I'll get a team. It's you project Craig Anthony Harper's here. Who else would be here but the bloke who hosts the show. I've just met someone new. I just have a brand new friend who's been doing a hard cell. I will say on Bhutan, and it seems I have to go there, maybe move there, maybe become celibate, maybe change my life, get rid of all my stuff and just become monastic. That seems unlikely, but maybe that's going to happen. Hi, Emma Slade, how are you?
Oh? Yeah, I'm fine. I'm waiting to see.
Yeah, you've got the right hairstyle for the monastic life, right.
Yeah, well it's it's been pointed out that I'm not particularly her shoot around the head region, so thanks for that. No, you're right, I don't know. Look, my listeners would say to you, Emma, he probably swears too much to be any common but I can. I'm sure I can back off on that. I'm sure that.
Yeah, so you think about of silence is not the way you're going to go in your life, is it?
Or yeah?
Gosh, I literally talk for a living. Imagine that I don't have any other skills. I'm essentially an idiot that talks for a job. So imagine that that'd be Yeah, that's like telling a tradesman or a carpenter he can't build anything, but good luck making money.
Well, maybe we're just leaving happily there in Australia then with the podcast, and I'll just carry on here and being in an atset.
Yeah, well you do you, I do me, and maybe who knows, I might have a visit and some kind of existential kind of cathartic life changing moment. You never know, you never know, right, I've.
Heard it can happen, Greg, I've heard it can happen.
Yeah, well you would have heard because you are in tune with whatever there is to be in tune with. You are in tune. Do you think that happens where people go, I'm just going to head over to this place and have a bit of a look around, and they have no intention of any big kind of spiritual moment or awakening or cathartic kind of episode, and it almost it finds them rather than the other way around.
Yeah, I think it's definitely possible. I think it's definitely possible. I think it's about the right time, the right moment, the right place, and yeah, I think it can definitely happen, not just in Bhutan, but I think other places too.
And I guess not just the right geographic place, but mental, emotional, spiritual place too. Right, we're speaking in metaphors, not just like it can probably even happen in Melbourne.
Folks who know I reckon, I reckon, I reckon it definitely can you find those people, Craig.
I'm out. I'm on the hunt after this. If anyone needs something, it's me so many issues. How much time have you got, Emma?
Oh, you don't know time enough to talk to you.
Craig is absolutely fine, as you know, I just finished my massive four hundred and three kilometer walk across your time, so I am now sitting down a lot because I kind of need to slightly recover from it.
So you got me at just the right moment.
Well, we really appreciate you. Rather than me bang on about a dot point list of your bio or achievements, could you whatever you want to share with my listeners, just kind of introduce yourself, who you are, what you do, and then we'll dive in from there, if you would be so gracious, that'd be great.
Oh yeah, sure, okay, So hello everybody.
My name is Emma Slade or you can call me Ani Permadeci and I'm born in England, but I spent a lot of time in Bhutan, where I became a monastic thirteen years ago. So if you can't see me, you have to imagine somebody with no hair and red and orange robes. And I left actually a very high powered corporate job.
Slowly.
I left it slowly to become a monastic eventually in Bhutan. And I set up a charity for special needs children in Bhutan ten years ago called Opening your Heart to Beutan.
I wrote a book called Set Free, which people seem to enjoy.
And yeah, and I'm just an all round very enthusiastic let's make the world a better place type human.
Yeah you are. I love that I've done. Like I've had a bit of a look at your ted X talk and read some stuff and you you are quite inspirational,
although I'm sure you don't love the accolades. But tell me about was there a was there a particular genesis or moment in time for leaving the high powered world of you know, the corporate space and getting out of the suits and getting into the robes and getting rid of the hair and getting rid of pretty much everything, Like was there something that was there an existential crisis? Was there an event or was it a slow burn?
I think it was a combination. I think.
I you know, I had this turning point in my life. Many people have a turning point, I think, and turning points usually involve some difficulty, right, Actually, turning points often have that quality to them. So I happened to be end up being held hostage at gunpoint in a hotel room in Jakarta, and that had obviously a huge impact on my life and also my feeling about having survived and maybe what I wanted to do with my life.
But I think turning.
Points, I mean, I don't think it's an inevitable that if you have a difficult experience that it will inevitably change your life. I think it was like a door opened to kind of think more clearly about what I wanted to do.
But I could have carried on.
You know.
I think I think it is a combination of turning points and then steps after that, And then I guess I had another turning point on my very first vision. It to Bhutan in two thousand and eleven when I met a monk here, and so I think those two turning points feel quite connected to me.
It feels like.
One was very tough and made me question everything, and one was very amazing and made me feel very.
Clear about everything.
So I feel like there's actually two turning points, but they were quite quite long years apart.
I feel like, and this is just my perspective, so i'd love yours like I think a lot about the human experience, obviously with my research with the brain and the mind and human behavior and who we are and how we are and why I think the way I think, and where my stories come from. And you know how I see the world, Like there's the world and then there's my view of the world, and they're different things.
