Robert Wright on Why Buddhism is True

just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Robert Wright, a contributing editor of The New Republic, a Slate dot com columnist, and a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. Robert is the co founder of Blogging

Heads dot tv. He runs the web based video project Meaning of Life dot tv, and is the author of Why Buddhism Is True, The Science and Philosophy of Meditation, and Enlightenment. I have some really exciting news. We are about to launch our first one You Feed course and I couldn't be more excited to share it with you. I'm really proud of the work that we've done with this and it will be coming your way for purchase

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This five step process is what I have used for myself over the years to help myself function better and be more effective, and I'm really excited to share it with you. So if you're not on our email list and you're interested in the course, i'd encourage you to go sign up today, and the course will be coming out on March nineteen. I can't wait to see what you think of it. And here's the interview with Robert Wright. Hi, Robert, Welcome to the show. Hi Eric, thanks for having me.

I'm really excited to have you on and discuss your book, Why Buddhism Is True. It's an excellent book, and I think listeners of the show are going to get a lot out of it. But let's start like we always do, with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of

us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear, and the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second and looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work

that you do well. I think, broadly speaking, it makes sense that if you reinforce your better half, that's the one that will prevail more often. I think one take home lesson of both Buddhism and in a way evolutionary psychology is that the challenge sometimes come and figure comes in figuring out which is the good wolf and which is the bad wolf? Um. In another word, sometimes by our nature, we're kind of inclined to think we're doing the good thing or the right thing, uh, when maybe

we're not so uh. Sometimes kind of getting more closely in touch with the way our our view of things is being distorted is half the challenge. Yeah, that's a great way to segue into where I wanted to start with the book. Your background is largely as an evolutionary psychologists, and you talk about our feelings that we have about things or our perceptions, whether they are true or not.

And you and you talk about how that evolutionary psychology, what we're really wired to do is to do the thing that is best to propagate our genes onward into the next generation. And that while that might be what we are wired to do, that may not be a what is best in the sense of for the world or even for ourselves, or be necessarily even true in

the sense of of seeing the truth of reality. Right, there's a slight qualification I'd make of that, which is it In a modern environment, especially, we sometimes are naturally inclined to do things that actually don't even get our genes into the next generation, whereas they might have an earlier environment. I mean, I guess the classic example is pornography. You know, men in particular seem to spend a lot

of time with it. And that's because in the environment of our evolution, being attracted to you know, that kind of visual stimulus would have meant being attracted to a real woman, while in the modern environment isn't necessarily so. Uh, everything you said is right, that you know, kind of even in the environment of our evolution, doing what was what we're naturally inclined to do to get genes into

the next generation. Um, you know, isn't necessarily good for us or for the world, and isn't necessarily conducive to

seeing the world. Clearly, in the modern environment, it's even more ridiculous than that because it's often you know, not even not even getting genes spread in any event, right, Right, The desire to eat sweet or salty foods to excess being an example another another classic example, right, having a sweet tooth in an environment that has only fruit and junk food, is is better for you than having a

sweet tooth in a modern environment. Yeah. Yeah. We had a Buddhist teacher on named Noah Levine and he said something to the extent of, you know, we're we're wired very well for survival, but not so well for happiness. Right. In fact, we're wired almost not to be enduring lee happy. I mean, if if you imagine an animal that was easily contented that just a one meal and then just sat there contented forever, that would be an animal that would never eat again. So a kind of recurring dissatisfaction

is built into us. And you know, uh, Buddhism's emphasis on suffering is kind of part of the human condition sometimes sounds a little overstated, and I think maybe maybe in a way it is. But but if you recognize that the word that's translated as suffering duca can also be translated by according to some scholars, as a kind of unsatisfactory, then it makes a lot more sense that that would be just kind of a pretty pervasive thing,

