at UCLA. You were traveling around the world, exploring various kinds of meditation, and I actually had a similar interest you, and I ended up Crossing path as many of the same teachers in that world. And so, in the context of thinking about,
Out, how there may be more than one approach to understanding reality that can be fruitful. So I wanted to ask you about your experiences with advice and in particular how it is that, you came to know this man who was known as papaji or poonja and this is one of the Indian teachers of advaita. I didn't have the chance to meet him. By the time I knew about him. He had just died, but I didn't meet many of his students and got this for a second. Hand energy coming off people who had met him. Right? Right. So I wonder if you could tell us how
You came to be in a position of knowing this person and what you got out of that experience.
Yeah, well, so I guess my I should say something about how I got into science because I did everything backwards really I was interested in the nature of mind and Consciousness in particular first and it just out of necessity. That kind of the first stuff I encountered on that topic was kind of in the philosophy section of the bookstore. And most of the conversation about Consciousness is
At least, you know, half philosophical. So I was, I started reading and writing in that area and only kind of at the last minute, when I was poised to do a PhD in philosophy. Did I side? I decided to make a lateral move to Neuroscience because it just do. It was clear that, you know, it, whether the brain was the whole story. It had to be a large part of the story in the end. So, so, I guess so.
The come to the sequence, it seems kind of reversed. I mean, I was I was interested in the ultimate possibility of experiencing these things directly through meditation and psychedelics first, and then I kind of meandered into philosophy trying to make sense of all this and then decided at the 11th hour that I wanted to grab the neuroscientific tool. So at least I could be a neuro philosopher in my in the way I would have.
Conversations on this topic, so that's how I got here. And so early on when I was, you know, after a few kind of well-timed experiences with psychedelics, I decided that meditation was something that I wanted to look more deeply into. And so that took me to a retreat with ramdas when I was 18, 18 or 19, but this was the
As would have been the right after my sophomore year in college, and that's where that's where I dropped out. So, like the summer the summer, that between my my sophomore and junior year in college, which would have been about 1987. I think I, I did attend a retreat with ramdas and ROM drive. So you who had been Richard Alpert. He was a psychologist at Harvard. He got fired along with Timothy Leary for this.
Dancing LSD to liberally to his students and research subjects and more or less anyone who would walk into the room. So he and Larry kicked off the 60s in a big way, but got fired for their, their efforts. And then he went to India, became Rhonda. I met, his Indian Guru, and became Ram Dass, and then big then became a very eclectic teacher of kind of spiritual practices.
And so he was the first person who really put meditation into context for me. This is again, so it could just kind of a happenstance. I was just given a book of his after, my first experience with MDMA was a, it was literally the first thing I read. But put my MDMA experience into context. And so that was it was just natural to see if he was still around and teaching. And so, I went and sat her a treat with him. And so,
Retreat. I came away with a of a dual interest, in Buddhist Meditation, practice specifically mindfulness. And in the more non dual teachings, the advaita vedanta style teachings of of India and explicitly non-buddhist tomato much later. I came to realize that there were non dual teachings within Buddhism, but I was
What kind of rowing into boats simultaneously. I had a pretty dualistic mindfulness practice as taught in standard for pasta context and a a interest in non dual teachings of the sort one. One heard from from teachers, like Ramana maharshi, who was one of the great gurus of the first part of the 20th century in India and somewhere around 92.
Who are so maybe 93 I. Um, I heard about pooja-ji through some of the the chaos. His student. Andrew Cohen was was created in the Buddhist community. And Andrew came back from his his time with pooja-ji claiming to be fully enlightened and just vilifying the dualistic practice of.
Mindfulness. So he would just come into these. He, I guess he briefly had been. He had been a la pasta meditator, but then he went to India and realized that meditation practice was completely misconceived and in the presence of his Guru. Puja. He, he achieved something like a permanent Enlightenment on his account. And so, he explicitly targeted Buddhist communities and we know with his evangelism and so it had a fairly amazing.
Act because he had an effect on people. I went, I saw him once and was not really personally impressed with him. But his, you know, so other many other people obviously were and the end his criticism of the, the goal orientation of ordinary mindfulness. Practice certainly resonated with me. It was, it was definitely, it was something that I felt. I was such a logic, I felt I was suffering under. So I went to India at sea.
At some point thereafter and had my first encounter with Linda G. So that's how that's a kind of a general map of how I got into those various strands of practice and intellectual
interest. Yes. So you contrasted what Andrew Cohen was teaching about the futility of this sort of gold, directedness of traditional mindfulness approach compared with this idea and advice to that. There could be just a sort of instantaneous and permanent enlightenment.
Q, tell us more about what pooja-ji was actually teaching and how it differed from the sort of traditional style of meditation that you have been
used to.
So, you know, there are gradations of this in the advaita world and there are some teachers who will even put your cheese own Guru, Ramana maharshi. I just mentioned some of them while being basically non-dual in their message. They will offer some concession to a path and the utility of practices at least in the beginning to the, some kind of gradualism built into their framing of it, but others are totally.
Amazing. And so the in and punches, you was despite the fact that he had spent a lot of his life. Practicing meditation and devotional yoga. Essentially. He was totally uncompromising in the, in the steepness of his path. And so, essentially, the message is this, you come into the room with him and you, you know, you ask him about the nature of Consciousness with a self or, you know, how to get free of the illusion of ego at a. And, you know, we are already overcome one.
Chuckles suffering. What? However, you whatever, door? You try to open into the project of of seeking Enlightenment. His basic message was Consciousness is already free. It's always, it's, your mind is already the mind of the Buddha. You just have to recognize that, and you can either recognize that right now or not, right? And you're always there, you're only ever going to recognize that now,
No future time when you're going to be better, placed to do that. And anything you're going to do in this next moment on the basis of your non-recognition, right? The fact that you can't agree with me and admit that you're already, an enlightened. You're already, the Buddha, and the fact that you're disposed to want to do something now, to solve a problem that I'm telling you is a figment of a dream that gesture of practice.
It, you are strategically paying attention to the breath. Say if you're practicing ordinary mindfulness or your desire to, you know, to do devotional chanting, to your Guru, or to Krishna or whatever. It is in Indian context. Any of that is a confession of your ignorance and a-10s an active practice of overlooking. What is already the case. So by your by the very nature,
Of the project you are going to fail, right? You can get there from here. And so there's nothing to do but understand what I'm saying right now. And so so so it's just this very Stark, you know, you know, that he turns the path into a essentially, a brick wall that you hit it. 400 miles an hour. You just you it's completely hopeless and yet you are already free.
