Shozan Jack Haubner: Living with Leonard Cohen and a Zen Sex Scandal

and dampen our spirit. But it's not 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.

This is part two of our interview with shows on Jack Hobner, whose writing has won a Push Card Prize and has been published in The New York Times, Tricycle the Sun, the Best Buddhist Writing Series, Lions Roar, and other publications. His first book, Zen Confidential Confessions of a Wayward Monk, was chosen as one of NPR's Best Books of two thousand thirteen and won an Independent Publisher Book Award. His new book is Single White Monk Tales of Death, Failure,

and Bad Sex, although not necessarily in that order. Here's part two of the interview. All right, we are back with part two of our episode with jose and Jack Hobner. We're not going to go through the whole parable again because Jack made such a mess of it in the first episode that I don't want to put everybody through that again. Now I'm just kidding, it would be repetitive

to do it. Let's jump back in, and so I want to start with I can't help but bring it up, particularly since you included in your book and he made it fair game. So Leonard Cohen was my dream guest. He was the guy I wanted most on the show. And it's funny, I think I mentioned that to you and you told me, well, good luck his his monk name is Great Silence, and that sort of made me realize, like, Okay,

this probably isn't gonna happen. But you you talk about Leonard Cohen in the book because he was a fellow monk at the monastery. Yeah, that's correct. He's actually a monk before I was there. Um, so he took lay ordination, which meant he wasn't living full times on the grounds when when he was ordained, then he kind of ducked out of his very busy, influential life as a you know, an artist and an entertainer and a writer and a thinker. And Um went up to live at the monastery where

I lived, and this before my time. He's there for about I think it was about six years, kind of on and off. I mean, there's a little cabin up there, and he wrote one of his albums up there, and so he was a pretty consistent practitioner for maybe I want to say, like forty years. And he had a very close relationship with my teacher. Yeah, you talk about

in the book. You mentioned how your teacher was very old and you watched Leonard take care of your teacher in certain ways and how powerful that was for you. Can you talk about that absolutely? I mean, you know, part of the thing I wanted to the subtitle the book was death, failure, and bad sex, and one of the things I wanted to cover. We talked about it in the last first part of this episode was was failure, um and success, and Leonard Cohen was probably the most

outwardly successful man I've ever met. Um. I mean, he's a legend great artist, of profound artist, but when he was around us monks, he was one of us. This is not exactly your point, but we'll get back to your point. Um. It was really helpful for me to see that, to see a great artist humbling himself before something that was greater than him. And it wasn't my teacher as a person for me as a monk, um, it was what my teacher was devoted to and what we were devoted to as monks. A monastery is a

great leveler. It was wonderful watching Leonard come into our practice space and throw himself into meditation, just like any of us would. He never told rank because when I was around, he never pulled rank because of his status. That was a great lesson. There's something bigger than our personal life, our professional life. Watching him and my teacher kind of how they related to each other. Oftentimes they would just sit in silence for an hour, two hours.

Leonard would be sitting on a couch and legs crossed, just kind of looking forward, kind of hunt because I think his back was hurting at that time. He's very diminished physically, so it's kind of as a little elfin nomic Rabbi figure pukish grin my teacher. We were always trying to find the right chair for him because he was so old and he's just the meat was gone in his legs and his sciatic was like a red

hot nerve seven. So he had this nice chair for him and he'd be sitting in that chair and the two of them are just sit in silence together and while one of Rossy would say something Leonard, and Leonard would say something back. It was a really beautiful thing to witness. You say, I'm going to just read again. How do you say? His monk'st named g con icon

So that was Leonard's monk name, you said. Watching g Con serve our teacher un obsequiously and with intelligence, care and respect helped take the sting out of my own failures as a writer and as a man. You learned that there is something greater than artistic success. When you see a great artist humbling himself before it, I think that's just such a great thing to see. And then you talk about that he and Roshi had a similar project,

a shared vision. Roshi taught it. Leonard sang about it, and you describe it as the union of contrary things and then their separation again and the struggle in between. Can you talk a little bit more about that. That's a big one. But Um, the final song and Leonard's final album, which I was fortunate enough to meet with him before he died at his at his house and he played his album for me. And the last song is called Treaty Reprise, and that's referring to an earlier

song on the same album. It's called Treaty and and in it he Leonard says, I wish there was a treaty we could sign. I wish there was a treaty between your love and mine. Um, Roshi was always talking about the union between can sound a little bit complex and esoteric, but if we returned to that principle of relationship and not looking at the world as as me

and you. Let me give you example. I used to go into call on practice with my teacher and Um, you would do your bows before him and then you would give him your co on which he had actually given you. So the coon is a kind of problem that the teachers presented you with that doesn't have a logical rational answer, So it's a it's a it's a pretext to get in the room and interact with the teacher and for him to see where you're at and for him to help you um in your practice. And

for a long time he would shake my hand. That was the teaching he was giving me. Just reach out and shake my hand, and that at one point I had this insight um or an experience where that we were two halves of one experience. And I'd always been looking at myself as being me separate from the things I'm interacting with in the world I'm living in. I'm just one half of a full experience. And I think there's a lot of stuff in Leonard's music and in