because natural selection designed is to be recurring. Lee discontented, never contended for too long, so that we would keep doing the kinds of things, pursuing the kinds of goals that would have gotten Janes into the next generation exactly. And to go a little bit deeper in that, particularly, the Buddhist idea of both craving and aversion tie in

with that perfectly well. The craving to continue to experience pleasurable things, which, as we talked about, are wired into us, the things that are pleasurable or the things that are evolutionarily good for us, and then the desire to push away things that aren't is in the same thing. It's it's too it's to help preserve the organism. But that since that's kind of baked into who we are, it brings up that sort of constant dissatisfaction that's driven by

craving and aversion. Yeah, craving and a version are central to Buddhism. Um not following those those as guides is central uh to Buddhism. In other words, not reflexively uh, you know, pursuing everything that seems as if it will bring gratification, and also not necessarily reflexively avoiding everything that seems forbidding. Now, obviously you should shy away from truly

dangerous things. But when it comes to dealing with our feelings, Buddhism counsels that we not cling to the pleasant feelings, and that we not try to run away from the unpleasant feelings that we make in a certain sense, I guess uh make our peace with him, but in any event, UH experience them uh with a kind of equilibrium that gives us some critical distance from them, and and that hudes you know, forms of aversive feelings like out and

out pain physical pain, but certainly includes as well things like anxiety, sadness. The Buddhist idea is that if you if you don't run from those things, then they will actually be less painful, or can become less painful, you know, with with enough kind of disciplined practice over time. Right, And so one of the key principles of the book.

You know, why you know Buddhism is true, is what you're saying is that the Buddha intuited a lot of things that we now know from modern psychology and evolutionary psychology to be true, or at least to be you know, prominently held theories. You know, he intuited those on a different level a long time ago, and now we're starting to have the science to show that some of those things are indeed correct. Yeah, I think early Buddhist writings

size up human nature pretty well. I mean, and it isn't just in understanding how fundamental just you know, kind of positive and negative feelings are in guiding us and getting us to either pursue or avoid them, respectively. But it's also an appreciating how subtly those feelings guide, like our thought, you know, like a lot, like how how some thoughts kind of feel good and we cling to those thoughts, and some thoughts kind of feel bad, so we reject them. I mean, you know, you hear a

lot these days about what's called confirmation bias. You know, that's a cognitive bias that leads us to kind of see the evidence that supports our pre existing views and kind of not not see or acknowledge or hold on to the evidence that doesn't support our pre existing views.

And I think if you look at the way it works, I mean, like if you're on Twitter or Facebook or some you know somewhere and you see a piece of information and you either you know, want to share it with other people, retweeta or share it or like it or whatever, um or you don't. If you pay close attention, you'll you'll see that it's a feeling about the information that's that's guiding you. If you retweet, it's because it

feels good to retweet. And so cognitive biases in a way a misnomer, um you know, so like you know, because it's not purely cognitive, it's actually driven by feelings. And that's something that I think Buddhist psychology was onto very early, and modern psychology is is really only just kind of catching up to. Right, You're talking about the idea that we're not as rational of creatures as we think, that our emotional and feeling centers tend to drive what

we think, the decisions we make. All that sort of stuff you say somewhere in the book something to the extent of that modern psychology is sort of coming to what Buddhism realize that are effective and are cognitive centers are really not separated, right, They're very interdependent upon each other, and that feeling is often what will drive what actually happens, and then our rational brain will try and come up with a good reason for why we feel that way, right.

I mean, the the opposite view, and a kind of traditional view is the kind of metaphor of the chariot, where the horses are your feelings and the rational part of you is the charioteer, which is controlling the feelings. And so in that metaphor there's kind of a sharp distinction between the two, and that may be kind of apt with with really strong and obvious feelings like rage and jealousy and intense hatred. You know, sometimes feelings just

just take over and it's kind of obvious. But but but I think it's important to realize that even in a more subtle and fine grained way, feelings can shape our thoughts and our perceptions in ways that we might not realize without paying really close attention. Hello Fresh is our sponsor this week, and Hello Fresh offers a wide variety of chef curated recipes that change weekly that you can get deliver to your house. You get to choose your delivery day for when it works best for you.