Right. This is consciousness is already without an ego. You're not going to meditate your ego out of existence, and he, so he would obviously talk about that endlessly to anyone who is interested. Right? So he would have what are called satsangs where you just gather with him. And and I mean, there's sit in silence sometimes and then he would talk and her say he would sometimes read his mail and then he would ask her questions. And so the
Few very interesting things about this and they cut it in opposing directions with respect to my being convinced that that all of this was was true and real. The first was that he was personally the most charismatic representative of this whole project I'd ever met, right. So he was just, you know, it was like a light seemed to be shining out of his eyes.
He really was the he read as the the kind of prototypical Shakti filled Guru, right? And, and that was communicated on many levels and and one level was certainly somewhat spooky. I'm at least I have no explanation for it, which is, there was okay an energy about him that, you know, I found undeniable even when I was disposed to deny it. I mean, it was, there was not a lot of scope for
Confirmation bias here because at a certain point, I became convinced that his teaching was mistaken in some very important ways and that he was actually doing people harm and he would have done me harm. Had I not had my wits about me and you. And when I finally got the teaching in hand that I thought really, really delivered the full message, which was the dzogchen teachings and Tibetan Buddhism. And I met, you know, some of the great Zoda
and masters of that time and started studying with him. I still made one or two subsequent trips to sit with pooja-ji because he had been so valuable to me in other ways and I found him so attractive and, you know, just as a person and so on those trips it might have just been one of my newest just been one like 10-day time with him. I was fully invested in wanting, the Tibetan Lamas in the dzogchen master. So I was studying with to be
More charismatic than he was. Right because I agreed with their teaching and as but and yet in his presence, you know, and there was some analog to what was going on with him with several other teachers. I spent time with but I mean he had a turned up to just a thousand watts and it was it was amazing and it was like it was it was a one of the the aspects of this experience. And this is the part that I really can't explain just sitting with him just
Being in the room with him felt like being in the, you know, the the third month of a three-month Meditation Retreat. I mean who died? I just felt myself, more or less instantly inducted into a, you know, a stay completely blown out, parasympathetic nervous system state, right? And who's just unbelievable and it was happening in defiance of my desire to kind.
Prove him wrong. So that's my my, the only evidence. I can give you that. I wasn't, you know, totally fooling myself, but it was, it was, it was quite an amazing effect. And it was in fact, obviously, he was having on many other people, but he certainly had that that effect on me.
That part of it is so interesting to me and I think I saw the effects of that in some people and there seemed to be almost a hypnotic trance that people could induce themselves into or become inducted into.
To just from being in his presence. And, you know, you are not someone who seems like, I would think you would be susceptible to being Bamboozled or whatnot, you know, you're very rational and you are a skeptic by Nature. So, the fact that this power, they had even affected you is just absolutely amazing to me. Well, you know, it's interesting to me because if we're talking about a time, when you were maybe 25 something, is that
right? Yeah. Yeah. I said something like
that.
So when I think about, you know, my own son or myself or my friends, at that age, with that level of some sort of charismatic strength. I even if you're very scientific minded or very practical that's very hard. I would imagine that's very hard to digest and understand and not be Bamboozled by at that age. I mean, I just think doubt developmentally.
That is a time when we're really seeking without probably in your case more Direction, but in many people's cases, not much Direction and and you know easily seduced and I'm also kind of interested in your the the level of your skepticism. You know, how much time did you spend with him? Initially when you were studying with him, listening to his teachings? Hmm. Before you left. I'm trying to get a context of. It's hard to imagine, you know, the experience you had. I'm really interested.
Yeah, well, so the first time I went it was it was after Andrew Cohen had been there. So Andrew Cohen was kind of the first Westerner to discover him in in anyone's memory. I think there was one point where we're pulling Gigi has a much younger person went out to the west and taught some people. I think he actually went and taught alongside krishnamurti at some point. He was he's in the same spot as krishnamurti and his bye.
Oh somewhere, but then for many other years, he was just telling off the map for Seekers. So Andrew discovered him, I guess in the in the late 80s and then came back and proselytized. And when I went he still not that many people had gone to India to see pointed you at that point. And I went with, with Ram Dass and a few, just a handful of other people. So they were like five of us showed up and maybe they were nine.
Us total when we got there and I think I spend about 10 days with him, where we just been, you know, maybe four hours a day, sitting with him in his living room and then we would go back to the hotel and come back and do it again the next day. And that was always all he did. He didn't. He was retired. He was in his early 80s, I believe. And he was just in full Guru mode, but he was just not. There was no, there was no scene around him at all.
All and then what happened is Osho died and the the kind of the full laser beam of bereavement and and longing from that cult got pointed toward Lucknow and they showed up by the hundreds and it exploded into a huge scene. So that the last time I went that was beginning to happen. And so
The writing was on the wall and I realized I never needed to go back there again. But also my my path pedagogically had sort of parted ways with his teaching because it ways in which was just so obviously wrong while being right. I mean III take his his fundamental Point his point, about the nature of Consciousness. Really is true. And you know, when I teach mindfulness, now, it's taught.
Very much in Embrace of the Paradox of doing anything to recognize, what's already the case, right? So there is a and always already the case message coming through when I when I'm telling people, to pay attention to the nature of Consciousness, but it's there's no, there's no question that you need to start from somewhere and there are more and less auspicious ways to use your attention in order to get this project started.
And it's also true that many people can claim to have recognized that, you know, that their mind is, is the mind of the Buddha and they are not, they don't look like pooja-ji, right? And they don't look like anything. Like an advertisement for a successful consummation of one's spiritual hopes. And this was happening. These people were were kicking off all around me in Punjab.
Geez, living room, right? So, when I was there with a larger scene, maybe they'd be like, you know, 75 people on a subsequent trip, in a virtually every day. There'd be someone in the crowd who would claim to have have gotten it and get it so and given that pooja-ji was teaching. I just an all-or-nothing path, given to claim to have gotten. It was to be what's the claim to be fully enlightened? Right? And they done with the. Holy Name is no seeking required. No, no.
Of confusion thereafter. And so I saw one after another of these people get celebrated, as we've got essentially the next Buddhas of our age and some of them were so obviously neurotic and and just, you know, just grandiose and conflicted and not all that Mindful and then they just couldn't name a clearly. They were lost in thought and were unaware of it. And you know, this was you know the obvious
There are gradations here, but it was so it was so clear to see the mismatch between Punta G and this new enlightened addapt. Whoever he or she was that day and punches you would never acknowledge it, right? He would celebrate this person tears of joy would stream down his face, whenever somebody got it. And, you know, that was kind of amazing to witness and the celebration around these
People was in its own way beautiful. I mean you had people who it's not that these people weren't having anything like a breakthrough and some of them really were incredibly happy and you know, feeling you know, saying for the first moment in their lives, but it was also clear what was going to happen afterwards. And yet the, given the nature of the teaching they were the door to the Dharma was was there after closed for them because they just had to pretend to think that they were fully enlightened.