Leonard's art that is straight out of Rosy's teachings. Uh Shinzen Young, who's a teacher I believe in the of Apastana tradition, translated for Roshy many many years. Choshi was Japanese impeccable English, so Shinsen would translate for him at retreats and um Shinzen's got a great clip on YouTube.

People can look it up where he's talking about Leonard Cohen's song I think it's love Itself, and he completely dissect how that song is an artistic version or representation of of um My Teachers, kind of classic um to talk up to Zen Model, I would definitely have to check that out. I mean, I like Shin Zen. We had him on and uh, I'm going to do that this evening. Probably you go on to say that about Leonard. Was he an artist consumed by despair? No, his work

was shot through with the opposite of despair. But in Leonard's world, the opposite of despair was not hope, it was clarity. Yeah, that was the sense that I got after listening to was his music for a while. There's sort of a schoolboy understanding of Leonard Cohen Um. Actually one of his reviews they said, you know to buy this album, purchase some razors along with it because you want to slip your wrists, which I would argue that's

a superficial understanding of his music. I think there's a Catharsis in how he expresses things honestly and and with heart, especially at the end of his life, like he had this late career revival, which I which is so inspiring because there's a there's a quality of humbleness to it,

but for something that's so much greater than himself. He uses images from the Bible as well as his Jewish heritage, as well as his practice with our teacher Brochet, as well as his work with um Ramesh Balsakar I think was his name in Indian Vedantic Guru um and he's offering us these these humble poems and songs um And

I think I really subtle spiritual teachings. A lot of times you listen to something in his later work that sounds like a love song, but if you if you sit listen and contemplate, he's he's actually, I think, speaking to issues that are a lot bigger in principles that are a lot bigger than just a personal life love

with a capital L kind of thing. Yeah, and I love what you said there with you know that it was clarity because I've never been able to explain why or what it is about Leonard Cohen that I find hopeful and inspiring because again, at a superficial level, it's it's construed as depressing, but there's a there's a clarity um or something that shines through it that I've never really been able to put into words. I think that's

about as good as as I could do. You know what what you said there, and it's just it is it is powerful stuff. And and I loved just knowing, you know, his life in Zen and all that was fairly well known, and and his humbleness. Um. You know. I I got to see him on one of the tours and it just was magical. I mean, he really was a special person. Yeah, he really was. And he gave everything he had to those tours. And I remember him telling me that without his Zen practice, he could

have never done it. And I kind of got it, you know. And then practice, you're just throwing yourself into these intense retreats, and you know, you do things you didn't know you could do, you know. And and he said his practice really gave him um power and it desire to give back um to give fully to his to his audience. I got that sense. I mean, just

one last point. You were talking about the clarity and what it what it is that resonates with his music that that isn't negative or nihilistic, And I just want to say, as a man, he always had a smile on his face, and he was always asking the people in the room what they need it. That was my experience of him. Um So, I always have the sense that he had a clear eye, that he was looking at society and life with and he was sort of bringing these insights to us with with a smile and

an attitude of generosity and not bitterness or resentment. You can kind of hear that. I mean, it's great to know that that translated into his life because you could certainly hear it in the music, and there's a sly humor that runs through so much of it. Yeah, he is the funniest songwriter of the last century. Yeah, I am sad to see him go, But what a what

a good life. Let's turn our attention to really what the second half of your book is about, and it is largely about the monastery that you're at and the teacher who was there. The teacher was involved in a I guess i'll call it a sex scandal for lack

of a better word. Can you talk to me maybe just a little bit about the basics of of what you know, the facts there, and then I think it'd be we can go you know a thousand directions from there, but maybe just start with people who aren't familiar with that story. Mercy once told me the zen Master is not a saint, but sometimes it's helpful to act like one. UM. One of the things that I was attracted to about him as a teacher was that he never once provided

a prescription for behavior for me. So what I took away from that after many years of working with him was, I'm not going to tell you how to live your life. I'm not gonna tell you what's right and wrong. You do what you gotta do, but you better believe you're gonna have to take full responsibility for it. That was the sense I got from working with him. The other thing was he was not a teacher who said sex

is bad. Ever, um part of life, and UM, if you're married, sex is going to be part of your relationship with your wife and part of your practice if you have a strong practice. So there was no part of life that was forbidden or off the table. Question was how do you practice within all the situations that arise and that you helped give rise to in your life.