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the rest of the interview with Robert Wright. Psychology, or at least parts of modern psychology, particularly evolutionary psychology, talk about a um model of the mind, that is, is based on a lot of different modules, That the mind is not this one thing, but instead there are lots of different modules that that run different parts of the mind,

and that there isn't necessarily a central control. We tend to think of ourselves as being this person that is in control and does all that, and both Buddhism and at least the modular model of the mind both say that's not true or not as true as we think. Yeah, we have the intuition that like the conscious us, the conscious self is this kind of CEO that runs the show. UM. But when you start paying attention to your mind closely,

you start wondering, you know, if that's true. And one thing you hear it uh sometimes it meditation retreats is a meditation teacher will say, thoughts think themselves, and what they mean is that once you get your mind, you know, through meditation, into a pretty calm, reflective state, that's the

way it seems. You realize that thoughts. You don't kind of decide to think them, They just show up, they enter your conscious mind, and then you normally choose to kind of take ownership of them and say, well, I thought this thought, but you know, the idea is that

that's not really what's going on. And and this idea that that's not really what's going on does get support, as you suggested, from the modular model of the mind, which has the support of many psychologists, not all, but but that includes a lot of evolutionary psychologists who say that, you know, really the mind consists of a lot of different kind of players, and they're kind of competing for control.

So sometimes, you know, you may get a sense for this if you're like at a cocktail party and you're on the one hand, you're talking to somebody, but on the other hand, you can see ther derv's over their shoulder, you know, and you might feel some tension. You know, you you don't want to be rude, and you want them to think highly of you. On the other hand, you're hungry. Well, you know, proponents of the modular model of the mind would say, well, yeah, that's two different

kind of actors in your mind competing for control. Now, in that case, you can see the competition because it's playing out kind of at the conscious level. You feel the urge to go get the food. You feel the kind of urge to not you know, to be nice and and not go get the food. Uh. But according to the modular model, a lot of times the competition

plays out at the subconscious level. And so all oh you see is the thought that kind of one, you know, the thought that comes from the module, that kind of one, the competition. And so we are much less in control than we realize, we being the conscious self. But then ironically, through meditation we can in a sense, you know, as odd and paradoxical as it sounds, we can by recognizing that actually come to be in more control, behave more

reflectively and judiciously. Right, Because going back to feelings, what you're proposing is that so there's all these i'll just call them parallel processes in the mind that are going on, and as you said, they're vying for attention, and the theory that you propose in the book is the one that has the strongest feeling attached to it is the one that tends to win that sort of cognitive battle for attention, and that's the one that that sort of

pops up into consciousness. It's the one that tends to capture us more than the ones that might be more tepid feeling wise. That's right. And you know, again, if you pay attention meditation, I think mindfulness meditation can be a big tool here. You will notice I think that thoughts tend to have feelings associated with them. I mean, a relatively obvious example is if you're thinking about sending

a kind of irate email. Now, on the one hand, that's a thought, you're thinking it would be a good idea to send this email to this person in this kind of intemperate voice. On the other hand, if you pay attention, there's a feeling associated with the thought. You're kind of a little angry, or you feel aggreed or something.