Because any recourse to practice or anything else was was a declaration that their, their initial Epiphany was what it seemed to be, right. So then this is weird, self-concept that got ramified there and and all of this was made even more paradoxical or even just frankly contradictory by the fact that at a certain point pooja-ji, recognize that the harm that Andrew Cohen was doing in his growing cult. And he
Of out him as somebody who was not at all, enlightened right now, as a, how does that make any sense of anyone who can say that their enlightened is enlightened? How can you, then go go back after your prize student and say that his Enlightenment was, was never the case. So it just it made no sense. And yet it was undeniable was the basic message about the that Consciousness is already, free is confirmable. I mean, a decide that is success.
For meditation, really does confirm that and pooja-ji himself seem like this amazing Exemplar of truly rare, psychological freedom. And whether he was fully enlightened or not. I have no idea. He certainly did things and I've heard of him doing things that seem, you know, fairly culture-bound and and idiotic, but he just he was an amazing presence and that was that was very, it was captivating and distracting for people.
So,
These problems that you've been pointing to and the effects of his teaching, kind of speak to this broader question that I have about these approaches, which is that the kind of thing that people are learning in the presence of pooja-ji or that you learned from these experiences are inherently subjective experiences. Your learning through some kind of introspection or having some kind of personal Insight through practice that, that that isn't tested in any objective way. And it really the whole process of
Science is built to kind of D emphasize the the subjective in our understanding of reality. So, in many ways, the kind of approaches that you're talking about seem opposed to the scientific method and yet you Embrace both of them. So how do you reconcile that?
Well, so I because there's two aspects to that one is the just a kind of a philosophy of science, you know, epistemological point, which is
You know, the seems to be all we have is conscious experience in the end and we have this this intersubjective game of talking about it. Right? So we have kind of a language game grafted onto a the phenomenology of being what we are cognitively and emotionally and on some level. We're all brains in Vats dealing with a kind of simulation problem. I mean, you know, the vad happens to be our skull, but in
the thing is mediated by every every piece of evidence of the physical universe is mediated by our nervous system and our, you know, our concept of having a nervous system and the story of evolution that delivered. It. All of that is the ground truth of all of that is still Consciousness and its contents for everyone. Whether whether they want to think about it that way or not and the starkest materialist even a materialist who would say that maybe Consciousness is an illusion, someone like Patricia Churchland.
Or Dan Dennett, you know, they still still all they've got is consciousness and its content and then and then the concepts we trade in linguistically and the the intersubjective methodologies. We've devised scientifically to have a seemingly third person conversation around, you know, third person facts, you know, for the so-called objective facts of the physical.
World, but also first person facts about the, the the nature of human experience and it's always seemed to me to be obvious, that there should be a first person that we first of all we have to rely on first person experience somewhere and as you know in every neuroimaging experiment that tries to get at what the mind is like, you know from subjectively we have to rely on on people's report of you know what it's like to be.
And, you know, that's, you know, that is hard to get away from subjective report as being the gold standard upon which even peripheral measures of things like, you know, stress, you know with akka with a cortisol levels in the blood or, you know, reliable, neuroimaging Maps. You know, let's say, we let us say, you know, schizophrenic scum into the lab and they're complaining of auditory hallucinations and
Then we put them in a brain scanner and find that auditory cortex is active. So okay, even if they're after we decide, okay, it's the auditory cortex lighting up that we're going to use as the evidence that these people are hearing voices. We only got there because a bunch of people came into the lab complaining, they were hearing voices, right? And and and if they stop doing that and they are over there or it became out of sync with what we were seeing and in the statistical maps of
Function, we would no longer believe the maps. And so the first person we can never really banish the ghost in the machine as far as talking about the nature of experience. And then the door opens to more and more sophisticated ways of of mining the data of on the first person side, right? So I go just what, what is it really like to be you?
The better and better, you get at observing what, it's like to be you. Now, granted that changes what it's like to be you in certain important ways. And so there's a, you know, there's a kind of a uncertainty principle there of sorts, but still there's a range of of competence here. There's some people have absolutely no ability to notice things that are there to be noticed about their minds, right? And the end and training.
And give them more and more of those abilities and some people have amazing talents, right? And, you know, two weeks of training and they're basically, you know, the next Buddha. And that's um, so there's got to be a bell curve of competence there, but there is a there there and it's just there's just no question everything I'm saying now is it must still be controversial in most scientific orders? But here's a piece that shouldn't be controversial at all and it proves the point.
Point. So you take a phenomenon like dreams right now, some people virtually never remember their dreams, right? And if you had a planet filled with those people, we could be in doubt as to, whether or not dreaming was really a thing. Right? I mean, we wouldn't want anyone showed up and said, listen, when I go to sleep at night, it's not like, I just, you know, the lights go off and, and, and it's as I'm
One who's dead? And then I wake up the next day. Know, I have these incredible experiences and some of these experiences are even more amazing than anything. I've experienced in the waking State. And, you know, I meet people who, you know, are dead or who, I know must be dead, right? I'm hanging out with famous people and it's just amazing. Imagine. If only one in a million people could remember their dreams, right? We would consider these people nuts and yet they wouldn't be and all of us would be dreaming.
In every night as you know, based on what our sleep studies suggest. And yet we would be waking up thinking, nothing had happened and this. So that's that is the condition wherein in with respect to the possibilities of introspection. Rather generally rise. Just there's so much to the mind that can be recognized from the first person side, but it's just not the same as what can be recognized from the third person side. Is that
Yes, you cannot do Neuroscience. Subjectively merely subjectively where you can't even notice that you have a brain based on meditating on it. But there's so many other things you can notice that are are rare disclosure is given how little the average person, or even the average scientist pays attention to these
things. Mary. I'm curious as someone who works in the film school, at USC, this idea of introspection and
Noticing, what's happening in your Consciousness to me, seems like that has to be an integral part of any art. That's done. Right? You have to start with some insight? Is that any is that something that that you just assume the students have some talent in already? Or is there any kind of attention to how to get better at that?
You know, I first of all, I just went listening to what you just saying, Sam. I just keep thinking about what unreliable Witnesses, we all are and it kind of for you to talk about basing data on an initial complaint. That's very subjective and it's subjective from someone who is especially not reliable, if they're suffering from psychosis of some form is kind of so tragically a you know, the start of research.
