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this altitude, I can run flat out for a

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5:12

Tim Ferris Show.

5:19

Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This

5:21

is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of

5:24

the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my

5:26

job to sit down with world-class performers from

5:28

every field imaginable to tease out the habits,

5:30

routines, favorite books, and so on that you

5:33

can apply and test in your own lives.

5:36

This episode is a two-for-one, and that's

5:38

because the podcast recently hit its 10th

5:40

year anniversary, which is insane to think

5:42

about, and passed one billion downloads. To

5:45

celebrate, I've curated some of the best

5:47

of the best, some of my favorites

5:49

from more than 700 episodes over the

5:51

last decade. I could not be more

5:54

excited to give you these super combo

5:56

episodes, and internally we've been calling these

5:58

the Super Combo episodes. combo episodes because

6:00

my goal is to encourage you to,

6:03

yes, enjoy the household names, the super

6:05

famous folks, but to also introduce

6:07

you to lesser known people I consider

6:10

stars. These are people who

6:12

have transformed my life and I feel like

6:14

they can do the same for many of

6:16

you. Perhaps they got lost in a busy

6:18

news cycle, perhaps you missed an episode. Just

6:21

trust me on this one, we went to

6:23

great pains to put these pairings together. And

6:26

for the bios of all guests, you

6:29

can find that and more

6:31

at tim.blog slash combo. And

6:33

now without further ado, please enjoy

6:35

and thank you for listening. First

6:39

up, Elizabeth Gilbert, the

6:41

number one New York Times bestselling

6:44

author of 10 books, including Eat,

6:46

Pray, Love, and Big

6:48

Magic, Creative Living Beyond Fear,

6:51

which together have sold more than 25 million

6:54

copies worldwide. And her

6:56

latest book, City of Girls, you

6:59

can find Elizabeth on Twitter at

7:01

Gilbert Lizz. There's

7:27

quite literally nothing I would rather talk

7:29

about than Reyes. So

7:42

you started in a good place for me.

7:45

So, Raya

7:47

Elias was quite simply the love

7:49

of my life. She and

7:51

I were friends for 17 years. I

7:56

was married for most of that. And just,

8:00

just very slowly and very quietly over

8:02

the years, fell in love with her. She

8:05

was a lesbian,

8:07

Syrian, Detroit raised,

8:09

rock and roll, hairdresser,

8:13

filmmaker, author, musician,

8:15

who had always wanted to live just

8:17

right on the edge of life. She

8:19

had been a speedball heroin junkie on

8:21

the Lower East Side, New York City

8:23

in the 1980s, was

8:26

in Rikers Island, was in Bellevue,

8:28

was in various rehabs and rehabilitations.

8:30

This homeless was, oh

8:33

God, she'd had such a storied life. And then

8:35

she finally put it all down and she spent

8:37

19 years clean and sober.

8:39

And when I met her, she was on the

8:42

other side of that recovery and she was the

8:44

strongest, most extraordinary person I ever met. And as

8:46

I said in that speech that I gave in

8:48

that talk that I gave at the moth about

8:50

her, which I shared a year

8:53

after she died, she was the most

8:55

powerful person in every room that she ever walked into.

8:58

And I adored her, she was my

9:00

guide, she was my teacher, she was the

9:02

rock, the ground underneath my feet. She

9:04

was the one person in the world who

9:07

always made me feel safe and she didn't

9:09

just make me feel safe. The

9:11

feeling that everyone had when Ray walked

9:13

into the room was, oh,

9:15

thank God Ray is here, everybody's safe.

9:18

You know, that's what the alpha is, right?

9:20

The alpha is the person who keeps the

9:22

entire pack safe. And because she was the

9:24

most powerful person in the room, what

9:27

I always knew when she walked in was,

9:29

not only would she make sure I was

9:31

okay, if anybody was preying on

9:33

me in any way, she would make sure

9:35

the predator was okay too. Like

9:38

she had everybody under her wing to make

9:40

sure that people were all right. She

9:43

just had this way of handling humans like

9:45

nothing I've ever seen in my entire life. And I

9:48

absolutely adored her and I was a

9:50

loyal wife and I loved my husband

9:53

and the three of us were really

9:55

good friends and there was no way in the world

9:57

that I was ever gonna cross that line. I just

9:59

kept that love very. quietly in my heart. And

10:02

we all just had a beautiful life

10:04

together until the day that she was

10:06

diagnosed with terminal pancreatic and liver cancer.

10:09

And I got a phone call from her saying that

10:11

she'd gotten this diagnosis and that they said she had

10:13

six months to live. And from that

10:15

point forward, it was no longer possible for

10:17

me to keep that love hidden. And very

10:19

swiftly after that, I had a conversation with

10:21

my husband and said, I need to go

10:23

and be with Raya. And no

10:26

one was surprised by this. He

10:28

wasn't surprised by it. He'd seen it for years.

10:30

And he very, in one of the greatest acts

10:32

of courage and dignity I've

10:35

ever seen anybody do, he very graciously

10:37

stepped out of the way and we

10:40

separated and I went to be with her and I

10:42

was with her until the end of her life. So

10:44

that's who Raya was and that's who she was to me.

10:47

As for that speech that I gave at the moth,

10:49

that talk, what I was

10:51

challenged to do in 12 minutes was

10:55

to try to get over the net who that

10:57

person was, the most epic human being I'd ever

10:59

met. And I decided the way

11:02

to do that was to tell a

11:04

few stories about the experience of her death

11:06

and dying, which were mostly based on ideas

11:09

that I had about how she was going to

11:11

become very helpless and I was going to have

11:13

to be her hero and protect her versus

11:16

the reality of the situation, which

11:18

is that she never became

11:20

helpless. She remained the alpha in

11:23

the entire situation. She was a really

11:25

hard patient to take care of for

11:27

that reason. She absolutely refused to cooperate

11:29

with my version of some airy fairy

11:32

soft hippy dab that I wanted to

11:34

give to her and instead she

11:36

died the way she lived, like the

11:39

badass, the unrelenting warrior that

11:41

she was and it was brutal and it

11:43

was beautiful and she never stopped taking us

11:45

by surprise, right even up till the last

11:47

second. And the point is going to come

11:49

where that truth is going to become bigger

11:51

than your plans. And that extended

11:54

into the way that I tried to manage,

11:56

I'm using air quotes now, managed,

11:58

raised debt. I also went into her death

12:00

with a plan. We're going to have an

12:02

enlightened death, we're going to have a real

12:05

hospice death, we're going to bring grief bereavement

12:07

experts in here to talk. I mean, I

12:09

laugh now because it's like, just

12:11

Raya, who is such a biker chick, it's

12:14

like you're going to bring a fucking grief

12:16

bereavement expert in here to talk to me.