So he had over the years touched his female students. UM, I don't know how many I know there there was a large enough number that it was a problem over the years, Um, there was a wide range of responses amongst the women to this touch. And I really discovered that once the scandal finally broke, I discovered how hard it was too boy come up with any totalizing ideas about the situation. Ultimately, I learned poorly, but I tried to learn to just listen. You know, one person would

tell me something. She would say that Roushi taught her a really important lesson about letting go of her idea is a good and bad when he touched her, and she's profoundly grateful and considers him the most important person she's ever met. And then she looked me, looks at me in the eye and says, you know, are you

going to tell me that experience is not valid? You know that I have another student come to me and say, you know what, he touched me and it was really horrible and it turned me off the dharma and I left the center and I haven't really practiced them since are you going to tell me that? Still tell me

that he's a great teacher. So all this stuff came out, UM in two thousand twelve when a when a former monk wrote a blog for a website saying, this teacher was doing this touching all these years and I'm blown the lid on it, and then that story just exploded. It hit at a time. I mean it's exactly like this time. I mean with Harvey Weinstein and now how Hollywood is going through the whole scandal now, I mean, you know there's something in the air, um that's bringing it.

Probably the Internet on some level, because it gives people who are disaffected a chance to speak up. In the Buddhist communities in America, there were many of these scandals. I mean, they are almost the norm. They are a cliche. And ours ours came at a time where the culture really wanted to talk about scandals in Eastern based spiritual communities,

and so, I mean the story went briefly viral. I mean, it was in the Daily Beast, it was in the Atlantic, I think it was big New York Times article about it, UM, And it had a huge impact on our community, and it raised a lot of questions and a lot of issues that a lot of sort of still kind of grappling with. We're talking earlier about good and bad and all of that and going beyond those certain things. And I think for you, you talk about it being the

coon of a lifetime for you. Right. The Christians asked, how can add things happen to good people? And then your version of that is, well, how can good people manifest bad things? Or how can this teacher who was so profound in his teaching, so loving and kind to me and other people that I saw, also do these really bad things? Like how does all that come together? And how do you make sense out of that? I mean, I don't think it's new, like you mentioned to to

Buddhist communities. I mean, the other classic example would be Um trunk O Rimpoche right and the fact that he kind of drank himself to death right. And and I've you know, I've talked to some people who are students of his who are like, I don't have an answer, Like what can I really say? He was a profound teacher and he had these real problems, and I just find it fascinating. It sounds though, like you are no longer part of that monastery and that this had some

role in that. Yeah, that's true. Okay, you just threw out a lot of stuff there and we could, we could have an episode three unpacking all of it. Um, so two parts. First, was inspired me to think you're mentioning Trunk inspired me to think about this. He was a truck and trumpery actually profound teacher, um and and supremely gifted, almost probably a genius in making esoteric Tibetan Buddhist principles totally accessible to Westerners by translating them almost

into psychological concepts that we could grasp. Very wild personality. There were certainly instances where he behaved in a in a way that was surprising to a student but had a positive impact on them. And let's say that what that way was sexual, then there could be another instance where he behaves in the same way towards the student and it has a negative impact. The question isn't just how do good people do bad things? But how how are we supposed to behave in a way that is

spontaneous and free but doesn't harm others. We have actually from our end, and we never know how they're going to impact people on the other end. And processing this experience with my teacher, really it makes me step back a little bit and check myself. UM, listen, more than I talk, pay attention to the person across from me, because it's really it's a really, really, really deep question. What is good? What is bad? What do people owe

each other? What is the proper relationship between a student and a teacher. Isn't the job of a teacher to push buttons? When is the teacher gratifying him or herself rather than pushing that student's button. I mean, they're really um there. There's questions that are not going away. And one of the reasons I wrote that chapter of the book and that part of the book was to talk about it. Um And I don't I apologize. I can't. I can't bring these issues up without mangling them because

they're much deeper than I go. But I think it's important to talk about that because I think it's gonna happen again. There's gonna be there's right out there right now. You never told us exactly how many downloads you have, but we assume there's a lot of people listening to your podcast, and and there's probably somebody out there saying, you know, my teacher is touching me and I'm allowing it to happen. And what do I do with that? What do I owe him. Um, is this something I

need to do? Um, I think we. I think it's important to talk about these things, especially talking about the things within these communities. So to the second part of your question, one of the reasons I decided to go

ahead and share this experience. And I tried to just share my experience around Roscy as a teacher and and my community within the scandal, and not speak to anybody else's experience because I got put in my place so many times within our community and the many meetings we had around this issue for doing just that, speaking to other people's experience and interpreting it a certain way. So