A human flaw in the research. Anyhow, the students, you know, I teach screenwriting specifically and I don't teach editing, which is what most of my practice is filmmaker, is and screenwriting in screenwriters, are living so much in their mind and something about that Jonas, and I have talked with other neuroscientists about, the default mode, network is a place that it seems that
A constant narrative to me when I think about it in terms of the people and teaching its place where there's a constant self storytelling, you're constantly, you know, shuttling back and forth from past present future memory, you know, I love this term that you use in waking up of grasping after Pleasant and recoiling from the unpleasant. There's so much of that going on. In the process of writing, a story in a screenplay and having to hit because it's going to
Movie having to hit points of a very predictable Rhythm and ebb and flow to a two-hour film where you are, capitalizing on all of those things that mindfulness is actually trying to neutralize. So, in teaching, these students, there are some people who seem more in touch with the story that they're telling of themselves, and they see themselves initially as writers and that separates them from from some
Nothing more fundamental and some people are better at it than others because they're sort of more lost in that self narrative or more convinced by it. I don't know, you know, it's hard to judge. I can certainly when I read their work. I definitely can see, I know it when I see it, someone who's really got the internal dramatic Gifts of, you know, keeping you on edge or you know, breaking your heart.
Making you fall in love, excuse me.
So I don't know the distinction. I am very good at hearing that, but I don't know. You know, what is the difference from one person to the next that makes someone just completely unable to really understand those rhythms of human desire. And and that self narrative that, you know, you see it in movies that connect in those ways with, you know, globally now. And I don't know if that I don't.
Where to go with that from there because it's just something I think about a lot. I don't have the answers. I'm curious. What if Sam can speak to the you know, Mary you're talking about the process of narrative thought that screenwriters are going through and of course, is as a filmmaker story is important to you. And I think story is important in Psychology. But, you know, you mentioned the neutralizing effect of of mindfulness. I wonder how Sam views. The, the value of that kind of narrative.
Thought given that many of the practices of mindfulness meditation do have the result of diminishing that kind of thought.
Yeah. Well, I think there's a misunderstanding around what it means to be free of thought when meditation is actually working because it's not a there is true that there are types of meditation that whose aim is to block thinking, right? Or order your if thoughts are arising. You, the meditation is not working. I mean, these are classical.
Asian practices where the goal is to get attention to stay on one object, the breath or a mantra or visualization to the exclusion of everything else. And each competing thought is by definition, a moment where the concentration on the chosen object has elapsed. And on the other side. The reason why one would do that is when there are two reasons, one is, you can then use that that facility, that, that muscle, that
You've built for a concentration to then notice some other fundamental things about the nature of mind. And that's so it's a tool of insight that you're you're building, but it's also its own died. Very diverting potentially, very diverting path into and of inner Oblivion and and pleasure. I mean, it's the kind of the, the heroin addict side, a potential side of meditation where you can just Bliss out with in constant, in states of concentration.
Is incredibly Blissful to be totally without thought? I mean, it's just it's it's amazing which is some indication of the cramp. We all feel thinking compulsively every moment of the day, but mindfulness generally inside practice generally is not a matter of blocking thoughts or hoping to get rid of thoughts is just it's breaking. The identification with thought noticing thoughts themselves, as appearances in Consciousness and not
Not feeling that there's a thinker in addition to the next arising thought. I mean, you're just it just becomes obvious that you're not authoring your thoughts. There just appearing quite on their own and in a larger context, which doesn't feel implicated in the same way. So there's an image in the Tibetan teachings, that in the end. Thoughts are like thieves, entering an empty house. Nothing for them to steal, right? So you just there's no, there's no problem with any and doesn't matter if they're.
Two full-size or ugly thoughts. But, you know, I don't know what it would be like to be a Buddha who still had aspirations to be a screenwriter or a fiction writer. Maybe that's still possible. But you know, at any point along the way, I don't view real meditation as an impediment to creativity. I mean, maybe it maybe not the most. If you may have other priorities at a certain point in your practice.
S or in your life but you know, and I take tremendous joy in watching movies and good television and reading fiction. When I do I'm going to tend to read much more nonfiction, but there's not there's no no impediment to my enjoying the the power of stories, right? And if I were, if I were writing fiction, which I you know, as a writer, I started out wanting to do just that, right? So I what was I thinking?
I don't know where you were going Mary, when you were talking about how your you're writing students, some of them step out of their their lives or reframe things. But yet, but maybe you won't, you weren't saying that but it reminded me of a time when I was totally identified with being a fiction writer. Am I? My First Girlfriend serious girlfriend in college was breaking up with me, you know part of me was missing.
Miserable. But part of me, a significant part of me was thinking, oh my God, I have to to write this this this thing right now. This is what I'm experiencing right now. I was just searching for the language to make this, you know, lemon into lemonade. And I'm at one point. I remember even maybe this wasn't The Break-Up. Maybe this was just a fight we had had, but I literally, I got out of bed and went into the bathroom in the middle of night. I was writing just just to make use of it and Bam.
As well, get something out of this. I'm in hell. And I was, you know, working on a novel. So use it and that, that, you know, I don't really have that much of that given that, I'm so much into the nonfiction of things these days. But, you know, having that writers module going in your life as can be amusing and can actually give you a kind of stoic resilience in the face of what would otherwise just be purely a
Bad outcome. Mmm.
Yeah, it's like the idea you have to suffer to sing the blues big and that's part of your identity as you know, and and sort of gives you a tool to yeah, exploit your misery, basically.
Yeah, but in those brief moments though, you're no longer miserable because you're actually pretty stoked that you have got great
material, that same way you when you do,
Engage with fiction. What's your go-to? A? What kind of what kind of movies do you
watch? Um, I'll probably watch anything that stands a chance of being good. And so there's no genre that. I'm I'm exclusive to but and the new golden age of Television hasn't passed me by. So, I've watched a lot of, you know, the series that would would not surprise you. I mean, the series that everyone has watched from The Sopranos on up, you know, Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad and madmen and I'm a
All that television has been beyond a guilty pleasure Miss. Some of it is just so good that it's, it's it's great to watch. I think, recently I, you know, we're now at the tail end of the pandemic, I'll or well, one hopes. I've been watching some old, not super old films, but films that I haven't seen for, for well, more than a decade. I watched, I had a Coppola moment. I watched both Godfather's, skipping us.