12:20

Give me a break. I'm going to

12:22

go down watching football eating chicken wings

12:24

and smoking. This is of no interest

12:26

in that. So she just waylaid that

12:28

plan completely and died on her own

12:30

terms. I'm just thinking of something that

12:32

a hospice nurse said to me because we were cracking

12:34

up one day. I can't remember

12:36

what it was about, but there's a lot of anybody who's ever

12:39

been by it. There's a lot

12:41

of humor that shows up, and

12:43

it is literally Gallo's humor. It really

12:45

is like, I've got a picture

12:47

of me and Raya's ex-wife and Raya's ex-girlfriend who

12:49

were the two women who showed up like champions

12:51

at the end of her life to help to

12:53

take care of me and help to take care

12:55

of her because they loved her

12:57

so much. It was also just such a factor of

13:00

what a boss Mac Daddy Raya was, that she had

13:02

like every woman who'd ever loved her came back to

13:04

take care of her when she was dying to

13:07

take care of each other. There was

13:09

a lot of laughter between the three of

13:11

us about just like handling this force of

13:13

nature as she was dying. Like, can we

13:15

survive it? She's the opposite of a good

13:17

patient. So there was a lot of humor

13:19

in there and the hospice nurse was laughing with this one

13:21

day and I said to her, it's amazing that you can

13:23

laugh given the line of work that you're in. She spends

13:25

her life working with people at the

13:27

worst most painful parts of their lives at the

13:29

end of their lives. She said, we have a

13:31

little motto, we say if you can't laugh at

13:34

death, get out of show business. You

13:36

shouldn't be a hospice nurse if you can't

13:38

let you won't survive. I'm sure

13:41

that's what you and I are talking right now in

13:43

the midst of the COVID crisis and I've been thinking

13:45

about that. I've been thinking about the nurses that I

13:47

know and I'm imagining that you

13:49

know there's some dark ass humor

13:51

happening in those hospitals right now.

13:54

There has to be in the same way that

13:56

soldiers would tell you about the humor that happens

13:58

when you're under fire. there

14:00

absolutely has to be or you simply won't be able

14:02

to survive it. So I will say that the humor

14:04

is there in those moments. I mean, right

14:07

after Raya died, I

14:10

mean, we had been through such hell with her and her

14:13

death was not, as I say, it was brutal.

14:16

One minute after she took her last breath,

14:18

her last horrible breath, Gigi,

14:20

her ex-wife, stood up, brushed

14:23

off her hands and goes, okay, so that's done. I'm going to

14:25

be on the next flight out of here like at two o'clock.

14:28

It was hilarious, but it was also just like

14:30

what Raya would have done. Okay, you guys good?

14:32

We good? We done here? We

14:36

just all rolled over laughing in the

14:38

middle of our tears. I

14:40

feel like that humor has to be shot through

14:43

the entirety of your life or else you really

14:45

are not going to make it through Earth School

14:47

because Earth School is a hard, hard school and

14:49

it's a hard assignment and I think the humor

14:52

is quite literally grace. Let's

14:54

pair stillness with

14:56

awe for a moment. I've

14:59

also read that there

15:02

are times when you'll love a

15:04

sentence so much that you read

15:06

that you'll start clapping by yourself

15:09

where you happen to be reading. And

15:12

I would love to know what type of writing,

15:16

what writers have done that for you,

15:19

if you could name even a few

15:21

of them and what

15:23

it is, what are the ingredients that lead

15:25

to that one woman standing ovation? Often

15:27

in the bathtub. Well, they

15:29

say that great art has to contain

15:31

two features. It has to be both

15:34

surprising and inevitable. So

15:37

that's the great thing. That's good. That's good.

15:39

Right? Yeah. That's paradox is that you have

15:41

to go, oh my God, I didn't see

15:44

that coming and that is the only way

15:46

that could go. I'm thinking of the ending

15:48

of Breaking Bad, that whole show

15:51

but like the last moments of Breaking Bad.

15:53

Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. You've

15:55

had many years to watch it now, people. I won't tell you

15:57

the ending. I will just tell you that I also stood up

15:59

and applauded it. that because it felt

16:01

both surprising and inevitable. So

16:03

that's the feeling you want your whole nervous system

16:05

to kind of be like, oh my

16:08

God, I didn't know that could be and

16:10

yes, of course. It

16:12

had to be and now it's rearranged my

16:14

DNA in a certain way where I can't

16:17

be the same now. Poetry tends to do

16:19

it. The poets have this amazing

16:21

ability to put that into such

16:24

a tiny space where it's like

16:27

the encapsulation of inevitability and surprise.

16:30

So I'll give you an example of

16:32

one piece that I love, which is

16:34

a poem by T.S. Eliot called

16:36

East Coker that has gotten

16:39

me through some of the darkest times in my

16:41

life. Some of those moments in your life where

16:43

you don't know what to do, right, where a

16:45

human being, and this is where

16:47

I think human life gets really interesting. What happens

16:49

to people when they reach the end of their

16:51

power? Because especially in this culture where we live

16:53

in a culture that says you should be able

16:55

to power through anything, life will very generously remind

16:58

you that you cannot. It will

17:00

very generously break you at times and very

17:02

generously show you as we're seeing right now

17:04

in the COVID virus. We're like, oh actually,

17:06

there's a limit to our powers here and

17:09

it's very humbling. What do you

17:11

do when you're at the end of your power? So

17:13

the poem East Coker is one, and it gets me

17:15

every single time. How do you spell Coker? C-O-K-E-R.

17:20

C-O-K-E-R, yeah, East Coker. There's

17:23

a part of the poem where T.S. Eliot writes, wait

17:26

without hope for hope would be hope of the wrong

17:28

thing. Wait without love for

17:30

love would be love of the wrong thing. There

17:33

is yet faith, but the faith and the hope

17:35

and the love are all in the waiting. Wait

17:38

without thought for you are not ready for

17:40

thought. And so the darkness

17:42

shall be light and the stillness the dancing.