There's a feeling associated with the thought. And you know, if you meditate a lot, I think you get better at noting the feeling that accompanies the thought, and that allows you to examine the thought more on its merits, you know, without the feeling attached. Um. Now, again, that's a relatively obvious example that you know, we all know on reflection, that's yeah, okay, sending this irate email was

kind of a feeling driven thing. Uh. But the point is that there are even subtler examples, and and then the larger point is that in any event, you know, I think at least that meditation can help you get clarity with important decisions sometimes kind of separate the feeling the affect on the thought and judge judge the thought on its merits. Yeah, I think that's very interesting. You say something in the book where you say, I find it easier to view my feelings with some measure of

detachment than to view my thoughts that way. And you're talking about in in the you know, in the meditative process, right, this idea of of just mindfully watching what happens, and that you find that it's easier to look at the emotional component versus the thought component. And you go on to say that that would make sense if indeed, feelings are the glue that make thoughts stick to your consciousness,

that makes you unreflectively take ownership of them. After all, presumably you can't start dissolving that glue and so can't get a distance from your thoughts until you learn to see it clearly and learn to view feelings with some objectivity. And I thought that was really interesting because I'm always looking for which comes first, the thought or the emotion, and and how do that what's the relation between those two. So I just thought that was a very interesting way

to look at it. Yeah, and I think a lot of meditators have this experience that feelings are a little easier to kind of see objectively. So like, if you're you know, beset by anxiety and thoughts accompanying the anxiety, you know this, this terrible thing is going to happen. I know it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen tomorrow. That's

why I don't want to go to this meeting or whatever. Um. If you sit down and meditate and have success in the in the sense of getting a little objectivity, probably what's gonna work first is just observing the anxiety itself, the feeling of anxiety. Where in my body is it? Oh, it's in my abdomen, and it's in this part of my abdomen, and by focusing on the feeling, you start

getting a little critical distance from the whole thing. But but but then, yeah, getting that critical distance from the feeling, uh does allow you, in turn to get a little distance from the thoughts. And I think it, uh it tends to work in that order at to say time though, A lot of what you would look at from a cognitive therapy perspective would tell you that if you change the thought, if you can question the validity of the thought, you can diffuse a lot of the emotion that's coming

from a thought that may not be accurate. And and I always find it interesting to to look at which of those two levers can I move? You know, Sometimes it seems like I can look at the thought and I can see the falsity and the thought, and then I can let the the anxiety, say, drains away as

I realize, oh, that's not really true. And then there are other times where the thought just seems like, well, that's just true, and no looking at it seems to do that, Whereas in those cases it's almost by accepting the anxiety and looking at the anxiety closely, it goes that way. So I've seen it kind of go both directions, which is why it's such a question I always have. Yeah,

I think in principle it can work either way. I mean, I think cognitive therapy works for a lot of people, and it makes sense and it and it can work like that where you just address the logic, like if you have some kind of huge distortion involving the prospect of public speaking, like you know, some people they really imagine themselves like projectile vomiting while doing this public speaking, even though it's never happened before. It's just a weird

kind of phobia. And you might say, well, you know, has it ever happened before? And they're like, well, no, it's there and before I mean, is have you ever don anything remotely like this? Well know, I haven't, and and it may that may work. Uh, and when it works, you know, that's great. And I think I'm a big kind of booster of cognitive therapy. And there is, by the way, a a fusion of the mindfulness based cognitive behavioral therapy. So some people work on it at both ends.

They in fact, that tends to happen anyway, I mean, just with meditation, just with mindfulness meditation. Uh, you know, question the feeling again tends to lead you to question the thought. But you're right, you can. You can in principle, start on either side of the problem, the feeling or the thought right, and sometimes one or the other will

be more effective than the other. In my case, like I said, sometimes cognitively it's like it just seems like my mind is in that place where like, no, this is absolutely true. This thought is absolutely true. Whether it is or not, that's just kind of where I'm stuck. Um. Another idea is similar to this, going back to the modular model of the mind and that the you know, the one that comes up and wins is the one

that has the most power. And talking about um self discipline in this case, and I thought this was a really fascinating way to say that. You say, there's a difference between thinking of the goal as strengthening the self discipline muscle versus thinking of the goal is weakening a module that has grown dominant. Can you talk a little