In the third and and Apocalypse Now, which I hadn't seen in a very long time. And I'm only, I'm always amazed that certain films, hold up. And I'm always quite surprised when a film I think is going to hold up, doesn't at all. And so there's like when I watch, I think we have got a movie as much as you know, there are certain Classics out there that are still great. Most of them are pretty bad by any
Any more any standard you use? Now? Let me just we've gotten better at writing and acting in film. I think there's just no question. That's the case. I mean, Brando changed everything with acting, but it's like, II most of Hitchcock. I find difficult to watch.
Thank you for saying that. We have a bit of a controversy going on on the podcast because I waited on your side, my side. So I get anything before 1965 or solos.
The controversy is more between Jonas and Antonio, damasio and between Jonas and me. Yeah, he is a fetish
for he's into Gene Kelly and
he actually worked as a movie reviewer back in the old days in Portugal. And he had this great story about how he spent the day with Orson Welles one day. Yeah, but what do you think about that these things have any value for you? Beyond us the entertainment? Because I find that one of the things that's really interesting about some
Some Modern TV and movies is that they actually can serve as kind of many works of philosophy. And I'm thinking of, you know, the kind of philosophy of Mind where you take a an idea and you go through a thought, experiment, to kind of imagine and work out some of some of the logic of the situation. So films, like ex machina to Think Through like what would it be? Like if you really had feelings for an artificial intelligence or or Westworld, do you think these
Some have any value in that
sense. Yeah. Well Westworld in particular Palm Bloom and I wrote a New York Times op-ed talking about just how significant Westworld seemed philosophically. So we we just we checked all those boxes. You just offered to me to check but and ex machina I loved I actually I strangely this is a not the most common experience, but it was a film I saw.
And and on first viewing didn't think it was all that good. And then, I don't know what convinced me to watch it again. But now I think it's great. I really think it was it was and they did so much. Alex Garland, the director did so much with with, so little amount was just a tiny movie. In terms of this, just one little spot is cool hotel or whatever. That was. And yeah, I thought
I think they are doing it, especially in this movies of this genre, trying to get us to emotionally, appreciate what we will be in for if we ever build true AGI. Artificial general intelligence really anything that passes the Turing test. I mean, that's an active imagination. That you just either. Make that leap or not. It's certainly better to have talented.
Hours and filmmakers help you imagine it then to just try on your own if you're not as talented as they are. So it's it can really bring it home in a way that is I think philosophically and ethically and psychologically valid, right? And I think if we, if we make the right films, you know, some of which we have I think we will not be surprised by the future.
If I mean, obviously there's the ways in which this is also kind of hilarious to look back at and visions of the future that have never happened and will never happen. If you go back to look at is like Kubrick's version of the future in 2001, right? Um, it's likely the Aesthetics of all of that and the it's just you know, it's this is a point that I'm here, thousands of people have made but it's, you know, it's just hilarious to look at the vision of future technology. That is so the day it is.
Is every bit as dated as, you know, an 8-track cassette player, you know, because it's either you have got these gigantic computers with blinking lights and toggle switches. And, I mean, it's hilarious. It just reflects so much more the time it
was made than the time. He was trying to imagine. Yeah. Yeah, The Day, the Earth Stood Still and also, there's this kind of obscure Spencer tracing Katharine, Hepburn film called the desk set, which is all about em, Iraq, the new, you know, room sighs. Computer. It's
pretty
Right eniac. Did they call it m Iraq?
And they called it Mr. Yeah, it was their fictionalized version excited. Yeah, but it's interesting what you were saying about watching felt older films and some of them lasting and others. Not I, I find like reading, you know, novels when I was very taken with when I was 25 or when I, you know, read them, 15 years later, you read them differently. You understand them differently, they communicate with you differently. And I think,
Think that happens with films to for years. I used to love watching die hard at Christmas, the original die hard and then and then at a certain point, it just seemed like this is really a clunky
thing reached its sell-by date. Yeah.
I don't know. It is a great movie. I think there's so much talent in that film in the writing and the cinematography a
lot I could do so here. So there's some examples of movies that I, at this point. Can't imagine ever see me.
Bad in retrospect. And, and I've had the, I've had the experience of returning to an old movie and sure that I'm going to love it because I love that last time and being just mortified that I ever thought. That was a good movie. Right? Like I just a complete sea change in my attitude toward toward Will in the same document but I but a film like the, like The Graduate, right? The for the first two acts of The Graduate. I think the third Act is a little wonky once Katharine Ross gets into
The picture, I think it starts to unravel a little bit. But the first two acts of The Graduate are so well done. I mean, the performances are so good. And the writing is so good, and it's just, it's, it's hilarious. And it's not like, it's not comedy. That is going to be. I mean, it's also also just so of the period is just it's it's fantastic filmmaking. And so we I would be really surprised to, you know, ten years from now, turn on the graduate and think all Masters hacky and embarrassing.
Borges, what's happened to me with a bunch of movies? I'm not sure. What is the prime offender here? I remember, watch. I remember thinking American Beauty was brilliant and I went back and watched it at some point and
is it because of the Kevin Spacey
effect? No, it wasn't. It was pre Scandal, but it was no, it was more had a difference of opinion with my wife who I'm not even sure with my wife at that point. I think we might have just been dating.
But she thought American Beauty was terrible and I was so it's sort of in her presence that I re-watched it and you know, with her, as a kind of backseat driving the experience. I just all the dominoes fell in the wrong direction. I thought, oh my God, this
is this is awful. I did not like that movie when it came out. I did
either. Yeah. I thought it was
great. It was enormously successful and well-reviewed. You know, that's what makes a horse race.
I have a funny example.
Which I just hasn't been released yet, but it's doing a podcast with Ricky Gervais and I told the story to him. So this will come out and duplicate somewhere. But otherwise you hear the only people have told us to I had a this experience with a friend watching. The film life is beautiful. I don't remember that. The Roberto benigni comedy about the Holocaust which was which is really celebrate. I think he won an
Oscar. It was he did Dan for best foreign
film. Yeah, and I thought it
Is horrible, right? And I thought it was unfunny. I thought it was just a completely misconstrued. I mean, I wasn't especially triggered by the, the desecration of the Holocaust. But I mean, that was sort of part of what I would. Just it just seemed completely totally misfired for me and I saw it with a friend in a theater and I'm just kind of moaning and groaning at various points, you know, just dissing disparaging the film, but he is being, he's moaning.
Groaning, but he's being moved to Tears by various moments of the poignancy. But we've completely misunderstood each other. We think we're a core like echoing and you know, eliciting these responses from one another. So we spill out of the theater into the light of day and I think Palo Alto I think was back at school at that point and we just simultaneously blurred it out. Are totally antithetical was like he had tears and I turned him. He
Tears in his eyes. I was just getting ready to shit all over this movie and it was sounds like it comment. It was a hilarious misunderstanding.