That's you and I are in the same conversation, but we're not in the same experience because you don't live in my head or thoughts or ideas or beliefs, and I don't live in yours. I feel like it's it's
a lot of us. And this might sound judgmental, I don't mean it too, because I think it was me for a lot of my life and probably is still at times we tend to do life on almost like an unconscious auto pilot, where we just kind of get up and do what we did yesterday, even though it wasn't particularly fulfilling or joyful or meaningful, or it's just like we're in this almost this cognitive groove or this behavioral groove, and we don't kind of think, what do
I want the next one, two, five, ten years of my life to look? Like? Like what is my what is my purpose?
Like?
Do I have a purpose? What does that mean? Is am I meant to be doing the thing that I'm doing? Not in a self loathing way or a self critical way, but in a almost like a self awareness way, like I'll shut up after this. But one of my stories is I built this quite successful business when I was pretty young, and then by the time I was thirty, I had a bunch of businesses in a of employees
and a bunch of money. And in the middle of all of that, I'm like, Oh, this doesn't feel that amazing at all, and not that maken dough and not that having employees and building a brand is bad. Of course, it's like, ah, because I think I kind of had this idea that I probably never really examined that when I have all this external stuff, then all this internal stuff will be great didn't work.
Yeah, I mean, I guess I'd say a couple of things there.
Firstly, you know, so I've just spent quite a lot of time in rural Bhutan with people who live as subsistence farmers, right, and they definitely have to get up every day and do the same thing, and their lives are harsh.
And you know, this is a subsistence line start.
So I would first of all say that if you have the good fortune to be in a situation where you have the chance to think again about those getting up doing the same thing, where you have a choice to change that, I think it's wonderful. But for many people in the world living very subsistence lifestyle, they don't actually have that choice, to be frank, because they need to put the potatoes in the earth and then harvest
those potatoes. And you know, so I think first of all, we should remember that even if we're having this conversation, we're already pretty lucky to be able to have that conversation.
Right, Yeah, yeah, true, Yeah, So.
Let's just remember that for you know, for a minute. But obviously, you know, external things are very helpful. It's really helpful to have a central eating system, it's really helpful to have nice dentist to go to. And I don't think we should start to loathe the external things. Yes, they support us, they help us, they keep us safe. It's like Maslow's hierarchy of human need. So I'm sure you'd have studied that in your time, right, So we
have to have those basic needs fulfilled. And if they are fulfilled, then yes, maybe we get the opportunity to think more deeply about what it is to be human and how happiness arises. But we should I think it's dangerous to take in a sort of two extreme position where we imagine that external things don't matter.
That it doesn't matter if you don't have a house or you know what I mean.
But it's just a limit to how far those things can give us permanent, unchanging happiness.
They just can't. But that's kind of quite handy.
One. I like the fact that I have a car and a house. They're quite handy, and beds are good and air conditioning in Australia air conditioning is good, and also food is nice, so yeah, I guess. I guess I think like that. Maybe what I meant was some of us grow up in a kind of a collective cultural kind of thing that success is about things, you know,
happiness is about things. It's about your stuff, what you have, what you earn, what you own, what you drive, where you live, what people think of you, what you look like. How many Instagram followers you have, I don't know, if there's Instagram and Bhutan.
You know, Instagram is huge and biton it's huge. Yeah.
Yeah, So I guess it's just more that maybe more awareness than judgment, you know, where it's like, yeah, that's great, you've got all that stuff. That's good. But also and I think for me it was that, you know, but also yeah.
I mean I think it's always really you know, actually most humans actually understand this stuff. I think when you really talk to somebody properly and they understand this stuff. Everybody knows when they're on their deathbed, yeah, that whatever car they have is not going to help them. And they also know that it that won't be the thing that it's hard to leave, right.
They know that. Yes, So I think it's often I.
Know it may be sound a bit more bid, But it's if you really want to get to the heart of the matter, just think of what's going to matter to you at the point of dying, and you can pretty much work things out from there.
Yeah. Yeah, So what is the day to day for Emma the Buddhist? None? The day? Like? What do you? What do you? What do you do?
Like?
How does your life work?
Yeah? Could you keep up with it? Craig, I think that's the question. I'm thinking. Maybe you probably could from the time I'd been spending.
With you, but I mean I definitely couldn't you overestimate me? Lower your expectations?
Well, I guess, you know, if we really think of the question. For you know, one thing I think about a lot. Is it better that I remain in the world, very active and helping in the world, you know, with actions and fundraising.
And speaking to people, et cetera.
Or is it better to go into solitary retreat and meditate.
Is that the better way as a monastic?
Not?
I think usually people don't have.
That dilemma, But as a monastic, that's our basic dilemma. Do we stay helping in the world or are we more helpful to the world if we're in meditation retreat or some combination of those two. So basically my life is some combination of those two. That's the kind of contract I've drawn with things. Right, So I've been you know, as you know, I've been doing this incredible walk across butan not that it should be called a walk, it should be called a massive climb across Darlp Mountains. Just
raised a lot of money for special needs children. But now from February, I'll be in a three month solitary retreat in the.
Mountains of Bhutan.
Wow.