bit about what you mean by that. Yeah, So there there is a specific kind of mindfulness based therapy for addiction, for examples, and the idea is that when you feel the urge to smoke a cigarette. You don't push the urge away. You know, you don't say, I'm in a you know, I'm an exercise self discipline. I'm I'm not gonna think about cigarettes. What you do is you allow the urge to go ahead and assume full form, but

then you try to observe it mindfully. So so, uh, the urge to smoke a cigarette comes and it materializes, but you don't smoke the cigarette. You just sit sit there and entertain the urge. And and of course it takes some practice of meditation to to get good at this,

but it's doable. Um. And the idea is that what that does is it's like, I mean, if you think of the urge as an actual like an animal, like a rat in a laboratory, you know you're not giving it the food pellet, right, I mean, if you keep giving a rat a food pellet, it will keep pressing the bar if you keep if you keep giving the module in you that once to smoke cigarettes. I mean there isn't, of course, an evolved module for that purpose.

But metaphorically speaking, if you if you keep feeding the urge to smoke a cigarette by giving it a cigarette, well the urge will keep showing up. Um, but if you if you let the urge show up fully and then it doesn't get the cigarette. The idea is, uh, that's a very effective way to disempower the urge. And there's some actual evidence that that this works, that that this can be a very valuable therapy. Yeah. I've been

in recovery from addiction most of my adult life. And the phrase I like is it's kind of like stray cats, right, if you just stop feeding them, eventually they stopped coming around. But if you feed them, they're gonna you know, they're they're gonna, they're gonna keep coming. The modular model of mine in this sense works very well with the kind of your your kind of rubric paradigm or or you know parable I mean, for for the podcast, it's you know it really with with the modules, some of which

lead you to good things and some bad things. Um, it's very much like feeding them if they get positive reinforcement.

I mean, the way the mind is designed is that if they get the gratification, and what qualifies gratification is different for different modules, but if they get the gratification, then they will grow stronger, you know, like if hating somebody, if you feed that by then going around and saying the negative thing about the person, right, that's reinforcement for the feeling of hatred, I think, And and so the

reinforcement can differ. But but but the basic parable that that this podcast is under actually makes a lot of sense in terms of the modular model of the mind and right, And so I think the other thing that's important in what we're talking about, and it's you know, threads through the whole book and speaks right to the topic of mindfulness, is the answer isn't to force these things, you know, it's not to not reinforce them by forcing

them away. It's by examining them. And you actually have a phrase, and I can't find it right off the top of my head, but you say something about, you know, paradoxically, by looking really really closely at something, we managed to

get distance from it. Right. That is the one of the fundamental ironies of mindfulness meditation is that if you have something like anxiety or stress or sadness, and you don't run away from it, like if you're just feeling sad, and you don't have to be like a practice meditator to try this. If you're just feeling really sad and you sit down and rather than go you know, rather your normal reaction is to go, well, how can I

get unsad? You know, maybe I can have some chocolate, Maybe I can talk to somebody who will cheer me up. And that can be fine if you talk somebody choose you up. But but if you instead take the path of just sitting down and xamining the feeling, just going okay, fine, I'm sad. Uh, let's experience it. What's it like to be sad? What part of my head is the feeling of sadness located? And how exactly does it make me feel?

If you let yourself get close to it in that in that way the irony is then you get some distance from it, at least when it works, and and you you may find that Wow. I sat down and just you know, sat with the sadness for a while, and the more closely I looked at it, less of a problem it was. I was doing this today. I've been having back pain lately more than the normal, and what I realized is that it's generally the thread of thoughts that are going through my head about the back

pain that are far worse than the pain itself. I find myself saying things like, oh, it's on my back's killing me. It's terrible, I can't take it. And then if I just stop and actually pay attention to what the actual back pain is, then I'm like, oh, well,

this isn't really that big of a deal. I mean, like it just puts it in a totally different perspective, and it's it's the story that I'm adding on top of it that is causing me so much, so much challenge, And that's really that that looking closely at the thing itself instead of what we think the thing means. Yeah, I mean, in the extreme case, they're really adept meditators who can become pretty much completely indifferent to physical pain.