17:45

That's a stand up and applause moment. Yeah, that

17:48

is a stand up and applause moment. And sometimes

17:50

when people I know are grieving

17:52

or they're stuck or they're

17:54

broken and everything has been taken away,

17:57

I will give them that poem because that says what.

17:59

I don't know how to say better than that, which

18:02

is right now you're

18:04

being asked to wait without hope

18:07

for anything that you hoped for would be

18:09

the wrong thing and wait without love. Anybody

18:11

who's been going through a horrible breakup, I'll

18:13

give them that poem. Like you're being asked

18:15

to wait without love right now because love

18:17

would be love of the wrong thing. And

18:20

anybody who's a beginning meditator, I

18:22

give them that poem because of the

18:24

line wait without thought for you are not ready for thought.

18:27

You don't have the wisdom right now

18:29

to have the correct thoughts. So

18:32

you need to wait without thought. And

18:35

then you will see if you

18:37

do that, and there's still faith, but the

18:39

faith is in the waiting. The

18:42

faith is in waiting without hope, waiting

18:44

without love, waiting without thought. That's

18:46

the definition of faith, sitting in the darkness

18:48

in that waiting. And then you

18:50

will see how the darkness becomes light and the stillness

18:52

becomes dancing, but only every time. In order to have

18:55

it, you've got to give up hope and you've got

18:57

to give up love and you've got to have faith

18:59

only in the waiting. So that's a line that makes

19:01

me applaud. Another author who gets me

19:03

is, another poet who gets

19:06

me is Walt Whitman. And Walt

19:08

Whitman saying, describing himself in a

19:10

song of myself, describing himself

19:12

as standing both in and out of the

19:14

game, watching and wondering

19:16

at it and also being involved

19:19

in it. That description of he

19:21

watching himself walk through life, both

19:24

in and out of the game, is

19:26

again, something that I think of as the

19:28

highest point of enlightenment. Can you

19:30

engage with your life? Can you be involved

19:33

with your life? Can you feel

19:35

all of the feelings? Can you fall in

19:37

love? Can you lose? Can you fail? Can

19:39

you grow? Can you succeed? Can you fuck

19:41

up? And also watch it

19:43

from a little bit of a detached distance

19:45

and marvel at the game itself. So

19:48

that line gets me. And then

19:50

as far as fiction writers go,

19:52

I'm so in love with Hilary

19:54

Mantel, who wrote the Wolf Hall

19:56

trilogy about Henry VIII and

19:58

won the Booker Prize for the first two. installments of it

20:00

and then the third one just came out. The way that

20:02

I've been describing it to people is, imagine

20:05

if all three Godfather movies

20:07

were as good as the first two. Imagine

20:10

if Godfather part three was just as good

20:12

as one and two, that's how good Hilary

20:14

Mantel is, that the third installment. I'm reading

20:17

that right now and it's just a bowdown

20:19

moment. As an artist, there

20:21

are a lot of writers who I look at their

20:23

work and I admire them, but I

20:25

see how they did it because it's almost like

20:27

a carpenter looking at another carpenter's work and being

20:29

like, I can see how you did the joints

20:31

there and you hit that hinge there

20:33

and that's cool. I see it well done. Then

20:36

there are people, I look at their work and I'm like, I

20:39

literally don't believe that you're human. I

20:43

don't understand how you can

20:45

even do this. That's how I feel about

20:48

Hilary Mantel writing about 16th

20:50

century England in a way that is so

20:52

intimate. You

20:54

cannot read that book without thinking, this is

20:56

exactly how it happened and I don't know

20:58

how she does it. I'm happy

21:00

to never be able to do that. I'm just lucky to

21:02

live on earth at the same time as somebody who can.

21:06

I would push back a little bit and I

21:08

would say that you have

21:11

a rare ability to blend

21:14

readability with wordsmithing

21:18

sentences that are very

21:20

memorable and really strike a chord. I don't think

21:22

that is easy to do. I

21:26

would say Kurt Vonnegut is one who

21:28

comes to mind, but it's not easy to

21:31

combine those two things. It

21:34

made me crack a smile when I

21:36

was reading about you appreciating sentences. The

21:38

quote from you at the end of this

21:41

portion of the interview was, it's

21:43

part of the reason that the arts are around to remind us

21:45

that we're not just here to pay bills and die that we're

21:48

also here to get excited and feel wonder and to feel awe.

21:50

That's easy to read, but it

21:52

is something that makes me go, fuck,

21:55

goddamn, you're totally right. I need

21:57

more wonder and awe.

22:00

spending too many bills, spending too much on

22:02

paperwork. So I do want

22:04

to applaud that ability. And I'd

22:06

love for you to speak to what

22:08

else you have learned from Martha

22:11

Beck. What are some of the other things that

22:13

have really stuck for you? I'll

22:15

give you one more Martha Beck line that I love. She

22:18

says, there are certain moments of your life where you're

22:20

standing in front of a bonfire and

22:22

you have to jump. You just have

22:24

to jump into it. And you have to be

22:26

willing to burn away everything that

22:29

you've been taught and everything

22:31

that you're afraid of and just do it. And she

22:33

said, and I remember her telling me this was such

22:35

glee, she goes, it's such a cool moment that

22:38

you're in. And she said this to me

22:40

as I was leaving my marriage and going

22:42

to be with Ray, she said that these

22:44

bonfire moments are so fantastic because there's only

22:46

two things that can happen when you jump

22:48

into a bonfire. One of them

22:50

is that you find out that it wasn't actually a

22:52

bonfire, that you were afraid that it was gonna burn

22:55

you to pieces and it actually didn't. It wasn't as

22:57

scary as you thought. You did it, you took

22:59

the leap. It turned out to be kind of like

23:02

warm and soft and easy. So it was no big deal.

23:05

The other thing that can happen is

23:07

that it is a bonfire and you

23:09

are incinerated and your entire

23:11

life is incinerated by it. And

23:14

that's even better because then you get to be

23:16

reborn as a phoenix on the other side, completely

23:18

new. So either way you win. So

23:20

there's no reason not to. You'll either jump in

23:22

and find out it was nothing or you'll jump

23:24

in and you'll be destroyed and that's awesome too.