So you know, my life can be either very active in the world helping a lot, or it can be very disciplined in strict meditation retreat. Because I'm unusual for a monastic, because I'm quite you know, I'm like a bit like I'm on rocket fuel, so I can do a lot in the world. I think, I don't mind speaking to people, and I'm mind organizing stuff. I don't mind getting stuff done in the world. So you know, I had those two sides to my personality, I think,
because so that's that's my world. So day to day, if I'm in the world, it will be I could be translating stuff helping to translate things from Tibetan. I could be helping children with special needs.
I could be talking to somebody like you.
If I'm in a retreat, then I'll be up at four in the morning and I'll be meditating and praying for around eleven hours a day, all seated, seeing no one and just training my mind.
Wow, eleven hours a day for three months. Yeah, yeah, yeah, wow. Tell me, Okay, tell me about this.
That stopped you in your tracks.
No, no, no, feless All right, right, well done, well done, em I'll tell you what for a none? Goodness, I'm not your normal No, no, you are not. No, I've met none like you. See what I did there, I've met like you. Tell me about the mind.
I'm you know, I've just spent six years studying a part of the mind, that human behavior thinking, and I'm fascinated to tell me about how you explore your own mind, how you understand the self that's in the middle of you know you, you know, what does that even mean? How do you explore your mind?
Like?
Yeah, what is that? What does that look like?
And it's difficult because the minute we call it the mind, we make it an object.
Yes, like a fixed.
Object, right, So just I mean we have to use the word to mind, but in a way that's already problematic. There's just a moment by moment, a rising of thought moment by moment.
But the question of whether it comes.
From something that we can call a mind that already that's a tricky tricky thing.
I think if we're going to bring things back to sort of basic Buddhist principle, we would say that there's a part of your being which is already.
How can you say, clear and awakened and without any confusion, but around it, if you like, if we imagine it like that, which is a bit crude, but anyway, but around this, there's like layers which cover it, and those layers are selfishness or self clinging.
Greed and anger.
And for most of our life we interact with those layers and they pull and they push us.
Right, that's kind of what a human life is like from a Buddh's point of view.
We believe, with study and meditation and development of more compassion, etc. That we can break through those layers and discover a part of our being which is like, how can you say it's a part of our being that could become awakened, could become a Buddha.
And so that's.
A mental activity which is no longer under the pull and push of anger, greed, and self clinging, because most of the time, all of our mental activity is in that, Yeah, in those areas.
Yeah, I don't know if this question is going to make sense, But tell me about the knowing and the understanding and the wisdom that we have that we've never been taught. Yeah, So that's like, yeah, that's there.
That's definitely there.
It's definitely there, and I believe it's there for all of us to discover for ourselves. And I think once you have some kind of glimpse of that, then you're already you've already stepped out from a lot of things which otherwise will like there'll be like the tail wagging the dog, right, yes.
Yeah, but.
Whether we call that knowing and that wisdom, the mind becomes complicated.
I think it's but there is that wisdom there for sure. Definitely.
I feel like the mind is. Yeah, Like it's like when we get any word, but we'll go with this four letter word M I N D. Right, it means different things to different people. Absolutely, it's like love what is love? It means different things to different people. It's like, well that's stressful. What is you know? It's like there are so many and because we have our own version of what love is, or what the mind is, or what knowledge is, or what good or bad is or
you know, and these are all subjective interpretations by different individuals. Yeah, it's really hard to find any kind of universal alignment. But you know, and then and then, you know, I think, almost ironically, the mind is the thing that gets in the way. You know, overthinking can get in the way, Like, well, maybe that wisdom, that insight, that genius that lives through me and doesn't come from me, Maybe that's got nothing to do with my mind. Maybe that's just me being
able to access something that isn't me. But I don't know. Like I was having a chat just before with a friend of mine who speaks on stage. We both speak on stage a lot. I do a lot of you know, public and corporate speaking, and there are times when you know, I'll do a three hour workshop and I start not often, by the way, but it's usually somewhere between okay and
pretty good. But there have been a few times where I look up in three hours have gone and it feels like twenty minutes and I'm like, where did that go? It's like, you know, time is a constant, but our experience of time is a variable, right, and so how time seems to me? And then I've spoken for three hours. But it's almost like that that what came out or what transpired was almost in spite of me, not because of me. It's like there was some flow state that,
you know, I don't know. I just feel like there's a wisdom and an intelligence and a love and I don't know what the right word is, but that's accessible to us if we can get to that point.
Yeah, I mean one hundred percent. You know, I think the flow stage is very interesting, and I do hear about it from, you know, from people, so I think it's it. There's a lot of links between Buddhist ideas of meditation and things like this flow stage. When we're in retreat, actually time goes very very slowly.
Yeah wow.
So mostly in daily life, our life, you just got oh well today went like that, Oh my god, Like people are like, it's Christmas?
How can they be Christmas? I feel like it was just or whatever.
Right, So in retreat, time goes incredibly slowly, which I found is kind of interesting in terms of your this, you know, our perception of our perception of time. I think that if we recognize the potential that you're talking about, the potential to you know, be in flow, love, wisdom, whatever these wonderful words are, I think the question is just how are you going to get there? So, as a monatic, what's nice is we have like a roadmap. Yeah, so what I want to know is how how do you get that?