I thought it was important to write this book. Um. Sharing these things made it such that some thing that I've been thinking about for a while, ever since my teacher died, UM, kind of came to pass, which is that it's probably time for me to move on. And some people were uncomfortable with me writing about these things within our community, and there was a bit of a showdown about it, and I made the choice. You know what, a lot of things are coming together in this moment.

They're telling me it's time to go and go I did tell me podcast host, I think you'd be great. I've been thinking about, you know. I mean, I bought a car and I drove to northern California and I hung out by the ocean for a while. Then I house sat for somebody in San Francisco for two weeks. Then I drove across the country and I stayed with my parents for a little bit. Um, I met up with a friend, did some traveling. You know. I sat in a monastery for thirteen years, actually ten years in

a monastery and three years at a temple. Just spent a lot of my time kind of staring at one spot on the floor with a soft gaze for breathing in and out. And I've really been enjoying traveling and being in the human world again and sweating and traffic and worrying about money and thinking about having a relationship with a woman again, and bringing my practice off the mountain and into the world. Yeah, it's a different way to live. It's certainly I'd like to get some time

on the other side of it, you know. I've I've always thought, you know, I'd love to live in a monastery for a period of time. But yeah, it's kind of in your book, you you sort of describe it as both exciting and terrifying and terrifying. Yes, it's becoming slightly less terrifying. I mean I have to preface this all with it, you know, as then Buddhist monk does not stay up in the ter monastic training center forever. So Um, the path is to go to do your training.

You start out as a student. Then you become a monk, and you shave your head, you take tonture, you get a new name, you get your robes, and you begin to Initially, when you're just a student, you're taking responsibility for yourself and your practice. When you become a monk, you're beginning to take responsibility for the context that the active takes place in. And you have specific responsibilities depending

on your role. And the environment is teaching you to step out of yourself and to begin to take responsibility for things around you and to treat them the way you would treat yourself. And eventually you have to go off the mountain automnastic environment and and they call it um the oxhorting pictures, which is a famous Buddhist parable.

You you're in the marketplace again. You're the man with no rank living um and manifesting the pharma in the quote real world will I'll certainly be interested to see where it takes you. I assume writing will remain a part of it. Indeed it will. Yeah, let's talk about an interesting story that you tell I can't remember it exactly. You're mentioning that you were with I believe he was a Christian teacher of some sort, and you guys start

talking about demons. Does this ring a bell? That was what I was sick with pancrotitis, and I left the monastery for several on the longest side been away. I had to go on zonka, which means you're officially leaving the monastery. I wasn't easy, but I had to go. And I was um in Hartford, Wisconsin, staying at my parents place. And there's a nice, interesting, beautiful church called Holy Hill out out there. It's kind of this Bucolic setting with the church perched at the top of it.

It kind of ran into a priest there, and yeah, he's some interesting words of advice, and I'm not sure what exactly you're thinking of. Well, I thought it was interesting that he talks about, you know, fighting demons, and that you're asking him like well, how do you fight these demons? And he says, how should I know they're

your demons? Yeah? Then you go on and you you say, and this line it goes back to the wolf parable a little bit, this idea of not ostracizing the bad wolf for caging the bad wolf, but you cannot defeat your demons, for they thrive on the fight itself. Yeah, it's like an addiction you start. I mean, sometimes you manifest the demons, like when you're really angry and filled with a sense of self righteousness, right, you know, they overtake you. Other times you're pushing them away and trying

to ignore them, and they and they come back stronger. Um. The practice that I learned was just you let the thoughts and feelings arise. You don't hold onto them, you know, push you know, push them down. You let them come and go like the weather. But that has been my experience is that oh yeah, your little demons, your little inner demons, they're just looking they're just they're just looking to mix it up, you know. They're just looking for

