Susan Piver

have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back 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. Welcome

to the show. Our guest this week is Susan Piver, a Buddhist teacher and the New York Times best selling author of seven books, including The Hard Questions and the award winning How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life. Her most current book is The Wisdom of a Broken Heart, and her eighth book, Start Here Now, a guide to the Path and Practice of Meditation will be published this year.

Susan is also the creator of the innovative Open Heart Project, an online community to help you deepen your meditation practice. Here's the interview. Hi Susan, Welcome to the show. Thank you, glad to be here. We're glad to have you with us tonight. So our podcast is called The One You Feed, and it's based on the parable of two Wolves, where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says,

in life, there are two wolves inside of us. 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 these two wolves are kind of always at battle with each other. So the grandson stops and thinks for a second. He 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. There's something so moving and striking every time I haven't heard a thousand times what. I've probably heard it a couple of times, and each

time I do, it sort of gives me chills. There's something about the sequencing of the story and the clarity and possibility in the answer the one you feed it first gives when the notion that at everything is possible, that there is nothing sort of predetermined that is dark and foreboding, although of course, as we all know, you just have to look at the news, they're countless dark and foreboding. Things happen every day, but still, in every moment, you have the choice of what to nourish in your

own consciousness. And this doesn't mean, you know. I sometimes get upset at what I call the positivity police, sure, people that are always telling you you should think you know happy things and you'll have a happy life, or positive things will lead to positivity, And I think on some level there really is something to that, But on another level, it shrinks your world down to a thought monitoring, moment to moment process of wondering if you thought the

right thought or not, and if it's very claustrophobic. The parable that you're sharing speaks to sort of this moment of freedom and expansion that is I just will use the word hopeful again powerful And every moment is a moment to make that choice. And because you made that short, you know, to feed the feed one particular wolf in this moment, does it not mean you will feed the same one in the next moment. So it also speaks to the need for a present that is indestructible, that

is constantly turned up to eleven. And you know, as a meditator and meditators, luckily we have been given some insight into how to turn that dial up, how to be more aware. I like what you said about the I like the positivity police. You have a line. It was one of the things I was going to talk about. You say in um one of your writings that when you when you spot something you don't like about yourself, the tendency is to turn up the negative self talk.

I'm not suggesting you replace it with positive self talk. I'm suggesting you drop self talk as completely as possible and just relax. Yeah. I'm laughing because I really need to hear that myself today. Yeah, so thank you me for saying that. And then you you kind of go on from there to say when you're in the grip of negative feelings, you know, try and stop talking to yourself about it and allow your awareness to drop away

from your thoughts and and into your body. And I think that's I like that so much because I am um. We've had enough different things on this show that listeners will know that I'm not a huge fan of the positive thinking um movement either. I mean, I think there's a lot of it in it, but I think there's

also a lot of real challenges there. And so I really like what you what you said there, And I spend a lot of time, I've spent a lot more time recently really being more tuned into sort of what the self talk that's going on in my head is, and it is, Uh, it's certainly better when that can be turned off in a lot of cases. Yeah, I'm curious, if you don't mind me asking what what has your experience been with the positivity movement for lack of a better phrase, what makes you feel that way? Well? I

do you know? I don't know that I haven't like I wasn't dragged into a room by fifteen positive thinkers and and made to listen to Norman Vincent Peel at a you're splitting volume for fifteen hours. But um, the question that we ask on this show a lot is what's the difference between positive thinking and denial? Like it's easy to I think, go buy what you need, what you're feeling, and what your emotions are, and go right to self talk. That's positive that tries to bypass all that.