Great? How are you going to make that happen?
Yeah? Yeah, Well it's funny. I grew up in a very Christian household, so you know, different path to yours. And I'm I would call myself, I don't know what I am agnostic now. I'm definitely not the golden child
of Christianity, that's for sure, as you can tell. Okay, but I still, like, you know, I have a certain faith and belief and part of that for me is I you know, I have to identify all my own human garbage, my ego, my insecurity, my fear, my need for attention, all of that, which is it's never disappearing,
right it. The volume gets louder and softer, but I recognize that, and so I basically say a little prayer, and my prayer would be something like, I don't want this to be about me at all, and I just want I just want to be a value and service to the people. And if something amazing happens for those people, that is great, but that isn't about me, and it's not for me. So I think for me, it depends
a lot on my intention and my attitude. Like, yeah, so I have this capacity, as you probably you know, where I can be cheeky and funny and a good storyteller. So there's all, you know, the kragon stage, there's a skill, the knowledge, the academic stuff, the butupp apart, that's all somewhat very human and performative to an extent, you know. And the dichotomy is also, as a professional speaker, you can't get up there and be boring. So you've got
to be entertaining. You've got to be a little bit funny. You've got to be able to tell stories, build rapport, build connection, read the room. You've got to do all of that skill based stuff as well as try and not just be a performer, like try and be a real aligned human, a bit vulnerable, and like I talk about my myriad of shortcomings and failures and issues NonStop, and not because I hate me, but because I want people to realize how unspectacular I am, so that I
might be more relatable and they might go, Craig's done. Okay, he's also an idiot. Maybe I could do okay, you know.
Yeah, but as you say, you know, whatever skill you have, if we can use it, but with that intention to help many beings, you know, yes, with that idea of service, I'm genuinely wanting to offer what we have to help others. Then that's that's great. I mean, that's great. We should not use our talents we have to. We've allays given talents, we've all been given things that can help in the world. Just the question is is it only helping you or are you using those talents to help many people?
That's it?
Yeah, yeah, I think for me when I was young, I was quite because when I was growing up, I was a morbidly obese kid and a whole lot of stuff, and off the back of that, lots of issues, lots of insecurity, So I became very self focused and selfish
only child. All this stuff, and I kind of realized over time that I needed to have a purpose bigger than me and had when I kind of opened that door and tried to be, you know, a value and service to just more than myself, I'm like, oh, this is actually this is where I feel most alive, This is where I feel most aligned, you know. But yeah, that so that was just experiential and.
Yeah, yeah, it's great that you worked it out, though, I mean, isn't it great? That's the journey. We're all on this journey. But I think the more the more kind of awake you get, the more of service you want to be. Your own failings that continue to be there. They can get quite painful, They can feel quite painful, and often my teacher has to say to me, you know, just see where you are now, See where you are now, understand clearly where you are now? Right you know you've
moved this far. You know you've moved this far, and you'll carry on moving. But right now, you're not completely perfect, right so I think we But it's just when you try your hardest to be a good human being and serve O, there's your own failings. Somehow they strike you so clearly far more so than when you were being selfish like whatever you called it earlier on right, you couldn't see them then at that point, right, you're so
covered in layers a delusion at that point. But I think it's quite natural at that point, you know, just see, just accept I'm here now, I've been on this journey. I've got to hear. I'm not kind of finished yet, and you're still the weaknesses that are they're the failings that are there, whatever you want to call them, They too will go in time. But sometimes it can just be very painful to realize you're still not completely there yet, you haven't finished your journey yet.
When you were a young up and coming corporate superstar, and could you have imagined, you know, thirty years later or whatever it is, that you'd be talking to some guy in Australia, you'd be in Britan and you would spend eleven hours a day for months on end in silent meditation and prayer, and could would now.
If yeah, now, I was always very interested in Buddhism, even as a child. I was always very interested in images of the Buddhist sitting down meditating. I was always really fascinated with what is that person doing and why does he look so happy?
Right?
But no, I could never have thought that the way my life is turned out and look and looks now, And you know, I think occasionally I have those moments when you're like, Okay, you could have been a CEO.
You could have been actually pretty rich right now.
You could have probably had some incredible, swanky house with somebody doing your laundry, and you know, it's just like unbelievable. But that that could have been my life. That could have.
Been who I am today.
So sometimes it's quite useful to think about the paths you chose not to take, as well as the paths you chose to take.
I think it's both helpful to be aware of.
Tell me about if you would your family and how they responded to your left turn, your radical left turn in life. I'm just teating, Hey, everyone enjoy that path. I'll be over here in Weedsmell, just wearing like, you know whatever, doing whatever.
I don't know.
It's funny, you know, because when I was in when I was in investment banking, my mom didn't understand what I did, right, She's like, I don't really know. She's something like a stockbroker, and I was nothing like a stockbroker. Actually, so now she's like, I don't know she but it's not I don't really know what she does, right, So actually I think they were confused by pretty much everything I did in my life. I think everybody gets the charity.
Everybody understands if somebody is going out of their way year after year to help others with the charity.