23:26

When I say Martha doesn't play by the game,

23:28

that's what I mean. Like that's what I mean

23:30

about she's not even in the arena that we

23:32

would call any sort of normal

23:34

way of living. And for that reason, she's been

23:37

one of the top three most influential

23:39

people in my entire life. You're

23:42

like, Martha, do we go left right or straight? And

23:44

she's like, we go up. You're like, what? How

23:46

do we do that? That's incredible.

23:49

Let's talk about the integrity

23:51

check that

23:54

sternum to naval area will have to come

23:56

up with some sort of perineum like labeled.

23:59

makes it a little easier to… In

24:01

their compass, I think. Because in their compass,

24:04

there we go. That's where it's located, yeah.

24:06

When you do say an integrity check,

24:08

and I had read that when

24:12

Raya was sick, for instance, you began deleting

24:14

or archiving emails without responding as a bit

24:16

of a treat to yourself. Okay,

24:21

deleting, goodbye. And when

24:24

you say now, check

24:27

in with yourself, and

24:30

decide to say no to something. Let's

24:32

just make it easier, make it concrete

24:34

via email. You get an invitation from

24:37

a friend you do actually really like with something

24:40

that could plausibly advance your career or be fun,

24:42

but you check in with yourself and it's like,

24:44

nope, this isn't a yes.

24:47

How do you phrase your no's or

24:49

declines? Do you have any particular go-to

24:52

language that you like to use? I just

24:55

want to make sure everybody knows that this is not easy. I

24:58

don't want to have any illusions for

25:00

anybody that this is simple. And the

25:02

closer the relationship, the harder it is.

25:04

The closer and more intimately I'm involved

25:06

with somebody, the more stakes there

25:08

are for me and the harder it is for me to

25:10

tell the truth. And that feels like it

25:12

should be, you know, there's a paradox.

25:14

The people you love the most should be the people that

25:17

you are able to be the most honest with. Well,

25:19

no, because they're the people who you want to

25:21

hurt the least. That's where it's really, really hard.

25:24

There's a couple layers of it. I now treat my

25:26

inbox like it's my home, because I

25:28

think it's an extension of my home. So if

25:31

somebody walks into my home uninvited and

25:33

announces themselves and doesn't say how they got

25:35

a key and asks for something,

25:38

I delete that email. I'm just like, I didn't

25:40

invite you in. There are proper channels,

25:42

you know what they are. I don't know how you

25:45

got my personal email and I just delete it. And

25:47

if I feel a sense in my sternum of offense,

25:50

of feeling like this person has taken

25:52

a liberty, I don't believe

25:54

that I owe them anything. I don't believe that I

25:56

owe them anything any more than if I came down

25:59

to my kitchen. and saw people sitting at

26:01

my table who I didn't know eating breakfast,

26:04

I wouldn't believe that I owed them to make them a

26:06

cup of coffee. I'd

26:08

be like, get out of my house. You're not supposed

26:10

to be here. I don't even think I owe them

26:13

a polite response. I owe them nothing.

26:15

I didn't ask you to come into my house. I

26:17

don't owe you anything. So that's the easiest. Those are

26:19

the ones that are easy. And I now treat myself

26:21

to doing that. I mean, I do that every day.

26:23

I clear my inbox out very quickly now. And then

26:25

it's very, I'm entertained when they come back later and

26:28

they're like, just circling back. And I'm like, yeah, just

26:30

deleting you again. Circle back as many times

26:32

as you want. You are not coming in. So that's simple.

26:35

If it's a- Just bumping this up, Picsy. I

26:37

know you. Yeah, I'm just

26:39

bumping you back. And I'm just, it's like whack-a-moles.

26:41

It's like, I can do this all day. Delete,

26:43

delete, delete. If it's somebody who I care

26:46

about, if it's something that

26:48

I'm interested in, but I'm just not going

26:52

to do it because I don't want to, I

26:54

will write back and say, thank you so much. I'm

26:56

really honored that you invited me to this, but I'm

26:58

not going to be able to do this at this

27:01

time. And I don't feel

27:03

I need to give a reason. I think

27:05

a simple no is really, really good. And

27:07

the reason, sometimes the reason

27:09

it's good not to give an explanation is

27:12

that if that person is an expert

27:14

manipulator, as many of us

27:16

are, that explanation will not suffice. So

27:19

it won't matter what you give as an explanation because

27:21

they can come back and be like, well, we can

27:23

do it by audio. You know, we can do- Oh,

27:26

well, we can do it a different weekend. Just

27:29

no. And I learned a lot about this from

27:32

my teacher, Byron Katie, who teaches an amazing thing

27:34

called the School for the Work. She's

27:36

a whole another being who's not

27:39

at all living by the rules.

27:41

Extra-terrestrial for sure. She is extra-terrestrial.

27:44

She is the only fully enlightened human being

27:46

I believe I have ever met. And as

27:49

such, she does not have any trouble saying

27:51

an honest, she has an unknown, no to

27:53

people. Just to underscore that, because I did

27:56

an in-person training with her, I mean, literally

27:58

no. Hesitation,

28:01

no struggle, no conflict. It's

28:08

bizarre and mesmerizing

28:10

to watch. Really. She loves you. She

28:13

loves you. There's also no hostility. So I

28:15

remember seeing somebody come up to her, somebody

28:17

came up to her at an event, handed

28:19

her a book that they'd written, which

28:21

people do to me all the time too. So

28:23

I really marveled at this. They said, I wrote this and I

28:25

want to share it with you. She said, oh, sweetheart, I'm never

28:27

going to read that. She said, true.

28:30

It's just true. I've never played that. And I'm

28:32

like, oh my God, I didn't know you could

28:34

say that. So that's amazing. And she said it

28:36

so lovingly like, oh, no, I

28:38

have no interest in reading that. So she teaches,

28:40

I don't know if you did, when you took

28:43

her training, did you do where she teaches a

28:45

simple no, and she does training

28:47

on how to give a simple no. I

28:49

don't think we actually spent much time on that. So

28:51

I would love to hear you say more.