That's actually really interesting. We've talked a bunch about the role of the audience and watching the experience of watching movies and something we talked with Marco, you know, knee repeater. Yeah, and in a theater or I mean, yeah, there's things that happen outside of the theater to but certainly fears the most
Social version of that. And that the kinds of emotional contagion that happened among an audience, but you've just given us an example, the opposite of that.
Yeah. I know it is something in the context of covid. It's hard to imagine being in a packed theater and liking that part of it. But that really is part of the experience for a big movie
and small movies. I mean, it's just it's so great to be. I'm so grateful that I became a film lover at a time when it was always it.
Theater, right?
Let this one are it occurred to me. There's one other part to your question about the relevance of film. And, and I guess fiction, generally for everything we're talking about it. It goes to the power of story, which is just undeniable psychologically. I mean, this, this is this, some you can just feel it in yourself. When, you know, someone is telling me they're just talking about facts or talking about things. And the moment when it
It goes from just a mirror download of information to somebody say, okay, for instance. I was walking yesterday. I was walking down the street, right? Like you can feel the moment. There's a protagonist and there's a scene and there's something. Something's going to eat this up, but there's no plot. That's now unfold in something different happens in your mind. And and then there are these stories that do have this kind of archetypal significance for us, where, you know, they become kind of a kind of template through which
You view your own adventures and Misadventures in life. And so I don't think mindfulness or cutting through through the illusion of the cell for breaking identification with thought or any of those, you know, targets of the contempt of Life need deny this other aspect of our minds. I mean, there's there's there's part of a certain. There's no question that the
Power of story is, is a significant part of our operating system cognitively and
emotionally. Yeah. I don't know that. I think it, it eliminates it, but when I, you know, in Reading waking up and I and I have been meditating for many years, although I honestly am not a student of meditation. I'm a practitioner, and I'm probably a pretty sloppy one, but I do it every day for decades now, so, but I think that so much art, especially
Dick comes out of those places where you grasping, it, pleasure or recoiling from unpleasant, you know, things it's a way in which we cope with the imperfections and the confusion and, and the lack of mindfulness and a lack of our understanding of our deep profound Connection in Consciousness. With the natural world, the environment we live in and, and
So I think it's such a, it's such an important human practice art for, you know, existing in a world where things are not as peaceful and is blissful as we'd like it to be for everybody. And and I think how much I'd missed that which is terrible. I don't wish, you know, the unhappiness on people that that is at the source of their artistic Expressions, but it is so characteristic among artists of all media painters and dancers. And
Music but music, especially it's just so Universal. And it's speaking to that emotional plane. And the emotional plane is connected to the things, we love and hate and fear and all the things that are so, so far from being in a kind of peaceful mindful
Bliss. Hmm. Well, I mean, I would just say here that no matter how much you become a student of meditation, the, the failures of mindfulness.
Be there in abundance, for the longest time. I mean, it's a little bit like the concern, one often heard expressed more by women than men but mean by anyone potentially, when offered the prospect of working out with weights in a gym, you would often hear someone who really just had not done much of that and didn't know what was entailed and getting in. Fantastic shape. You'd hear someone say something like well, I don't want to get
Too big, right? I want to get too bulky. Like, I don't want too much muscle. I want to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger as though that would were remotely possible for most people without you, like, just insane genetics and anabolic steroids, and little toe down it, total dedication of one's life to the project. I think that's where most people are with respect to the very high class, problem of whether becoming a Buddha will screw up your your career as a
as a novelist or a screenwriter. And yeah, I mean, I think for the longest time you can just decide a it gives you this. This extra aspect of just assigning, what you want to pay attention to, you know, and and be you just be being sensitive to the consequences of paying attention to certain things, either deliberately or helplessly and then you find subtle or pains and Pleasures to get captivated by
Right, as it becomes, a kind of game of.
Continually being taken in by more and more refined delusions. And that's that becomes interesting. Right? It's interesting, you know, like yes, you're not, you're different kind of protagonist in the movie of your love of your life, right? You're no longer the starkly chaotic, unethical, unhappy, wrecking, ball that some people are, but you're still someone who's confronting the difficulty of
Navigating the complexities of the world, whatever your level of mindfulness, and ethical scrupulousness is no matter how much you dial it up. It is in my view that game just gets more and more, interesting. Right? I mean, it's because there's a very simple game. If you're just a, if you're a bigot and you're selfish and you're, you know, you're basically a sociopath and it's, you have you have pretty simple life, right? You know, you just, you've either people. You love you. People, you hate you. Don't you don't? You don't even
White. Love the people, you love because you haven't really figured out what that entails and is all. It's basically just about you know, what's for dinner. But the more you expand the circle of your concern, two more of humanity in the more, the more self-critical you become based on your awareness of, you know, the your own fallibility and the more interested you are in ways in which you might be wrong. And the more disposed you are to collide with the, the opinion.
Of other smart people who are playing, a more complicated game, you know, I just think all of that becomes more interesting and I think there is a way in which meditation, practice and going to spirituality, and the beliefs that can. They one can gather around all that. I think there is a way in which that can become deadening, and kind of Life become a kind of Life negative orientation, but I don't think it need be. I think that's, that's a
There's a that rests on a kind of confusion.
One thing that to add specifically that is the discussion of emotion something. We've kind of circled around a few times and in our conversations course, we have talked with Antonio damasio who believes that emotion is very important for Consciousness and and for human intelligence, what happens to our emotions as we become expert? Meditators, I mean, are we
Gather. The idea is not just to suppress your emotions obviously, but how do we balance, you know, taking the important information that is there within emotion, with letting them get carried away
and I can only say, what what is in the teachings as a matter of you know, kind of Doctrine and then it which I don't put a ton of weight on and I can only really talk about how things seem based on.
My own experience whatsoever in the doctrine, that one can't confirm in one's experience. I think one should kind of bracket with at best. It's a hypothesis, but it seems to me that there's a there's a very happy asymmetry in what happens to emotion the more mind. You truly mindful. You become and the asymmetry is that negative emotion like hatred or
Anger, really is predicated on a kind of lack of awareness and the lack of understanding of specific things. And the more aware and cognizant, you become of those things, the more starkly negative reactions begin to erode. I mean, certainly the half-life of them gets cut way down. And so and and the truth is their suffering component. The
Fact, that anger makes you suffer become so Salient that the righteousness that makes you feel like you're, you know, you're justified in being angry and you should just, you know, you should express your anger and endlessly to anyone who will listen, you know, it's not that it's not that you're never taken in by that again. I'm you certainly can be and I think there are appropriate expressions of anger and appropriate. Way is to use the energy of anger. But, you know, fairly early on you begin to ask yourself the question, which I help.