that energy, that aggressive energy pull you in. It's like it's like trolls online. This is what your demons are like. If you engage. If you engage with them, that's that's all they need. No matter what you put out there, they're going to twist it to their advantage and pull you in deeper. So if your demons are like your inner troll, inner online trolls, yeah, I think that's great. I think it's this And it's what you said a second ago about you know, meditating and letting thoughts and

emotions come and go. It's I'm getting a real taste in my own life about how much resistance causes me pain and keeps me ensconced in that sort of very small sense of self. And it's a realization I think I go through at a slightly deeper level every year. I'm like, it's just all about what I'm resisting, and then I seem to forget that for a while and then but I just I think Shenzen Young is the one who has put into equation, you know, suffering equals

pain times resistance, you know, pretty beautiful. Yeah, it really is. And I just more and more, like I just recognize that, like it is my resistance to what's happening that is really responsible for the vast majority of my suffering in life, and yet it's a hard thing to let go of. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know it said, it's very subtle, but I mean, my my feeling is, uh, you know, the teachings tell me that you don't read. If you resist that,

you're in trouble. You have to make relationship with with your life. And there's gonna be painful things your life. And the key to not suffering is not to reject the pain, but but to somehow make relationship with the

situation that you're that that you're in. I mean, my my teacher talked about um this quote that you know, the true monk is the person who makes it their business to make the two mutually opposing activities, So the activity of living, living in the activity of dying, the activity of good and the activity of evil both completely their content. I sit with that a lot, because much of my suffering arises from life being a certain way and me resisting it, fighting it, trying to change it,

wishing it was another way. And then there's the you know, feeling bad about myself because I resist things, and and on and on and on. Let's talk about you refer to yourself. I think as a middle manager of the middle way which made me laugh. Um, I love the idea of the middle way, and I think different people have different interpretations of it. But talk to me about

what the middle way means to you. Well, I mean it relates specifically to this model that my teacher taught again, where you you know, the self isn't fixed or solid. You've got an inside and there's an outside, and give yourself completely to the circumstances that you're in. And that doesn't necessarily mean like you give your you write a check to the Zen Center for all your life savings or something. I mean we're not necessary talking about traditional,

say Western Judaeo Christian notions of giving. But if you're sitting there doing your dishes and you want to go check your email instead, maybe you just give yourself to the feeling of the plate in your hands, the activity of scrubbing the mall off your um dishes. So the middle way is collapsing the distance between self and other, dissolving that distance and the two come come together. It's not picking one thing or another, you know. Um, the mind is like a pinball and it's just bouncing from

one thought an idea to another. And when you give it what it wants it wants something new. Um, So you're always chasing things. When you just obey your that little dog inside you that's always yapping. The middle way for me is the practice of dissolving that sense of self in complete giving. And my mentor taught me there's two ways you can give. You receive or you initiate.

So my teacher would was manifesting this principle when he would shake my hand, because when you think about it, when you shake your hand, you're reaching out, you're initiating, and you're receiving their hand. So the two halves are becoming one, and the sense of self is dissolving in a in a sense of we right. Um. Then of course you step, you separate and now you're you're separate again. So you can't stay in that unity or that connection symbolized by the touching of the hands. You can't stay

in that heaven realm forever. You've got to come back to the world. Used to say, you know, there are no toilets and no restaurants, and of them, you know, So the messy part of human existence is the eating and the shipping is beautiful. The middle way, we don't reject the human world and we don't attach to the heaven world. It's the middle way right between the two paths. Just like the Buddha who Soco Buddha figure. He lived

the life of a glorious prince. I mean you read about his early life, which is somewhat apocryphal and somewhat mythical. You read about his early life and it was like he was living at a combination between like Hugh Hefsner mansion meets a cultural center or something. I mean, he had all the pleasures that he wanted. He was a Kardashian basically, yeah, with like a super high i Q or something and everything you could possibly want, power, money, facts, talent.

But he didn't find happiness there. So he threw all that aside. He went into the um forest and he starved himself. They said if he touched it, if he touched his belly, he grabbed his spine and he was so thin. And when he found is his ego survived that experience as well. So his ego was fed by the life of being a Kardashian, and his ego was fed by the life of being a spiritual or nuncient. So he decided to practice the middle way. Wait, right

down the middle. We need two extremes. As this show has gone on, I think more and more that has become the teaching for me that I just see it in in so many aspects of life that like you say that right down the middle of the two opposites, it's not a mediocrity. There's just a wisdom in rejecting