28:54

We worked on the emotional one pages and

28:56

the turn arounds. We did a lot on

28:58

the turn arounds, which is

29:01

probably, we could do a whole episode just on

29:03

that. Everybody look up by her, Katie, for today's

29:05

reason. And if you have the means, and

29:07

if you have the chance to ever take her nine day

29:09

school for the work, it's the most important thing I've ever

29:11

done for myself. So I would say that

29:13

quite simply, but she has a whole day in the nine

29:15

day school for work, which is about the simple

29:18

no. And the simple no is ways to say

29:20

no. And it

29:22

always begins with thank you. And

29:25

there's never a but, because she feels

29:27

that the word but is very cruel and

29:29

it's just an and. So

29:32

it's thank you and no. And that's

29:34

it, that's a simple no. And then if they come back,

29:36

you can say- Well, hold on, just to pause

29:38

for a second. Is that literally the phrasing or

29:40

is it just- Yeah, thank you

29:42

and no. Yeah, that's it, that's it. And it just,

29:44

it still makes my stomach ache because I'm like, oh my God,

29:46

you can't just do that. You've got to give, you've got to

29:49

like do the dance. And she's like, you don't have to do

29:51

the dance. And she's the one who taught me if the person

29:53

is a good enough manipulator, it doesn't matter what you bring. They're

29:56

going to manipulate it. And the beautiful thing about a

29:58

simple no is that it- in the

30:01

jiu-jitsu game, it gives somebody no weapon that

30:03

they can take and bring back to you.

30:05

They can say you're being incredibly selfish, and

30:08

you can say, I hear that and you might be

30:10

right about that. That's another one she always says, you

30:12

might be right about that. You might

30:14

be right about that and no. You

30:19

just keep adding and no after the statement.

30:21

So then there's, but I really, I

30:23

need you to do this. I'm desperate and you

30:26

say, I see that. I see your desperation and

30:28

no. And one other thing she'll add

30:30

is you can say, if I change my mind about

30:32

this, I'll let you know and know.

30:35

And that's been a game

30:37

changer for me. So I just did one last

30:39

week. Somebody who I have

30:41

a professional relationship said, I want you to

30:43

do this one hour video interview to

30:46

promote this thing that I'm doing. And

30:50

old Liz would have thought I owe her that

30:52

because she did this other thing for me that

30:54

time. And I checked

30:56

in with my inner

30:58

compass and I was like, well, nothing in me wants to do

31:00

this. And so I just wrote back to her, I said, I'm

31:02

so sorry. And I'm not gonna be able to do this at

31:05

this time. And she wrote back and pushed in and said, oh,

31:08

let me clarify. I wasn't clear about why

31:10

we need it. We really need it because

31:12

right now it's really hard for us to

31:14

sell things because of COVID-19. And that's

31:17

why we need it. And I wrote back and said,

31:19

I hear you and I understand you and know. And

31:21

it goes away. They don't tend to come back as

31:24

hard to find. It

31:26

really does just stop

31:29

and let it sit at the no. The

31:31

more words you add after that, the

31:33

more entangled you get. But again, I

31:35

wanna make clear it's hardest closest to

31:37

home and it's hardest with family.

31:40

And with family, I find if I anticipate

31:42

that I'm gonna be asked something, I

31:44

really have to practice. Cause it's

31:46

scary. And I have to really practice and

31:48

be like, and just practice saying,

31:51

I'm not doing that right now. I'm not coming this year.

31:54

And I'll say it a thousand times because I'll just go

31:56

for a long walk and I'll just practice it and practice

31:58

it and practice it. Because as a child, I say

32:00

the closer the people are to you, the more difficult it is.

32:03

It has a bit of personal digression here.

32:05

I was working on a book, an

32:07

entire book about saying no this past

32:09

summer. And the great

32:11

irony of course is that I came up with all the

32:13

reasons why I shouldn't write the book in the process

32:15

of putting it together. But what

32:18

I noticed as I was practicing different

32:20

ways of saying no is that

32:23

it's an incredibly clarifying

32:27

exercise because it in

32:29

a sense it kind of brings

32:32

to surface the true character

32:34

of many people you know or

32:36

people who are attempting to reach you. And what

32:38

I found surprising and maybe I

32:40

shouldn't have found it surprising is that many

32:43

of my close friends who

32:45

I anticipated might be upset would respond

32:48

with, dude, good

32:50

for respecting your boundaries. It was

32:52

a great line. Rock

32:55

on. And they got it and

32:57

they were just like, oh, I wish I

32:59

could say that more myself, good for you. And

33:02

it was the bonfire that wasn't a bonfire in

33:05

those cases. Did

33:07

you ever run into a bonfire that was one? Oh,

33:10

for sure. Absolutely. And then I'm

33:12

like, oh, wow. Because if you, what

33:14

I like about what you

33:17

said about the sort of

33:19

jiu-jitsu analogy is that

33:22

if you provide really specific reasons

33:24

for why you can't do it

33:26

and you elaborate, you've just created

33:28

a potential negotiation. But

33:31

if you don't provide

33:33

that grip, that toll

33:35

hold, then one

33:37

of the few responses someone can give you if

33:39

they're upset and still want to push is some

33:41

type of personal ad hominem

33:44

attack or an accusation. And then you're

33:47

like, oh, wow. Okay. Now it's that

33:49

kind of party. Okay. This is good

33:51

to know before we're on stage having

33:53

a public tiff at God knows what.

33:55

I mean, this is valuable information. So

33:57

there were definitely some bonfires and. basically

34:00

people just self-immolated because I

34:03

was like, oh wow, you've just proved my

34:06

internal compass to be extremely accurate.

34:09

This is the reason and here is

34:11

the reason I'm not working with you.

34:13

But you don't even just say that.

34:15

You just know it because the

34:17

body knows first, the

34:20

body knows first, but only always. Only

34:22

always. One of the things that Martha

34:24

says that I love is she's like,

34:26

because culture and civilization have overwritten the

34:28

software system of the body so much

34:30

and told you that you don't trust

34:32

that. What you trust are the

34:34

rules and the mores

34:37

and the fear-based scarcity-based

34:39

grasping. This is how you have to

34:41

act. This is who you have to be in order to be safe. Meanwhile,

34:44

our body's like, ew. You know, ew,

34:46

gross. Or

34:49

on the opposite side, like yummy. I

34:52

want to be over there. I

34:54

want to be with those people. I

34:56

don't want to be with these people. If you think about

34:58

it, the wisdom of the body

35:00

is so incredible. How many people do

35:02

you know who said, I knew the night before

35:05

my wedding that this was a mistake?