Is this useful? How long do I want to feel this way? Right? And mindfulness gives you the ability to just step off the ride more or less whenever you want, and it does it has that effect on negative emotions in a way that it doesn't on positive emotions. I mean, people that you could immediately worried and say, well, can't the same thing happen to love or joy. And I mean, are you fear if you're stamping on your anger or you stamping on your joy in the same way?
And I haven't found that to be the case, you know, there's just no,
I would agree with that. Yeah,
I mean, it did anger is feelings of anger and fear and anxiety and shame. And they serve as a kind of mindfulness alarm eventually where you just, you become immediately aware of the presence of your own site, your own contraction, and then, then you can decide essentially to remain a cleanse.
First or or relax. And, you know, the it feels so much better to let go of it that you tend to do that more and more and it's, it just, you know, behaviourally. It's, you know, in almost every case is far more effective to do that right there very few, even if anger was totally warranted in the moment, nine times out of ten. It's best to use as a just a signal of kind of the, the salience of the
Situation, ethically or emotionally, but then it's far better to no longer be angry because to resolve the situation right, to continue to speak and act from the, the impetus of anger is in almost every case to be lit. Made less effective in actually solving your problems. So it really has an asymmetric effect. And, and I mean, it's and that's, you know, it's all to the good as far as I can tell.
Sounds pretty convenient. Ya know. It's interesting when talking about art being produced as a means of expression of these the, you know, the things that are going on very busily inside us at that. We can't control. Always it's a way that people Express that and get it out like you in The Break-Up in the book. And you know the kind of kind of kind of happy bubble that comes with it because you feel like you're processing that but for me, it's also interesting meditating.
Is a way that I can check, you know, sort of picking a scab of some sort of offense against me, imagined a real and just like, okay, stop. But other things, another thing that does that very specifically for me is going to and this is not my education. This is not the background I come from is going to see art in museums paintings. Especially can really take me out of the pettiness. I mean,
Pettiness isn't a word we've used in this conversation. But that is so much of the busyness is just a waste of time because it's so petty. But so it's interesting to me that that it goes sort of Full Circle that people who are creating things are somehow having that impact same. As mine makes me mindful to go, and just look at Art, especially abstract art. That just, I can get lost in so that getting lost in that way. And I don't think
You'd use the term getting lost in mindfulness. I don't mean to put words in your mouth. But I think that certainly that's something that happens to me when I'm editing film, like, I definitely. And when I'm watching film and a theater, and I think you quoted somebody and waking up, we talked about suddenly you realize, you know, you've left the, you've left the world, but you're staring at this image on the more the light on the wall. I just think that those, it's a place that is like meditation.
A bit for me, even when, because trying to focus on what's going on in a scene and how to recreate reality in the scene is so absorbing that it definitely takes me out of reality and anything. I might have been worried about,
ya know. I do think there. I mean, that's for me, that's a clue to the the illusory notice of the self, because I do think everyone on a daily basis.
Loses their sense of self the moment they become absorbed in anything, right? So and we even have the phrase getting lost in one's work, but people get lost in play. They go, they certainly get lost in in watching film and television and I think that's one of the things that is so captivating and important about those media that they do, you know, they and and this is why being in a theater with it with a big screen.
Is especially good because it really is a kind of super stimulus and it is absorbing and it is it really works only in those moments when you have forgotten that you're sitting in a room will looking at light on the wall. And that's but that's a clue to this fact that this self that we think we have in each moment is gets kind of reconstructed as a almost a gesture of mind when we're no longer absorbed.
And in something, you know, and this is goes to the default mode Network and and what it seems to be doing. You can become more and more sensitive to those Transitions. And I mean, if nothing else, becoming more concentrated allows you to become intentionally absorbed in whatever you, you want to pay attention to, you know, so you really can move it. We've all had this experience of sitting down and trying to read a novel, but, you know, every time you get to the bottom of a page, you realize
I can't remember anything. You your eyes just blindly scanned over and you got to read that page again. And that's what that is, you know, that is distraction and it's is was competing for the actual pleasure of reading a novel.
It's a good. It's a crazy phenomenon. I've even found myself going on to the next page. Oh, yeah. I might hand turns the page automatically
the robot. The robot is reading.
Yeah, exactly. This kind of brings up talking about this brings up for me.
You know, in finding Layman friendly articles about subjects in Neuroscience that are relevant to the class. I'm teaching dreams the brain and storytelling, I said, I've read come across a lot of things about how daydreaming is considered important in a number of ways and I know, you know, just speaking to artists and being an artist and different medium that they dreaming. Definitely is part of you know, going into
Where my paintings are and just staring at them. And it kind of waiting for them to talk to me, give me ideas, and it actually works. But daydreaming seems to be part of the process for a lot of artists. And can you talk a little bit about the difference between daydreaming and that context and or different connection relationship to mindfulness?
Well, on the enemy of any practice of meditation, whether it's, it's a concentration practice or a classic mindfulness. Practice is distraction, right? So thought is certainly in the beginning, feels like it's, it's in competition with the practice because it is. But in the, in the second type of practice in mindfulness, practice eventually thought itself becomes an object of
This which is every bit as good as anything else. But the truth is, when you're really linking many, many moments of mindfulness together you are getting so concentrated that thoughts tend to just they just they arise and vanish. You're certainly not following the train of thought. You're not getting caught up in the thought which is what is required to generally speaking to, really let it elaborate itself. But the truth is, the project is so hard so much of the time.
Time that what you a very common Experience. One select sitting silent Retreat is that you sit to meditate and you are assailed by the most creative captivating. Tempting thoughts you've ever had. Right? So if you're a writer, you know, you're you're you'll have an endless number of great ideas, that you'll feel like you should rush out of the meditation Hall and write down. And and the only way to really deal with that if you really are.
Later in your and you don't want to lose what truly great material is. You actually just you carry a journal with you and you'll jot down things that you really don't want to forget because we've all had this experience of thinking that an idea is so good. There's no way you'd ever forget it and then that idea never comes back again and it seemed very much like a dream, right? I mean, like, that's what's so inscrutable about dreams that you can have this incredibly intense experience, or even a traumatic experience and then over the course.