I mean I've had some success with it, like when I was on retreat and I developed an abscess too that I kind of fooled around with with that. I mean, like I would drink enough liquid to really make it because what would normally be tremendous pain and it was

way less painful than than usual. Um, but you know, even but you're right, you don't have to you don't have to meditate for days at a retreat to get some value out in the fact that usually even with physical pain, I mean, with with anxiety, it's often entirely in your head, so to speak. Right, But even with physical pain, there's often a certain amount of english that you are adding to it in the way you either anticipate it before it's actually showed up or you lament

it when it has showed up. And if you can can do less of that, you know, physical pain can be less of a problem. I don't want to trivialize it, to minimize it. I mean, physical pain is a serious, serious thing. But you're right, and this is something that's emphasized in Buddhism, is that there is the intrinsic pain, but a lot of the actual suffering is not part

of the intrinsic pain. So let's talk about the idea of essences and the the fact that we impute in essence to everything, and this sort of ties into the Buddhist idea of emptiness. Can you kind of walk us through tying those things together? Sure? I mean emptiness is in a way an unfortunate term. It is a very fundamental Buddhist concept, especially in what's called mahayana. Buddhism, which is a good part of the Buddhism in Asia. Um. And it sounds like, you know, the claim that look,

everything is actually empty. Uh. That sounds kind of depressing. Um. But let me let me uh by way of an anecdote from my very first meditation retreat, tell tell you what I think emptiness is best thought of his meanings. So I was taking a walk through the woods and I saw a weed called a plantain weed, which had invested a couple of yards of in houses, you know that that I had owned. And so I had spent a certain amount of time trying to kill it uproot

and dig it up whatever. And I had you might say, hostility towards it. But all of a sudden I looked at it, and I thought, well, why have I been trying to kill this thing? It's exactly as beautiful as all the other stuff in the forest. And in one sense that's kind of a trivial observation. But I mean to say, if I say to you, will look, it's not like the word weed is written in the d n A of what we call weeds, right. I mean, weed is just a cultural construct. It's like some cultures

consider there's some things weeds. Some consider other things weeds. We all know that in a sense. But when you have uh, such a powerful feeling, such a perceptual shift, right you, and a weed looks to you like it has never looked before, you realize that you have uh in the past, been kind of imputing essence of weed to it, and a really deep seeded way. I mean, it shapes your very perception of it, Like you just look at it and it seems to have this kind

of are a badness, um, But it doesn't. That's not an intrinsic part of it. And and and and that's what Buddhists mean by emptiness. I mean things are empty of essence, okay, And we go around attributing essence to things kind of perceptually and cognitively to some extent, when in fact it's just a human construct. It's not really an intrinsic part of things. And with weeds, you may say, well, it's not that big a deal, right, Okay, so you

tried to kill a weed. That's not a grave moral transgression. But we also do this with other people, right. I mean it's like you know my rival for you know, some some guy who wants a job I want, right, or is getting more attention than me? I mean I I you know, I I start to see essence a bad person in the guy right, and Uh, sometimes we do it with entire groups of people. That's called bigotry or racism or xenophobia, um so. And and you know, that's the kind of thing that leads to wars and

deep social conflict or in the current environment. And maybe it's political, it's ideology. It's ideological. You hear that some one is a member of the other ideological tribe, and you just look at them in a different way, you and and that, and that affects the way you process information about them in all these subtle ways we're learning about. So what emptiness means is that, in really subtle ways, without realizing it, we go through the world seeing essence

of this and essence of that. And often it's innocuous, it's fine, it's no big deal morally, but sometimes it really does get us into trouble. And in those cases, the kind of distortion uh that essence brings is worth doing something about. Um And Again, my view is that meditation can can help here. And so going back to the emptiness, idea. It's it's not saying that nothing exists. It's saying that these things of themselves do not have

most of the um. Going back to emotions and feelings, we're we're put in the feeling or emotion into most everything that see out there, were imbuing it. The word we're using is essence. We're giving it this essence that we then react to one way or the other, but of its own self, it doesn't have those things right.