I think that everybody gets, yeah, right, So I think the charity they understand.
I think that it hasn't always been easy for my family, yes, to understand what I've done. Mostly, I think we find it easy to put ourselves in the shoes of others, you know, Like I feel like I can imagine what it's like to be a bus driver or a.
Gardener or whatever.
I think it is quite hard to understand and know
what it's like to be a monastic. Yes, So I think my mum always imagined that I would get married and have like a nice house in the country in England with a nice person that had a big life insurance policy or something, I don't know what, you know, Like she wanted that kind of life for me, So I guess she was probably a bit worried because you know, there's no pension with being a fanastic, right, So I think you know, your parents always want you to be safe,
like you said, like the things we were talking at the beginning.
They want you to have food, they want you to have a roof, they want inter things.
So I think she meant it may have been a bit worried that in some way it's going to be more vulnerable as a result of my decisions.
I mean, obviously.
I've made the right decision absolutely for me, and I think they you know, as I say, they respect it, but I think it from where I started in my life, born by the sea in England, in Whitstable to a mother who was a housewife and a father who worked in insurance, you know, to have the oldest child end up as a Buddhist nun.
In Bhutan doing what I do. Yeah, it's quite a leap.
You know.
Yeah. How many how many what is lunds do you make who have a similar story to yours? Who are who are Westerners who now live in Bhutan or somewhere else in the world.
I'm the only one in Bhutan for sure. In Bhtan. Yeah, there is now a there's two Western monks here. One is American and the other one I haven't met.
I'm not sure his nationality, but I'm certainly the only female. There are obviously quite a number of Western women who have become Himalayan Vadriana Buddhist practitioners monastics, and they mainly live in India, maybe Daramsalah or other places around the world. I don't know how many of them there are, but they definitely there's definitely a lot of them. But you know, you how can you say it's like being a zebra
in a group of elephants? Right, So, if you're somebody who's born in the West and is ordained in a Buddhist country in the east, you know you're never going to be surrounded by thousands of you. There's there's not there's not going to be tons of us.
Right, yes? And how how are you received by you know, how is the zebra received by the elephants?
I think it's received fine. I mean it's taken some while. I've had to be very determined and also very lucky. My karma, as we would talk about karma, definitely arises in Bhutan, which is where sometimes the power of our place can be really important. And obviously they know how much work I do to help the country and the children of the country, so I think I'm very appreciated
for that. But if you're the only one you know, you're always going to be breaking down preconceptions, You're always going to be establishing new grounds, new ideas of what's possible. And I probably have had to do that a bit. In terms of being a Western woman here in Bhutan, m.
Tell me about karma. Tell the westerner about karma. Explain that to me.
Karma is just the natural consequence of previous actions continuing to arise. It's arising all the time, even as we speak. Karma is what we would say ripening. So it can ripen and cause suffering, it can ripen and cause happiness. It's a bit like we think about time. You know, we can't take ourselves out of time, right time is it's a It's just the same with karma.
Karma is just it's just ripening. And so yeah, that's that's karma. We're all riding on the wave of garma.
What does Buddhism teach I don't know if this is the right question. So you get the gist of my questions. But what does Buddhism teach about our desire for happiness? It's like it's almost like the universal goal, like nobody's goal is to be miserable or said, everybody wants to be happy?
Is okay, Well we just leave it right there for a second. Let's just question that for a second. Right, let's just question that.
Sure, because you've studied the mind, right you said, You've said psychology and all this kind of stuff, So we know that the human mind has this negative bias, right, yes, yeah, So with that negativity bias, you know, and often people say, like I don't know, we say three critical things we meant, you know, say, let me see, like somebody might say, okay, three people said something positive, but you remember the one one thing.
That somebody said it was negative? Right, So I'm going to question that. I'm going to question is.
Our human brain at this point really wired for happiness because I don't know that it is.
Yeah, yeah, I don't think it is either. I think your brain is wired to primarily keep you safe.
And it's about averting threat right.
Yeah, predicting threats and danger and identifying threats and danger. So yeah, and I agree with you. I think the expectation that we would be perpetually and maybe even regularly happy is not always the most logical expectation, you know, or goal.
I think we should just accept. Let's and I don't know if this is right, but let's just say yeah that right now, the human is still wired to be largely unhappy.
Yeah, and it's actually because of that that we're also desperate to be happy, right, because it's not our natural state. It's actually isn't something that comes easily or automatically to us.
Wow, that's such a It's like I know that, but when you say that, it's like, happiness is not our natural state? That is?
I mean, wouldn't it help if we just admitted that.