Course of ten seconds upon waking it degrades. So fully that you can't even remember that genre of the experience was I just in a horror movie or a romantic movie or in a way. It was just, you know, it's gone. So the experience of trying to be a hundred percent mindful for most people is of having many of the benefits of being more and more mindful. But also of being opened to
To the most creative, most fertile side of your mind. You've ever seen right? In terms of the quality of the thoughts. And and so it's really it it there is a kind of have-your-cake- and-eat-it-too principle here and I've done some hybrid Retreats where I've decided. I'm not going to put down writing all the or creative work all together, but I'm going to do a lot of practice and they become kind of
So writing Retreats. And, you know, that back, that's incredibly useful because it's, you know, when you're sitting to meditate. I mean, it's, you know, the the loser in that bargain is the continuous meditation. Because what happens is, you sit down to meditate for an hour and you just, you leap up. I have a having had a bunch of ideas that you really need to work on for the next few hours, but it's a good bargain. If you actually want to mine, the most creative thoughts, you you're capable of having.
We spoke with cleaner Christophe recently with the scientist who studies mind-wandering and she made a very similar point that when one is practicing mindfulness, one of the things that happens is that you are diminishing, The Power of Habit of thought. And so if one thought usually habitually leads to another that you tend to have the same thoughts over and over again, and that in the process of mindfulness, you're breaking those chains of habit, which then frees you up to have all of these new.
Creative thoughts. If it's very well what you're saying. Hmm. One last thing that we haven't touched on you. Meant we married just ask you about daydreaming and you brought in actual draining. Do you remember tend to remember a lot of your dreams? Do you see dreams at all is as a source of inspiration or a window into the subconscious or or they just two random strange
experiences.
Well, at this point in my life, I rarely first for a very long time. I rare, I've rarely remember dreams may have certainly had very vivid dreams. You know that I remember and I've had lucid dreams and there was there was a period where I was trying to practice lucid dreaming. And one of the requisites of that is that you remember your dreams in the first place. And I had a, you know, had some minor success with that. So I know
The phenomenology there, but the truth is, you know, I spent very little attention on it in recent years and my common experience is of just feeling like I did not dream and memos, you know, sleep is is a Coy enough mistress at this point that it's just I'll just take whatever sleep I can get. And I'm, you know, I think there's it will many of these meditation apps have touted themselves as sleep apps as well. And they are, I guess they
Sleep apps because I have content. That's meant to help you get to sleep in reality. I don't I don't know what the connection is between successful meditation, sleep, but I believe, I believe there's at least one paper suggesting that it's actually, they're inversely correlated, which is to say that the better you get at meditating, the, the worse, you get it sleeping. And, and that, you know, certainly experiences on Retreat would suggest that that's true. Because one,
When you're on Retreat doing nothing, but meditate, you definitely sleep less, you know, you sleep much less and, you know, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But, you know, maybe it's a context in which you just, you just don't need. The usual amount of sleep, but it's not at all. Uncommon for people to be sleeping more like four hours a night. Then seven or eight hours a night on in the middle of a long retreat. Yeah, so my sleep is certainly not great, but
Part of that is me deciding to take out my iPad and watch The Godfather 2 in the morning when I can't sleep.
So, it's Mary and her friends who have ruined your second. You know, I hope this isn't a personal question. But how much do you
meditate? You know, I meditate. Very formally very sporadically, I mean, you know, I sit for 10 minutes here and there, I'm a part of this could be a somewhat, an artifact of covid. Because my my life under
David has been in some ways very similar to a retreat. You know, Mel is literally like, you know, house arrest for for many of us and it's been that way for me and you know, but I've kind of thrived in that context and I'm not quite sure how I would have thrived, you know, but for thee all my experiences of being on Retreat. So, you know, my life is such that I can I can bring mindfulness into it in a fairly continuous.
U.s. Way, right. So I got a good like there's there, many, many moments in the day, you know, hundreds of moments in the day. I'm even even happens to me while I'm watching a movie or television or, you know, having a conversation like this. Where the experience I'm having is exactly what I mean by meditation, when I'm sitting formally, right? So it's a, it's like a my, my ordinary experience is continually being punctuated by what I would call.
Call, you know, clear scene of the, the nature of Consciousness and some more and more of that from, for me. That's what I'm calling practice. Maybe. Like I'm thinking of my life as my practice and insofar as my life seems to be.
You know, neurotic and unhappy and and distracted, and distractible that that's, you know, I'm certainly failing to practice but the successful antidote to that for me at this point isn't. Oh, at least I got a good hour of meditation in the morning. Right? I like that. The hour of meditation in the morning is useless, unless the rest of your day is, is somewhat.
Like that hour of meditation in the morning, right? So it's like an otherwise. It's just a thought you're thinking that you're practicing every day and get you. Then you're going on to live the antithesis of that experience in every other moment. So it is much more about trying to notice, you know, many, many moments repeated, you know, in every possible context than it is for me to set aside a formal period.
Stays but I do do it but I do it. I do it spontaneously, you know, I just, I also do it. I'm very alert to the transitions between things, you know, the the moment of getting up from your desk, the moment of sitting down to it, the moment of, you know, going to the, you know, brush your teeth and you seen yourself in the mirror deciding to get something to eat, you know, reaching for a door handle. Like all of these transitional moments are moments where I, it's just a very
Rained habit. Now. What are those those are very often mindful moments for me. It's like I'm just it's kind of a it's almost like a rosary. You know, that is like you're grabbing another bead, you know, it's like then and that's I've kind of found all those beads that keep recurring in my day. And so yeah,
that's a really attractive way to think about meditation. I have to say that, you know, I've been practicing TM. So it's 20 minutes twice a day since 1987.
When Emma and doing them pretty much all. I don't think I've missed more than five medications and all that time and I've been thinking a lot about, it's interesting. You call them transitions. I keep thinking of thresholds when every time I, you know, I I've been making myself get up and walk away. I'm teaching on zoom and we're all on Zoom so much and I've been, you know, trying to get myself to get up and walk away from it, at least every 20 or 30 minutes, and my students get breaks that off and and and I
And I find with, you know, when I cry at literally cross a threshold, from one room into another. I mean, this happens everybody. You forget what you were going in that other room for, but they also seem like little changes in those kind of transitions or cleansing your palate. Almost mentally. Yeah. Well, in the vein of being alert to Transitions with taken up, a good chunk of stamps time, no happy
to do it. Yeah. Thank you so much for
her.
Working with us. Yeah. To talk to you.
Yeah, likewise great to meet you Mary.
This podcast was made possible in part. Thanks to ause Grant advancing. Scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. A special thanks to match. Here are Sound Engineering Editor to Nick Moran on bass. Lick a patent out on guitar. Jeff Brady on Vibes. Tottenham is percussion and Mark Whitcomb of DNA music labs.