It's another case of feelings infiltrating our perception and cognition more subtly then we realize and and the feelings are giving shape to this thing called essence that isn't really there. And and and one reason emptiness is really not a great word is that, you know, when I no longer saw essence of weed in this thing, it was part of a generally more beautiful this that I had. And in general, people who really adept meditators who say that,

you know, they kind of go around seeing emptiness. They report things being beautiful. It's not like they don't see the things. It's not like they can't tell the difference between one kind of plant and another. But the experience of emptiness apparently tends to make things more beautiful, it makes you more appreciative of them. Excellent. Let's now talk about what has been one of my favorite topics as of late, the idea of not self, and you talk a lot about it. I'm gonna ask you to to

to explain it more. But one of the things that you say, and I think this is really useful, is that you say, you know what, if you hear all this and it doesn't make any sense, do you fine? Just let it be and you know, you don't you get you don't have to get all caught up in it. Do the other parts of you know, contemplative practice that go around that and kind of see what happens. And

it's funny because that's what I did. You know, I've been reading about and studying Buddhism and practicing meditation for a long time, and most of that time that just idea did not resonate with me, did not particularly interest me until I had an actual experience of it. And I think that's really good advice because I would start to try and occasionally throw all the baby out with the bath water because I look at the not self thing and be like, well that doesn't make any sense.

And then I'd say, well, this is the rest of the makes sense. And so I think you're your idea of you know what set that to the side of it doesn't doesn't make a lot of sense. Is good. But let's talk about what not self means. And and you've got what I'll call a UM, a gradual approach to it um and and so can you walk us through that. You know, Buddhism is kind of famous for saying that what you think of as the self uh

does not exist. And one version of that is something we mentioned, the idea that the conscious self is not as in control as you might think. That's part of it. But there are also other dimensions to the idea of not self, the idea that the bounds of the self

or in some sense of lusory. You know, when you add up all the parts of the not self doctrine, it sounds pretty radical and crazy, and maybe less so if, as you said, you've had some experiences like I've had experiences, especially in retreat, where the bounds of the self seen to dissolve. But if you haven't had some kind of dramatic not self experience, and I haven't had the full

on version myself. I think the idea can still be of some use in a more kind of incremental way, as you suggest, And and what I mean by that is that if you do what we mentioned and look at a troublesome part of your experience, like some anxiety, and you you look at it meditatively and you go,

you know, I don't have to consider that part of myself. Um. And you know, I've had the experience with anxiety of just suddenly I was like, you know, I meditate on it for fifteen minutes and then all of a sudden, this feeling in my abdomen. It's still there, but it's as if I'm looking at like a piece of abstract art new museum, right, So it just no longer seems like part of me. It's neither good nor bad. It's

just interesting. And I think, you know, the incremental approach to not self is just to remind yourself that these various feelings you have, specially including troublesome uh feelings and thoughts, you have, identifying yourself with them is optional. Strictly speaking, you don't have to think of that thought as part of you. You don't have to think of that feeling as part of you, and in fact, meditation can help you really, uh, you know, kind of in a way,

in a certain and separate yourself from them. And I think I'm not just playing word games, you know. When I say that is a version of you know, that's an incrementive not self experience experience. The fact is that if you go to the fundamental discourse on the not self, what is thought to be the Buddhist's second discourse after his enlightenment, where he goes through the logic of not self, uh, to some extent, this is the way he puts it.