35:07

How many people do you know say that? Yet, why

35:09

did you do it? Because you were 29 and it

35:11

was time to get married. Because you'd been raised in

35:13

a culture that said, this is what you do now.

35:16

Because the invitations had been sent out because 300 people

35:18

had gathered. Because

35:20

your family spent $30,000 on the wedding. Like

35:23

whatever the reasons were, you

35:25

knew. Somewhere in that sternum area, you knew.

35:27

And how much you had to drink that

35:29

day in order to override

35:32

that. Whatever you had to do in order

35:34

to shut down that compass that was saying,

35:36

uh-uh. It's brutal. That's the

35:38

work of the second half of my life.

35:40

I can say that now, but I'm 50.

35:44

That the only thing I'm interested

35:46

anymore is that. Just

35:51

a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right

35:54

back to the show. with

36:36

your first subscription purchase. So learn more,

36:38

check it out. Go

36:40

to drinkag1.com/Tim. That's

36:44

drinkag1, the number

36:46

one. drinkag1.com/Tim. Last

36:49

time, drinkag1.com. And

36:57

now Jack Kornfield, one

36:59

of the key teachers to introduce mindfulness practice

37:02

to the west, author of 16

37:04

books including Bringing Home the

37:07

Dharma and Seeking the Heart

37:09

of Wisdom, and a

37:11

founding teacher of the Insight Meditation

37:13

Society in Massachusetts and

37:15

Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California.

37:18

You can find Jack on

37:21

Instagram at Jack underscore Kornfield.

37:24

Jack, welcome to the show. Oh,

37:26

thank you, Tim. Pleasure to reconnect.

37:29

I have wanted to have you on

37:31

the show for some time now. And

37:34

you've had certainly a tremendous

37:37

impact on my life, both through

37:39

your writing and through firsthand

37:41

in-person interaction, which I think we'll touch

37:43

upon. But first I wanted

37:46

to ask you a complete non-sec

37:48

order from that, which is

37:50

something that our mutual friend Adam

37:52

Ghazali suggested I ask you about.

37:55

And Adam, for people who don't know him,

37:57

is an incredible PhD, MD,

38:00

neuroscientist based at UCSF and

38:05

He suggested that I ask you about

38:07

hang gliding and I have no idea

38:09

why he suggested that But

38:12

I'm gonna start there and if it doesn't go

38:14

anywhere we can change direction but I figured we

38:16

would just start with that and then we're gonna

38:18

rewind the clock, but Why

38:20

did he suggest I ask you about hang

38:22

gliding? Well, it started many

38:24

years ago when I crossed country with a

38:27

Friend who had a hang glider and

38:30

we would stop periodically and go off

38:32

different hills and it was fantastic and

38:34

then I wanted to do paragliding and

38:36

started to learn it now because Everything

38:40

is developed and paragliding is a lot more

38:42

official. You need a license, which I don't

38:44

have but one of my favorite things is

38:47

to tandem paragliding

38:49

go off the top of

38:51

places like Grindelwald in Switzerland

38:54

where you can take the ski lift

38:56

up to 9,000 feet and then

38:59

jump off and float Silently

39:01

like you're a bird Among

39:03

the clouds the birds actually do come

39:05

by sometimes and like check out what's

39:08

this big bird flying up here You

39:10

can catch thermals and go way up

39:12

above the glaciers It's one

39:14

of the most thrilling and delicious

39:16

experiences that I know That's

39:20

Incredible. See you first experienced that

39:22

at what age probably in my

39:24

you know Late 20s and

39:26

did some and then sort of put it aside and

39:29

then I was traveling and teaching in Europe and

39:31

I saw a sign for paragliding and I said,

39:34

oh gosh, I really want to do it and

39:37

Started and now each time I go where

39:39

there's high mountains and paragliding That's one of

39:41

my things that I love

39:43

doing most people have these dreams

39:45

once in a while if you're lucky a dream

39:47

of flying or maybe in your meditation

39:50

you have this sense of not being limited to your

39:52

body and This is

39:54

the closest thing that I know because

39:56

it's absolutely silent and you're

39:58

floating there. It's quite fantastic And this

40:00

is something you still do. Mm-hmm.

40:04

I hope to do it next summer when I'm back in the Alps. And

40:07

how old are you now? 72,

40:09

good man. Well, we're

40:11

going to then go back a

40:14

bit in chronology and

40:16

ask about childhood. I

40:18

would love to hear you

40:20

describe your childhood. What were

40:23

you like as a child? What was your

40:25

upbringing like? Well, first thing

40:27

to say is I remember when I

40:29

got to Dartmouth College in 1963, and

40:31

I called

40:34

my mom from the payphone in the dorm

40:36

sometime in that fall. I didn't call very

40:38

often, but you know how it is. And

40:42

I said, mom, I said, guess

40:44

what? There are a lot of

40:46

other really fucked up families beside ours. So

40:51

that's kind of where we start. So

40:57

I had three brothers, and my

40:59

father was a mixture of a tyrant

41:01

and a really abusive person and a

41:04

brilliant guy. I was born on a

41:06

marine base toward the end of World

41:08

War II, and they didn't send

41:10

him overseas to do, they

41:12

put him in the medical part of

41:14

the Marines because he tested so high

41:17

on their test that they, you know,

41:19

okay, we're going to use him for

41:21

something. So he was brilliant in certain

41:23

ways. He was a biophysicist who helped

41:25

design some of the first artificial hearts

41:27

and lungs, worked on the space program,

41:29

but also did other kinds

41:31

of weird stuff like work for the

41:34

army biological weapons

41:37

people, not making biological weapons, but

41:39

trying to design things that

41:42

were kind of computer biological interfaces,

41:44

all kinds of creative stuff. But

41:47

he was, he had mental problems.

41:50

And so we didn't know when the car pulled in

41:52

whether we were going to get Dr. Jekyll or Mr.

41:54

Hyde. He would come in and, you know, either he

41:57

could shout, be abusive. throw

42:00

my mother down the stairs, rant,

42:02

chase after us, try to hit us, whatever.