And then I also think that it's sort of what you said a minute ago when you were talking about it being claustrophobic. I think that this idea that we attract things to ourselves is there's there's some there's there's some grain of truth in that, but taken to its extremes, you end up thinking that anything bad that happens, you know, people attracted to themselves. So you know, if I have cancer, did I attract that to myself? And oh I just

had a bad thought? Did I make it worse? And I just think it you know, I think claustrophobic is a is a good word for it. I think that it's Um, I just think, I'm I'm I'm always skeptical of anything that goes too far in any one direction, and so I guess that would be the better way

to put it. Yeah, that makes sense, and it also sort of seems to indicate that who you are so tiny that a single thought can sway the course of your life, and that your mind is so sort of far to you that you have to you know, corral it in some domineering way, and who who you are is just so much bigger than any single positive or

negative thought. And the suggestion to relax is not necessarily to just blow it off or just to feel like, well it doesn't really matter, or upsetting things don't actually

upset me or anything like that. Here relaxed means allow, you know, to expand and include, like you were saying a moment ago, when negative self talk arises were often counseled to just sort of squeeze it out, like just shut it out, shut it off, or turn your back on it, or I don't know what, pretended didn't happen something like that, And this instruction is instead too, why didn't your lens, as it were, put on a bigger lens? Or step back and see that thought as one of

countless things that are happening within you right now. And you know, the sort of famous metaphor in meditation circles, if there is such a thing, is to see your thoughts like clouds in the sky, and one by one, of course, they all pass passed by. There's no cloud that has remained in perpetuity. And who you are is the sky, and the sky has no preference. The sky

can hold it all. And remembering that our mind is more like the clock, more like the sky than it is like any cloud system, no matter how powerful, is called relaxation. In a lot of your work, you do espouse the idea of allowing yourself to feel your emotions. Go ahead and and go into those emotions, or at least allow them to be And I'm I've been asked a couple of times a boy people recently, and I think it's an interesting question, which is, um, when when

have you done that enough? When have you leaned in enough for When have you allowed yourself to feel those emotions enough? And when is it time to start trying to move towards perhaps a more positive space. If you're if you're wrestling with depression or sadness, do you how in your how in your mind do you reconcile that? Yeah, So that's a good question and a personal question for me because I've struggled with depression all my life. It just as it's like my companion, my strange friend that

is always trying to tug on my sleeve. So it's it's an important question to me personally. And you know, there's a difference between feeling and wallowing. And yes, sometimes we do need to kick our own selves in the butt, and you know, exploring and relaxing and all that is just a place to hide. But feeling has a sharp

edge that depression lacks. And the key differentiation was made by Gloria Steinhum when she was asked in an interview she was depressed over the death of her husband's was probably I don't know, six or seven years ago or something, and she said, I'm not not depressed, I'm sad. And the interviewer asked the difference, and she said, when you're depressed, nothing has any meaning, and when you're sad, everything does.

So there's a kind of life, a live nous. That's not a word, I know, but there's a vital discomfort and ah ed genius in feeling, not always negative, not always positive, that isn't there in depression. And there's a difference too between what you feel and this your interpretation of that feeling. So where we run into trouble is in the interpretation part. So most people don't get stuck in a feeling. And I'm not including depression as a feeling. It's more of an absence of feeling. I would say,

you get stuck in the story. And Pema Children, the great American Buddhist nun and teacher in my lineage Shambala Buddhist lineage, says, feel the feeling and drop the story. And that is everything. That instruction is the alpha and the omega. It's it's everything and certainly changed my life, did it? So you you've experimented with that absolutely, And when you try to feel the feeling, where do you go? Um?

I think, you know, as you said, sort of into you know, try and be present with what's happening in my body or I try and just be present to what it feels like physically. Um. And and also you know, emotionally, like try and locate what that pain is if I can, if I can find it. Because I think what you're saying there the answer that question of leaning in enough to some degree, I think, is that difference between a

feeling and a thought. I agree. And your body is very trustworthy usually sometimes you know, especially when there's trauma involved, and still trustworthy, but there's more complicated. But you're feeling. Your feeling means staying with the sensation in your body, and then when it starts two pulse or intensify or dissolve,