He goes through different parts of human experience, you know, thoughts and feelings and so on, um and says, you know, is it He's kind of he can be interpreted as saying, given the fact that you don't really have control over these things, given the fact that they can lead to affliction, right, uh, they can make you, you know, not happy, does it make sense to say this is mine? I mean, doesn't make more sense to say no, this is not mine? And and then he does say, you know, if you

say that with everything, then you attain complete liberation. Then you have the full on not self experience. But but I think even if you stop short of full on liberation, which you know takes time to say least, I'm not sure how many people have actually attained it. Um, even if you stop short of that, you can have incremental gains by just starting to question how much of your psychological quote self you really have to think of as

part of yourself. Yeah. I really like that that way of looking at it and explaining as you did in the book about I think they call him the five aggregates of the five heaps, right, the different things that the Buddha walks through. You know, your thoughts, your perceptions, your emotions, your body. You know that you can look at each of those things and and becoming a little bit less identified with each of those things, you are

walking the path towards the not self peace. And I just found that a very helpful way to think about it. And I know, you know, for listeners I've been you know, they know I've been talking about this affair amount lately, and so I really wanted to bring your perspective in on it because I thought it was a really good one. Well,

I'm glad, I'm glad it makes sense to you. Um, it is something a lot of people have lashed onto who have read the book, and I think it's the I mean, the larger thing that I'd like to emphasize that even if you're doing meditation and kind of therapeutic way, like you know, stress reduction and dealing with anxiety, you are closer than you may realize the kind of deep ideas in Buddhist philosophy, and and I think sometimes it

helps to understand the philosophical underpinnings of the meditative practice. And so um, we're kind of at the end of our our time here. But just to kind of wrap up you are you you refer to yourself as a

not very likely meditation candidate. Could you kind of talk about why you thought that and what you've personally gotten out of meditation, just because I think there's a lot of people who also think I'm not I'm not a good meditator or I'm not really cut out for meditation, and so I always find it helpful to to to provide other views on that. Yeah, well, I have real problem focusing on things I have, you know, probably a modest version of attention deficit disorder, but a but a version.

I I have a very limited attention span. UM. I also think I'm actually kind of emotional person. I mean, it's hard to compare yourself to other people you've never been them. But um, I would say that calm and equilibrium. People who know me would agree that calm and equilibrium do not come naturally to me. UM. And you know, I think I'm I'm capable of, you know, doing many things, very capable doing many of the things that meditation is

designed to make you do less of. I I you know, I think really negative thoughts about people, think really negative thoughts about yourself. UM. So I think I'm, on the one hand, somebody who's not naturally good at meditation. I'm, on the other hand, somebody who needs it. And I think that's a common thing. I mean, I mean, it's often the case that people who need it the most are are naturally the worst at it. UM. But I have found that, UM, it's doable, even for somebody like me.

For me, it was very helpful to go to an actual one week silent meditation retreat. And if you're really really poor candidate for meditation, you might think about that. But a lot of people pick it up more easily, you know, they do these needs. They may use these apps like Headspace or ten percent Happier, or they may you know, find a local community of meditators, or take online lessons or whatever. Is a lot of ways to

do it. But I would just say to people, even if you don't take to it easily the first time or the first few times, I wouldn't necessarily give up on it. It is challenging, and even once you feel okay, I know how to do it, it can be challenging to sustain the daily practice in some days. The rewards are very meager at best. But in my experience, you know, sticking with it UH is just a very good thing and changes the way UH you view the world and

changes it for the better and changes you for the better. Yeah, I would definitely agree. I am not a naturally good at meditation for whatever. I don't settle into it easily, but I found it to be really helpful. And I've also found that doing it for a longer period of time, as in a retreat, that can make a big difference. It can be a good way to recharge your practice. Just do that every once in a while. Yeah, absolutely well, Robert, thank you so much for taking the time to come

on the show. Thank you for the book. I'll have links in the show notes to UH to get the book and to some of your other works. So thank you so much. Thank you, Eric, I really appreciate it. Okay, take care all right bye. Yeah. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to one you Feed dot net slash support. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.