Yeah, it's very insightful and the you know when Yeah, that's it. I'm just writing that down because I think that's going to be the title of this conversation. But well, it's like, yeah, and it's clearly you know, happiness and joy and fun and connection. And I think like when I talk to people and I'm not guru, I'm still a student, right, I don't I would I would happily. I'm probably going to learn more from you than you
would ever learn from me. And I don't say that disingenuously right, Like it seems to me like what a lot of people really want is just not to be anxious anymore, like whatever that looks like, like I just want to be Like so many people that I talk
to are overthinkers. Like there's just this the chaotic mind, the overthinking, the anxiety, the rumination, which then has a physiological consequence of heart rate and breathing and adrenaline and cortisol and sympathetic nervous system and all of this physical elevation. You know. It's like thought, You know, thoughts and emotions and physiology the body are one system, not three, Like everything operates and effects. You know. It's like your thought
will have a physical consequence. If somebody is listening to this and right now they think they're in danger, and they believe they're in danger but they're not, then there will be a corresponding physical response despite the fact that there is no danger. So what caused the physical response was not the situation or circumstance or the reality of the situation, but rather a thought. And so try to navigate life with that kind of sometimes chaotic internal landscape Yeah, that's interesting.
Yeah, and that's why.
You know, but we're very wired to that, aren't we. That way of thinking is very seductive. It goes right into that basic hard wiring of ours. And that's why sometimes I say, Okay, does the human race really want to be peaceful?
Do they really want that?
Because it's not very seductive. Nothing happens when you're peaceful. There's no drama, there's nothing to talk about, there's no crisis to define yourself as a result of, there's no emergencies to share with anybody.
It's pretty dull.
Wow wow, wow, what Why don't we want pace?
Seems like I just don't know that we're wired to be peaceful creatures right now. And I think a peaceful state is if we look at the activities of humans.
I'm just saying that if you really want to be pe there may be quite a lot of steps to go down. And bear in mind that being peaceful.
Is not very exciting, and people seem very interested in excitement.
That is that is really that is something? Yeah, And also you know, you have a look at generally, have a look at the world, there's not a whole lot of peace.
No, So I think we had to become we have to be Okay, so we say, all right, humans want to be peaceful, humans want to be happy. Really, are we white for that? Can we really look at our species right now and say that's honestly true? The evidence would argue otherwise, sadly, So.
When you ask are we wired for that? Are you asking is that the way that our brain works? Is that our biochemistry?
Yeah? Partially, yeah, because.
I don't think we are white for that, right right? I mean that's not the case. Our cognitive function, our frontal cortex is the smallest part of our brain.
It's the part that gets tired most easily.
And I think often when people are overwhelmed, they're anxious, all these states that are very common for people. As you've just explained, we know they're not in their frontal cortex anymore.
They're not in their executive.
Function, right, So I think there is a piece around that biological evidence for sure.
Yeah. I always talk about my prefrontal cortex being hijacked by mayamigdala. You know, so you're like.
Yeah all the time, right, all the time, Yeah, all the time. Not just you, but you know, most of us. So I think it is clearly to everyone's benefit.
If somebody is happy, they benefit the people around them, benefit, their partner, their family, their community. I'm just saying that, I think we have to be honest about some of the biology one might be fighting, and therefore the deliberate nature of our path to happiness, because I think sometimes when I read about happiness, I think some people think it's just your kind of like your basic human state. I don't think it is our basic human state. That's
all I'm saying that. I think you can get it. I think you can accomplish it. I think you may have to use methods to get there, but I don't think we should see that. I think that we are inherently happy, and somehow we haven't worked that out yet. I think it's that's probably not accurate. Yeah, from a
Buddhist point of view. You know, if you're most of your happiness once you have your woof and you have your food and you have your heating and whatever, most of it will, as you say, come from the whatever this thing is that we're calling the mind, your stream of mental activity, that will be the prime determine of your level of happiness.
Yeah.
Yeah, do you in most communities in the world, well in kind of you know, Australia and England and America and Canada and most of our countries, well a lot of maybe not. I was going to say that there's huge mental health issues, you know, anxiety, depression, you know, sleeplessness, and like a lot of people with a lot of medication to you know, try to deal with and it's growing, it's getting bigger, and it's it's despite all this information
and education, it's not resolving itself. And what I'm imagining, that's not the case within the Buddhist community.
Oh no, I think it is. I mean I think that, and that's why I feel very much that it's slightly dangerous to say these people are suffering from mental or health and these people aren't. Because unless you are never afflicted by you know, anger, jealousy, greed, confusion, anxiety, worry, I mean pretty much every human is going to be subject to that, right.
So I think it's more.
About recognizing the basic human condition, which, like the Buddha said, is one unfortunately of mental suffering.
I mean, that's what the Buddha said, right, and so most of us are mentally suffering to some degree.
It's the degree that differs, right, it's the degree that differs. Yes, So here in Bhuton, you know, they're not without that mental suffering, definitely, for sure they're not. But I think that the pace of life here remains slower.
The community feeling is very, very strong.
The fabric of community support is huge here y, So I think that maybe it's not as intense as some places in the world, but obviously we still see it here, you know, because it's part of the human.
Condition.
It's part of the challenge of being a human is how do you deal with your own mind?
Yeah? How long after your nine ninety seven being held at gunpoint experience, did you decide that you wanted to change the way you do life?
So I had to recover first, right, it was a big thing to recover from, Okay, and.
That really took some time.
So I think, let me see now, it was about eighteen months later that I decided to resign, and then I basically traveled around the world learning about yoga, which is just the most wonderful thing. I think yoga is the most powerful healing and kind of centering tool in the world. And so that was really the start of my journey.