then you go with that. And of course there are some periods in our lives a great, great heartbreak, someone dies, or relationship ends, or some thing tragic happens, and that felt sense in the body is on the present, but not really, because when you start to pay attention, even to the worst heartbreak, there are moments when it's not there, and the pain intensifies when we try to force those moments to expand or try to stand on one pinky toe on that moment in the midst of this great

sea of pain. But if you stay with how it ebbs and flows in your body, then you're on the journey. And no one can tell you where it's going, and no one can tell you how long it will take. But at least it's a it is a trustworthy guide. You wrote a book called Wisdom of a Broken Heart, can you, um, I mean, you wrote an entire book about it. So I'm going and I'm gonna ask you to say it in a sentence which is not not exactly fair. But what is the wisdom of a broken heart?

You know, there's certain things, let's sake to for psyke of conversation, that you can't game, meaning you cannot make them be there when they're not there, and you cannot make them go away when they are. And those two things are love and heartbreak. They're bigger than you and me. And like I say, if they're not there, you cannot make them be there, and if they're gone, you cannot

make them come back. And so when we're faced, you know, not usually every day, but maybe there's one or two times in our lives when we're in a circumstance like that, then all of our conventional notions of who we are and how life goes and what works and what doesn't don't it don't work anymore. They're not useful. So you are forced into this kind of naked state where all you can do is look at things with a fresh

and quite pained heart. And so when you're shaken out of your perch like that, you see things you hadn't seen before. Your priorities realign mysteriously everyone's priorities realigned in the same way, so that love becomes the most important thing in your life, and you can feel whether it's there or not in one second. You can feel the contents of your own heart, whether you want to or not, and you can feel the presence of other people too.

And this these capacities to hold love as the highest and um feel whether love is there or not immediately, and be able to feel into the experience of other people. These are the These are the gestures of a bodhisattva. This is the activity of compassion. And though it doesn't feel good, it's compassion nonetheless. And it's a dark gateway, but it is a gateway, and most of us don't step through that gate unless we have no choice, and for better or worse, we all seem to run into

a circumstance where we don't have any choice. So it's a gateway to compassion. And that's the wisdom of a broken heart. Yeah, there are those moments where you have to be open. And I think that's when I said that that that idea of dropping the storyline and feeling the feeling that happened to me, Um, you know, over something similar and it was Pemma Children's book When Things Fall Apart. That was where I first encountered that particular piece of wisdom, and like I said, it was, it

was pretty revolutionary for me. God bless her, God bless her. She has helped so many people. It's just astonishing how powerful and important her work has been and so many lives, including my own and yours. So thank you, Pemma. I'm sure she's listening. Um. There's a line I use a lot um. It comes from Victor Frankel, and it's that idea of that between um, stimulus and response, there is

a space. However, I think you may have improved upon it a little bit because you, well, what you talk about is that knowing how to create time, no matter how brief, between what you observed and feel and what you think. And because I think I think the thing that's that I've always thought about with that that Victor

Frankel quote is stimulus in response. We tend to think of response is external, like between what I'm stimulated and what I say, or but what I really like about what you said is I think that that a lot of times, that distinction between what I've observed and felt and what I think about it is that's that's the part for me that's so critical, is before I suddenly land on my fixed interpretation, and that's the place where you make the choice of which wolf to feed, exactly

in that moment. So I appreciate you highlighting that. And and it's so interesting because we we just imagine quite reasonably, because whoever told us otherwise that you're either failing something or thinking something and feelings give rise to thoughts and sure on one level, but on another level there is a gap. There is a gap, and it's you know, when Buddhists talk about emptiness and space and no self and stuff like that, that tends to be very confusing

to myself personally. I believe it has something to do with that gap. Yeah, that gap is important, and I think that's you know, I said, I've said this on the show several times, but that's what meditation gives me is it increases that gap just a little bit, just enough that I can start to say, oh, wait a minute, what's you know? I find myself going, do I have

to think that? Is that? Really? What I think is that, you know, is that the interpretation I really you know that I have to take because a lot of that stuff is so so instantaneous, particularly if it's UM something that's been painful to us in the past. It's it's almost almost instantaneous. Our landing on the interpretation that is such a good indication of a good practice. That's of a of someone who is really practicing. I'm not saying that you're practicing twenty five hours a day, and you

know who is. But that's a great thing what you just said, and truly a sign that your practice is going well. I think so. So one of the things that UM and you and I touched on it just before the show a little bit, and you know, we had one of our earliest guests on this show when we started was Lodro Rinsler, who I know you, who