42:04

Or we'd get this

42:06

interesting creative person, but we hardly ever

42:08

had people come over when he

42:11

was around. During the daytime is the way we would,

42:13

because he never knew what you would get. And

42:15

so our family life, and my

42:17

family life in some way, was also, there

42:20

were great parts of it, because I

42:22

had my brothers and we were like our

42:24

own gang. We moved all the time,

42:26

but we had each other. And because

42:29

he was wacky as well as smart,

42:31

my father either quit or got fired

42:33

every year or two. And then we

42:35

would go from one place to another.

42:37

I went to, I don't know, eight schools

42:39

by the time I finished high school.

42:41

So my childhood, partly it was the

42:43

happy things of rough housing and being

42:45

a boy with three other boys, and

42:48

adventures. And then in the

42:50

basement, my father had all kinds of

42:52

scientific equipment. He had all this

42:55

stuff from World War II, this huge radio from

42:57

a battleship that you could tune into

42:59

a thousand different shortwave

43:01

stations around the world, and

43:04

projects he was trying to design stuff. And so we learned from

43:07

him, you could pretty much take or

43:09

design or do anything in the physical

43:11

world. And at the

43:13

same time, I felt like

43:15

my whole childhood was

43:17

also colored with the fear of

43:19

his violence and

43:23

his unpredictability. And

43:26

I became kind of a peacemaker in the family.

43:28

We all sort of had our roles, and now

43:30

I do it as a profession, right? Trying to

43:33

kind of make it a little smoother between my

43:35

parents so that they'd kill each other. And

43:37

each of my brothers had their own

43:39

strategy. My twin brother, who was a

43:42

lot bigger and much more outgoing, played

43:44

football, which I certainly didn't. I was

43:46

skinnier and I was in the orchestra

43:48

and he was the football player. I

43:50

remember when he first got in a

43:53

fistfight with my dad, because

43:55

my father was abusing our mom. My

43:59

twin brother had been. as young men sometimes

44:01

do. It was probably 13,

44:03

14, and he was pretty big, and he

44:05

was looking in the mirror, making muscles

44:08

in the mirror to see how

44:10

strong he'd become. Anyway, he just

44:12

got into a fistfight with my

44:14

father, and I was both thrilled

44:16

and terrified, but it worked

44:18

in some way because the abuse settled

44:21

down quite a lot after that. So that

44:23

was his strategy, was just to get angry,

44:25

and then later kind of to go his

44:27

own way somewhat more, although we all

44:30

have been very close as brothers. So

44:32

there was that. At the same time,

44:35

there was a lot of intellectual interests,

44:37

so we read and learned

44:39

about all kinds of things. Both my parents

44:41

were really interested in the

44:43

world around us. So it was sort

44:46

of this next thing of the gift

44:48

of being together with my brothers and

44:50

a mom who was basically pretty nurturing,

44:52

although she kept trying to leave him

44:55

and never got it together. I think

44:57

it was too scary in the 50s

44:59

to have four boys, no

45:02

job. And so we were

45:04

in the middle of this, and the kind

45:06

of healing that it took, it took a

45:08

long time to do the inner healing work

45:10

from the pain of my family. And

45:13

I remember when I became a Buddhist monk, and

45:16

I was sitting these

45:18

first years with my

45:20

teacher, Adjhant Chah, in

45:22

the forest monasteries of Thailand on

45:24

the border of Thailand and Laos,

45:27

and I'd be sitting quietly. And then some

45:29

of these memories or energy

45:31

would come where I remember one monk

45:34

who had a pot near mine

45:36

in the forest did something that

45:38

annoyed me, and I just got

45:40

enraged inside. And I

45:42

sat, and when I went to the teacher and I said, I'm

45:45

really getting angry here. And he

45:48

smiled. He said, yeah, where do you think

45:50

that comes from? Or something like that. And

45:53

I said, well, I don't know. I said, I

45:55

thought I was a peaceful guy. I was never going to

45:57

be like my father. I won't, you know, I'll be peaceful.

46:00

But it turned out it just stuffed all that stuff.

46:03

And so when I told it, my teacher about it, he said, good.

46:06

He said, go back in your hut. It's the hot

46:08

season. You've got a little tin roof and close the

46:10

doors and windows and put all your robes on. And

46:13

if you're going to be angry, do it right. Sit

46:15

in the middle of that. You know, and sit in

46:17

the middle of the fire. And don't be so afraid

46:19

of it because you're afraid of it. You're just going

46:21

to keep stuffing it. And on the

46:23

other hand, or if you're afraid of it,

46:26

it'll just explode. There's another way to be

46:28

with it. And so that was the beginning

46:30

of some healing, just to realize that I

46:32

could actually tolerate the suffering

46:35

and the energy that was in my, still

46:37

carried from trauma in my body and heart.

46:40

So we're going to absolutely come

46:42

back to Ajahn Chah, because I have many

46:44

questions on that chapter in your

46:47

life, but just so that I can

46:49

create the proper visual in my own head. So

46:51

you sat there in your hut, in the sweltering

46:53

heat with all of your robes on, were

46:56

you angry in silence? Were you yelling?

46:58

Well, what did you say? I was

47:00

pretty much angry in silence. And that's

47:02

an interesting question. You know, in the

47:04

monastery, the culture was not much that

47:06

you would yell. You could go somewhere

47:08

out in the forest and yell. It

47:10

wasn't decorous or something. People go, what

47:12

the hell's wrong with that monk? So

47:15

mostly I was sitting in silence and

47:17

then scenes would come and I would

47:20

realize, wow, I thought I

47:22

was peaceful in every cell of my body.