It also involved going to Barron Bay.
I lived in Barron Bay for quite a few months, so Australia was part.
Of my journey.
Hippies would have fit right in.
Yeah, but I think, you know you, I had to digest all the consequences of that trauma properly. I had to recover in order to see clearly what the next step might have been. So it would not have been a good idea in a way for me to come out of the hostage situation and the next day you've become up.
It is not I think that would have been a sure recipe for disaster, because trauma's changed you and they need to be kind of integrated into the whole of you as part of your history, as you know, part of.
Your jour and only then I think, can you begin to see a new way forward.
Yeah, yeah, beautiful. Tell me about your walk four hundred and three kilometers. It doesn't sound like it was a stroll around the park, and as you kind of alluded to, it's not like we're going for four hundred and three kilometers around suburban Melbourne like this is. This is a very what a complicated trek in the middle of wilderness. This is not a stroll. Why did you do that? Why? I know why you did it, but tell us a little bit about it.
So I've had a few moments in my life when I've just stood still and known something.
Yeah, And I was crossing a bridge in London, I don't know, maybe a year and a half ago, and in the middle of that bridge, everything became very quiet, even though I was in the middle of London, and I just knew at that point I needed to walk across Butan from west to east.
And I didn't know why. It wasn't to do with the charity.
I just occasionally you get I think in your life, you get these thunderbolt moments where you know something and you don't question it. You don't go into that mental whirling of is this a good idea?
Is this not? That I just knew it? Right? So when I have those moments, I always listen to them. I don't overthink them. I just know them. And so that was the start of it. And you know, actually I didn't know.
I didn't really have a clue of the scale of challenge that I was thinking about doing. So, like you say, four and three kilometers doesn't sound too bad as a distance, but I think it's so over the course of the thirty seven days, we climbed the equivalent of Mount Everest two and a half times. That's more than reality of what I just did. Yeah, and obviously I'm not a trekker, I'm not a hiker. As you can hear, I spend a lot of time I'm sitting down praying, right, So it was a huge, a.
Huge physical and mental challenge and accomplishment. Yeah, and I'm I'm recovering from my own great idea as we speak.
Right, amazing. Well, congratulations on that. How long ago did you finish? It's like in the last week or so.
Yeah, I kind of lost track of the days. What day is it? Thursday, Wednesday, Thursday, Thursday, right, Yeah, I think we finished about ten days ago. Yeah. It was very weird coming back from the forest. I have to say it was.
Even though Bhutan is a very unpopulated country.
It's not like I came back to Manhattan.
But it was very strange coming back to the speed and the confusion of city.
Life here in Bhutan. Afterwards.
Interesting, it's brilliant speaking about the speed of life. I was going to ask you when you're talking about being on that bridge London a year and a half ago where you had this kind of idea or revelation or what's it like when you go back to London.
I mean it's okay.
I mean I don't spend a lot of time in London, to be frank, I'm very rarely there.
It's just not how I want to live.
But for the benefit of the charity and various other things, if I need to go to London, I go to London.
Yeah. Yeah, amazing. What was the coming out of, you know, corporate land and that life and that very kind of typical existence of people grow up in England and Australia and America. What was the hardest to let go of? Like, what did you struggle, if anything, to let go of or embrace in becoming this whatever different version of you or taking this different path. What was hard for you?
Yeah, I mean I think that first of all, I think that obviously, actually when I was in the corporate world, it.
Was not that usual to be frank.
I mean I back in the nineties, I was often the only woman in the room.
Wow.
And I think that I would say that.
I felt very lucky to have that chance, that career to be in like Hong Kong, New York. I mean, I think so I don't want to kind of dismiss it as a like a boring everyday life. It was amazing and I was I learned a lot from it. I was very pleased to be part of it in a way. I think when you decide to be a monastic, you know what, often the reason why monastics live in communities is because monastic life is quite lonely.
Yes.
If I could use a word that freaks everybody out, it's like the final h I don't know, the final bogie man, the word lonely. Right, you have no companion, you have no partner, your celibate, but you also have nobody to share your day with. Yes, And I think that from a monastic point of view, there's something very beautiful about, you know, a couple or a kind of deep friendship where you can really say how you are,
share how you are, you know. And I think that the hardest thing about being a monastic is sometimes that's hard to get.
And so.
I think that was an expectation I had to kind of let go of. And you still have these very like deep conditionings about the way to be a human is to find your partner and stay with the partner, and you know whatever, and even you know, you imagine you're going to be old by a fireplace with grandchildren or whatever. Right, So I think that that conditioning is
very deep. And so I think letting go of that idea of what you should find in life, what you should hold onto in life, and what your well, the end of your life will look like very much all bound around having a partner.
I think that was a big conditioning to let go for me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well I've never been married, so I'm somewhat monastic.
Oh yeah, You've got potential, Craig, You've got potential. This just sounds good, sounds good.
But how do you find it? I mean, how do you find it? I'm sure that there's there's there's positives.
And negatives to every situation, and some people marriage you sound like hell on Earth to me, I'll be honest.
So, but I mean, how do you find that?