I know you do a lot of work with. And we had a conversation on there on that show, and it reminded me of today because we were talking about the concept of basic goodness and I know that that in the Shambala lineage, that's a very big part of it, right, that we are all born with this basic underlying goodness and then UM things get layered on top of that, which is sort of a slightly different approach than the more traditionally Western version, which says we're born into sort

of original sin and and things go from there. What I always think is interesting, though, is when we when we come across something like what we were talking about earlier today, which is the the shootings in France, I always find that that that that makes me question that

concept of of basic goodness. It makes me feel like, you know what, if we start out with with you know, some degree of these things inside us, these bad things, it seems easier to how we get to that than starting out good and going all the way over to that other extreme. And I'm just interested in your thoughts on that. Yeah, it's the most horrible thing on that just it's been plaguing me all day, like we're as

well as everyone else in the world. I'm sure, Um, you know, it's a hard one because you think, okay, basic goodness, that sounds nice. Okay about Hitler and what about the guy that killed all the kids at Sandy Hook? And what about the Holocaust? And yes, what about those things? Because they are real and they are horrible and there is nothing good about it, and there is no mistaking that for oh, I just had a bad day. You know.

It's just even if you point to all the socio economic factors that lay the foundation for such horrific acts, it's still does not make it in any way bearable. So I don't know it's the answer. But I wrote a long post novel, I guess long in the blog isphere.

Now It's like, so I wrote, I wrote a post about this today because I can't find any compassion in my heart for people who for the people who did that, I just tell you straight up, I'm really if I just if they were in the room with me and I had a gun, I I would not want to be in that situation because it's horrible. So I feel like what I can do, and what a person could do, is you don't have to not hate anyone. You can hate anyone you want, and you can have vast judgments

of right doing and wrongdoing. Go ahead, I'll probably agree with yours, and you can just feel outraged and depressed and enraged and so on. Then nothing is off limits except one thing, and that is imagining that you are any different than that person, because you're not. And what I mean by that is the seeds of that behavior are present. I believe in us all, and if we lived the life that those people lived, we might have done what they did. I find that hard to imagine,

but it's possible. And the danger comes not when I get outrage, and not when I fight, and not when I condemn, but when I put anyone else in a less than human category, and it becomes quite a big problem. And we as was in evidence today, and people just took out guns and shot other people for some freaking cartoons. So that's the only wine I can draw in the sand. And when it comes to basic goodness in the face of things like this, I still stand by it, not

as a belief but as an experience. And the where what my mind always hearkens back to is when those people who did this thing today came into the world. They were not born with automatic weapons in their hands. They were born reaching their arms out for the warm embrace of whoever was there. And that is how it is. That's the basic goodness. No one is born hating. Everyone is born expecting gentleness, because that's how we're constructed. Everything

else is a weird and very bad mistake. That's the best I got. Yeah, I think it's it is a perplexing question. It's part of the reason I like the parable that we talked about, because it does point very clearly to hey, both that stuff is all there. I don't know that. I I don't know that I personally, um, I don't think I buy into the original sin idea, and I'm not sure that I believe that basic goodness

is our nature. I think I tend to feel more like it's all in there and and and how we live and what happens and the experiences were given choose to a large extent what what gets expressed. But it is a I agree with that part that you say about not thinking that we're any different, because as soon as we start thinking that people are different or less than human, that's when you know some of the really