the extremes. Um. Although I'm drawn to them in a certain way, I certainly think that they led me astray many times, and I can see so much of human suffering coming from being at one extreme or the other. In a lot of ways. Might work at the monastery actually brought me to a certain extremes and then I was able to relax. Okay I went there, you know, and then go to an opposite extreme, Okay, I went there. Sometimes you actually do have to go to the extremes

order to find find the middle way. I mean, that's another thing we can learn from the Buddha's life. You know, it's a path. I mean, he didn't just wake up one morning and say, you know what middle way? I mean,

he had to go to the extremes. You know. It brings me back to what I was thinking talking about earlier if you could do do what you have to do in life, but but you'll have to take responsibility for it, and gradually maybe you mature and ripen and develop and realize it's not so interesting or sexy or profound to chase the life of a Kardashian. Maybe it's

just a different version of ego gratification. If I chase a purely spiritual path that completely rejects the world and says it's bad, Like, maybe there really is a possibility to wake up right here and now in the present moment, no matter what I'm doing, no matter what situation I'm in, whether it's standing at a line at Trader Joe's, you know, and part of you wants to die. I mean, I'm

speaking from personally to pick. I want to get on Facebook and on my phone, and if I'm gonna do that, maybe I do that, but bringing a quality of attention and focus to it. I'm waking up in the present moment instead of chasing pleasure or spiritual success. In the last episode, I promised ayahuasca, So we're not going to go into the whole thing. You got involved in that at least at one time, and people can read the

book and it's not not really big deal. But what I'm going to talk about, though, is one of my favorite, one of my favorite parts of the book where you're describing this friend of yours who he says, you know, he insists the the plant has no side effects. But I have noticed at least two very troubling developments since he started doing these ceremonies. A fondness for t shirts with howling wolves on them, and a tendency to sign

off his emails with love and light. Yeah, that sort of thumbs up my feeling feelings about a lot of the americanization of the aahuasca practice, which actually runs many, many, many millennia back, and it's very deep, taking um enthogenic or hallucinogenic plants as part of a ritual and part of experience. And I did take ayahuasca a few times, more out of curiosity than anything, and it's found it to be a very very interesting experience. Um. And boy,

that that would be a whole podcast in it of itself. Um, It's not something I'm pursuing um as a practice. It compliments practice in interesting ways. And I think I needed to a jolt after thirteen years of zen monastic life wanted to try something a little bit different and that you know, I mean when you're in the Zend circles, that those circles inevitably overlap with the ahauasca circles because people with spiritual practice outside of the conventional traditional practices

in America tends to meet each other. Yeah. We had a guest on spring Washam who's part of the Spirit Rock teaching community, who also leads ayahuasca retreats in Peru, and we were just talking about how like the controversy that she's stirring up with that, and it's just an interesting You're right, you do come across these same sort of circles and and it's it's interesting discussion. Yeah, it's

a very it's a very interesting discussion. I mean, I wouldn't recommend ayahuaska to anyone, at least not in the same way that I would recommend zazaan or meditation, although I wouldn't necessarily even recommend that. If people find it and they want to do it, I think, you know, go for it. And for me, it was very interesting, very profound, and I'm still processing it. You know, when you take a plant or ingest a substance that changes

your mind set. The temptation is to fall in love with that change and to fixate and attached to it and start projecting, um all kinds of stories around it, and none of that is then by any stretch of the imagination. But I also think that in a lot of Zen communities there's a kind of a tightness about ayahuasca. You know. Then then people can be a little bit

anal retentive sometimes. And um, I'm not saying that that the ayawaska is part of the Zen practice or even my practice, but it was very interesting as a Zen monk to participate. I mean I went to Peru and did it three times there. Um I did two times in another context, and I don't know if I'll do it again. But you know, to participate in a in an ancient spiritual shamanic ceremony in the jungle as a Zen Buddhist monk, I would not take that experience back. Yeah, yeah,

I think it's definitely. You know, everybody's got to find what what thing works for them. And to save myself getting into lots of trouble, the one you feed is not officially endorsing taking ayahuasca. We're not taking ayahuasca. Save save the comments. I get it anyway. Thanks Jack so much for coming on for doing two episodes with us. I highly recommend Single White Monk, Tales of Death, Failure, and Bad Sex. It's funny, it's spiritual, it's it's a

great book. Nice work. Thank you so much. I appreciate that, and thanks for having me on. It was really fun to come talk to me again. It was definitely fun to talk, so thank you for doing it. We'll talk again. Thank you. Okay, take care, okay, bye bye. Thanks everybody for listening, and thanks to Casper Mattress for supporting this episode.