Yeah? So it's interesting because obviously when I was younger, I had you know, girlfriends, partners, and but I never got married. And you know, like, I've never had alcohol, I've never had a beer. I've never been drunk. I've never had a drug, I've never had a cigarette, I've never been high. Yeah. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. So my life is very monastic in a way and
very very atypical. Like and I'm not saying better or worse, it's just for an Australian bloke who is like me, like a blow key bloke, it's very unusual to the point where people are like, what is like, what is wrong with him? There's like something got to be wrong with him, which there probably is, but I don't know that that's well, they're definitely is, let's be honest, but I don't know that that is the issue. But for me,
I do you know what is? I feel like I shouldn't even say this to you, but I'm just going to be honest, right I think. So I set up the first personal training center in Australia. Do you know what personal trainer is yet? Right? Yeah? In a gym kind of thing, yeah yeah, and you'd work one on
one with people. So I set up the first center, I wrote the first course, and I worked in gyms from nineteen eighty two when I was eighteen, and I spent a lot of time, eventually working one on one with people late decades where it would be me and another human being in the gym and you'd see them often, that person three times a week, and so you would have a one on one pretty in depth, pretty kind
of you know, going deep. And because you're not a friend per se, and you're not their family and you're people would confide in you. And I'm like, the stuff that I get told is mind blowing. And I mean, you know, some things they would tell me that no one else in the world knew, and which is a privilege and an honor and you need to respect that. But then the amount of people that would talk to me about their relationships and of what they say would
be negative. It kind of put me off. I'm like, wow, this is I'm not in any hurry to get married. I'm not in any and you know, I think also, and of course I'm not anti marriage at all. I'm also not anti having a beer. I'm not anti anti cigarettes and anti drugs. But you know, if somebody wants to have a bit of booze, or someone wants to get married or does want to get married, or gets married three times or whatever, I'm not judging that or evaluating that. But for me, it didn't hold a lot
of appeal. And you know, which is not say so things are amazing and I'm the smartest guy in the world. Definitely not that. But for the most part, I still feel loved and valued. I still have, you know, connection with people. I ironically don't have lots of friends, Like I know a lot of people a lot, but I probably have five six seven ends in the world. Yeah that I really know and trust. Yeah. So it's it's funny and I you know a little bit like you you know, my mom is like my mum was doing
come on, where are the grandchildren? She was doing that till I was about forty five and then just gave up, you know. So and you know, at no stage was it really my plan to wake up one day and be sixty ish years old and whatever whatever I am Now, this wasn't you know, that's my life goal. So yeah, it is interesting and also to just question, you know, like I actually got asked in an interview myself, why are my anti marriage? And I said, well, I've never
ever said that, and I wouldn't say that. I think for some people marriage is beautiful and amazing, I think, and I think for some people not just like I think for some people drinking milk is absolutely amazing, for other people not so much. You know, it's not like milk is good or bad, or marriage is good or bad, or becoming a nun is what everyone should do or
not do, or you know what I'm saying. It's like, well, yeah, we need to figure out what is going to work for us individually, you know, I think, while hopefully bringing some value to people around us or some service in some way, maybe.
Yeah, I think it's about you know, hopefully being wise enough to know, okay, what really brings out the best in me. You know, I may like the idea of having a boyfriend or whatever, but you know, if it makes me anxious or clingy or you know whatever, then it's not really bringing out the best in me. And I think, you know, I feel being a monastic does bring out the best in me. It doesn't mean that I couldn't be a lot of other things, and I could have been a lot of other things, but I
think it brings out the best in me. And that's what we want to do, is bring out the best in ourselves, right.
Yeah, we do Hey, it's been an hour. Can you believe that already?
No, it's been very enjoyable.
Yeah, thank you so much. Hate. So let's talk about your book. Your book is called Set Free. Your charity. Your charity is called opening your Heart to pretend tell people about those like all the plugging and promoing.
That's really kind of weird. Thank you. You know that's on Amazon. You can find it on Amazon. I guess in Australia you have to order it. But you have Amazon and stuff in Australia, right, I mean you must.
Yeah, we just got television too, fantastic, there you go.
I just you know, just anyway, So, yeah, the.
Book is on I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm messing with you. Yes, we have Amazon.
So it has a lot of five star reviews. I wrote it from my heart and.
I think it's funny and serious and hopefully you'll laugh and your cry. The charity is called Opening your Heart to Bhutan, because when we help others, that's what you do.
You open your own heart. That's what happens.
And you know, there's a website and you can see the campaign even for my massive trek across Butan.
The campaign is still there if people want to join in.
And there will be a documentary film about the walk made in Bhutan here with the Bhutanese film crew, and that should be out in a bad a year and that I hope is going to be really something else amazing.
Well, we'll get you back to talk about that. We'll primo that as hey, we'll say goodbye fare But Emma, thank you so much. It's really nice to meet you. You're a gift and I appreciate you taking the time.
Oh, thank you. Yeah, okay, hap to see you.
More and we're out boom, thank you.
Okay to meet you.
Yeah, you too. You're great. I mean, I know you probably don't want to comment, but you're great,