worst atrocities have happened. And what you said to me is totally makes total sense, and it's very smart about I'm not sure I believe this, and I'm not sure I believe that. So that's the only intelligent That's the only thing an intelligent person can say, because I'm not. I don't want to say that people who say otherwise are stupid, But there's everybody has to figure it out for themselves. Is there such a thing as basic goodness? Is there such a thing as original sin? Nobody can

tell you, nobody, You have to figure it out. So my experience is mine. But that doesn't let anyone out. You know, no one should take my word for anything, right, nor should they take anyone else's word right. And I think to some degree it is I I get the the concept of basic goodness and and the I think there's a free notion of that. I also think that whether its original sin or basic goodness or is almost

an academic question because we all do. We all are faced with what is it that we are going to cultivate? What you know? For to be pedantic, what wolf are we going to feed? To some degree, because we can regardless of how we came into the world, we are none of us are either all good or all bad. Certainly when you get to be b our Age, you've got a lot of both of that stuff layered in. At this point at least I do well. I do too,

and I want to take issue. I want to argue with one point, which is that it is academic academic question. I think, actually the experience of your life and it sounds dramatic, but flows from your answer to that question. And even someone very smart named Albert Einstein. Yeah, presume maybe the smartest guy ever. He sends my co host Chris Obviously, it's the first time I think I've ever said anything nice about him in like episodes. So Chris mark this, well, Chris, what do you think about this?

Albert Einstein said the most important question a person can ask is is the universe a friendly place? I'm paraphrasing. I think actually the most important decision that a person can make is do we live in a friendly or an unfriendly universe? And you know that was Einstein, So he, I don't think was saying do I want to be

in La La Land or not? I think he was saying everything, every gesture, every action, every motivation, every intention, and whatever it comes before motivation and intention, which is a mysterious arising in the gap, comes from your decision on that point. Yeah, I have heard that phrase. I've I've heard that, and I am in no position to probably argue with Einstein except that he can no longer argue back. But yeah, I think that's uh, we can

we can probably disagree on on on that one. Because I think when you know, a lot of the evidence says that it's not terribly friendly sometimes out there, but I don't think that's caused for despair either. Another thing that you have said is, and I really like this line, you said that generally monumental realizations don't cut delusion, but the moment to moment commitment to work with thoughts as they arise does Can you elaborate on that a little bit. Yeah.

I live in Boston, Massachusetts, you know, kind of right next to Cambridge, actually in Somerville, and it's a very heady place, a lot of heavy people. And I'm not sure why I'm thinking of that particularly, but maybe it's

just where I live. But there's a lot of attention paid to what you believe and your opinions, which everybody should have, and you're sort of mm hm, mission statement, I guess about your life and reality and so on, and and I just find that those kinds of things are traps, they're entrapments, and even if you have this great some things fall together in your mind in a really wonderful and powerful way. That's fantastic. But that I don't think is what what actually creates real change or

makes you more capable of love or a more creative person. Even. I think it's when you take that realization into the world and watch your mind in a moment to moment. I don't mean in a policing way, but in a just a sort of friendly way, and are constantly making little corrections or decisions like Okay, that was a projection, let me take that back, or that was an opinion that what is that opinion based on? Again? Oh? Nothing, okay, let me just set that down. Oh I felt this

my strength, this like pull on my heart strings. When this person walked by me, I said about them was about something that happened in me. Let me look at that. So that kind of just checking in with your experience and living your experience and taking responsibility even I would say for your experience is a greater source of wisdom

than coming to any kind of conclusion. Yeah. I really like that line because I think that, um it really points to I think there's a real tendency for all of us to want a silver bullet of some sort, right, Like if I just if I could just you know, I'll get this one realization and then everything will be easy or fine. And I really like that you're sort of you're pointing to the fact that it's a moment to moment commitment that that goes on with the thoughts

as they continue to come. And I think that it points to for a lot of us, and I'm I am guilty of this to a great degree. But it's not another realization that we need. It's not something that we haven't learned or haven't heard for a lot of us, it's are we are we practicing kind of what we know on a regular and consistent basis. Yeah, yeah, that that that makes sense to me. And you know, wisdom

is real and important and and inseparable from compassion. Wisdom and compassion are the two sides of the same coin, and Buddhist thought and maybe other kinds of thought too, and not that they lead to it. Their inseparable, not that one helps the other, it's they're the same thing. And you know, in our culture we kind of separate them.

And I think wisdom is something that has used on its own and it does, it really does, but it doesn't make you happy or relieve the suffering of others particularly, So just a couple more things that we are getting near the end of our time, I wanted to ask you. You talk a lot about about fear, and I was wondering if you could maybe give just a couple of short thoughts on how to deal with fear of that

that people could maybe take away from from the show. Well, I think, and maybe it's just because today there's so many strong emotions swirling around, But I think that the only gesture of fearlessness that one needs to make is to not be afraid of themselves and to not be afraid of their own feelings. And that's where courage The courageous person is someone who is not afraid of themselves. And it doesn't mean that you love every think about yourself or that you always think you do an awesome

job at everything. It means that you're not afraid of your brilliance, and you're not afraid of your confusion, and you're not afraid of your doubt and boredom and depression, none of it. You're not afraid of your fear, and that doesn't mean you aren't afraid. It just means that you're not as scared of that, if that makes sense, and therefore you can open your heart in even the most difficult of circumstance, and that's a war That's the

my definition of a warrior. Warrior someone who is willing to keep their heart open even when things become very, very difficult. And you know, without contemplative practice or meditation practice to teach us how to do that, I think it's very hard, very hard for me anyway. So in that sense, a meditation practice is so much more. But it's also that is what you are practicing. When you practice meditation, practicing breathing, you already know how to do that.

You're practicing remaining with your experience, and so itself is a gesture of courage. Yeah. I think that idea that whatever we're whatever we're facing, we have the capacity to handle is such a which is you, which is kind of everything you just said. That ability to know that whatever it is, I have the ability to deal with it. I can feel it, and it is it will not kill me, it's not there's no feeling that has lasted forever.

So tell us about the open heart pride it which is something that you have started on your website recently, and I think there's a lot of interesting things you're doing. Can you share a little bit about what that is yes, thank you, because I love the Open Heart Project. I it's a mailing list, it's free, and anyone who signs up for it gets a meditation instructional video for me every week on Monday, with a ten minute practice and short talk on something related to meditation. And by sure

I mean usually it's under five minutes. And I started doing this because I would teach workshops or classes or whatever and say to people, if you want to continue meditating, please find a meditation instructor, and the people would say, we don't have meditation instructors in Utah or Bolivia or wherever it is that that person lived. So I started I think, wow, I'll just send I'll try to help. I'll send out this some instruction and answer questions and

so on. And now there's more than twelve thou people all over the world who practiced together, and it's really become a very potent community of people who I find to be really smart, independent thinkers who are not interested in the latest bs of how to be whatever perfect and are trying just their best to be human and live good, powerful, realized lives. And it's become my full time occupation. I'd say, and a few months ago there were enough people that wanted to study more with me

or go deeper in their practice. I started something within the Open Heart Project called the Open Heart Projects SONGA, which is I think a month but it's a paid description when we work together more closely and really explore more deeply the practice and principles of meditation, and also work more closely with each other as a community. So it really sort of popped out of nowhere in my life. I mean not nowhere. I knew what I did it very intentionally, but I really did not anticipate that it

would become this, but I'm really happy that it did. Yeah, I think it's such a great thing because that idea of needing and meditation teacher is is so helpful, and it is kind of hard to find experienced meditation teachers UM in a lot of parts of the country, and so it's it's great that you're using that technology too to allow more people to experience that. So listeners should definitely check it out. We'll have links to the Open Heart Project, your website and all your stuff on on

all of our show notes pages. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to talk with this This evening, Susan, I enjoyed it. I did too, so it was really a delight to talk to you. Thank you. Okay, we'll talk again soon. Take care by all right bye. You can learn more about Susan Piver and this podcast at one you Feed dot net slash Susan