47:24

I also carry both the pain and anger

47:26

of my childhood and my father and just

47:29

the anger that comes with being a human

47:31

being and human incarnation. And I was never

47:33

going to have that, but of course there

47:35

was. And it lasted, you know,

47:37

this was, I had days

47:40

of, and actually much longer, weeks

47:42

or months of waves of this

47:44

coming and learning how to

47:46

be present for it and not get overwhelmed

47:48

by it. So I want to backtrack and

47:51

then connect those dots. So between

47:54

childhood and ending up in

47:57

Thailand, you mentioned Dartmouth

47:59

earlier. And

50:00

when I got there, you could kind

50:03

of request where you went. And

50:05

I said, send me the most remote place

50:07

you can. I wanted adventure, but I also

50:09

wanted to kind of, reading all those old

50:12

Zen stories, I wanted to see if that

50:14

still existed. You know, and

50:16

there were little detours, like being in Hey,

50:18

Dash Green, Summer of Love, and things like

50:20

that, that definitely, it changed

50:23

my life also in a very deep

50:25

way, because for, at least for a

50:27

time, there was a window when people

50:29

were just giving things away. There was

50:31

such a sense that the world could

50:33

be transformed. Some of it,

50:35

as we know, very, very naive. But

50:37

on the other hand, it also felt

50:40

like a greater sense of brotherhood and

50:42

sisterhood than I had ever known, except with my own

50:44

brothers, who

50:46

I love a lot, and we've done a

50:48

lot of things together. And I started to

50:50

feel like there are other ways for me

50:53

and for the world to be and live.

50:55

And that was also very wonderful. You

50:57

mentioned a three-letter acronym that we're probably not going

50:59

to spend too, too much time on, but you

51:02

and I have had quite a number of conversations

51:04

where I've wanted to ask you about some of

51:06

your experiences with psychedelics, including LSD, but

51:08

we've never really gotten into it. So I figure why not do

51:10

it in front of a few million people? The

51:13

LSD, at that point, your

51:15

experiences with that, did that inform your decisions

51:17

at all to then go into the Peace

51:20

Corps and end up in a remote area?

51:24

It did, and I've written a little bit about

51:27

it in a couple different of my books, chapters

51:30

in books I've written, because most

51:32

Buddhist teachers and Hindu

51:35

teachers of my generation also started

51:37

with psychedelics, myself

51:39

and almost all my colleagues

51:41

in the spiritual industry

51:43

that I'm in. That was the beginning, and

51:46

for me, it showed an

51:48

incredible possibility that all is

51:50

created out of consciousness and

51:52

the possibilities of inner freedom. And

51:54

basically, I was able, at the

51:56

best of it, to see my

51:59

body and my heart. personality and

52:01

my history and realize that that's

52:03

not who I am. To

52:05

become much more the conscious witness of

52:08

it all, to see, yes,

52:10

birth and death and to go

52:12

through those kind of death-rebirth experiences

52:14

that can happen at times in

52:16

a deep session with LSD or

52:19

death of ego or a sense

52:21

of self or removing and realizing,

52:23

wow, there's a freedom and a

52:25

life force. It's what we're made

52:27

of. And that profoundly influenced my

52:30

interest in spirituality, also interested in

52:32

what the world can be. Now,

52:34

just a few days ago, I

52:36

was on Maui with

52:38

my beloved wife Trudy, and

52:41

we were visiting spending time with

52:43

Ramdas, who for listeners that

52:45

don't know was the author of this bestseller

52:47

in the 60s called Be Here Now, and

52:49

now he's in 86 in

52:51

a wheelchair. But Ramdas,

52:53

who had been at Harvard University and

52:56

one of the early explorers of LSD

52:58

before he went to India

53:00

and became a spiritual teacher in

53:02

the living room while we were there two

53:04

days ago, Roland Fisher, who

53:06

is one of the senior professors

53:09

in psychopharmacologists at Johns

53:11

Hopkins University Medical School.

53:13

Oh, Roland Griffiths. Roland

53:16

Griffiths, rather. And Roland, excuse me,

53:18

Roland Griffiths. And Roland laid

53:21

out all the research that's

53:23

happening now on

53:25

psilocybin that he's been doing, and

53:28

its success for people, terminal

53:30

cancer patients, all losing

53:33

a great deal of their

53:35

the fears that they had, working

53:37

with people with severe depression. And

53:40

it was a beautiful session because

53:42

you could hear how these sacred

53:45

substances and these mind altering

53:47

substances, when they're used in the

53:49

right context, can really

53:51

transform human beings. And

53:54

NYU, Johns Hopkins, there's a whole series

53:56

of studies that are happening now that

53:58

are finally bringing you back into

54:01

the mainstream. So

54:03

I'd love to underscore just a few things that you

54:05

mentioned. Number

54:07

one, Ram Dass for those people who

54:09

want to do additional reading, formerly known

54:11

as Richard Alpert, if I'm getting that

54:13

right. Also has

54:16

a fascinating story coming full circle

54:19

with psychedelic research beginning,

54:21

I guess, at Harvard in some respects.

54:24

So it makes sense to me why Roland's

54:26

research would be so meaningful to him. And

54:29

a number of other just quick comments for

54:31

people. Number one is if you're interested in

54:34

looking into these Soul Simon, which

54:36

is considered the active

54:38

psychoactive ingredient in magic

54:41

mushrooms at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere,

54:43

I've actually been involved with crowdfunding

54:46

and funding myself some of the

54:48

research related to treatment

54:50

resistant depression at Johns Hopkins with Roland

54:53

Griffith says the senior investigator and I'll

54:55

be posting some updates to that. But

54:57

fascinating work looking at everything from and

54:59

this is also, as you mentioned, NYU

55:02

and at other very well regarded universities,

55:06

alcohol addiction, nicotine

55:08

slash tobacco addiction, as

55:10

you mentioned, end of life anxiety

55:12

in cancer patients. The

55:14

implications are really profound and the

55:17

data very, very promising. And

55:20

I wanted to also mention to folks who are

55:22

perhaps saying to themselves, well, I'm not interested in

55:24

taking psychedelics myself, that there are

55:26

people I know, good friends

55:29

of mine who do not currently

55:31

use psychedelics, but

55:33

had the ego dissolving experience

55:35

of a non-ordinary reality through

55:37

psychedelics that then led them

55:40

to become or contributed

55:42

to them becoming very, very diligent

55:44

meditators. And Sam Harris, who

55:46

is a PhD in neuroscience and thought of

55:48

or very well known as an atheist

55:51

or one of the four horsemen

55:54

of the atheist apocalypse, along

55:57

with Richard Dawkins and others is a

55:59

very close friend. and extremely diligent

56:01

meditator. And he's written about how his

56:03

psychedelic experiences, which were in some respects,

56:06

very, some of them uncontrolled, and you

56:08

really have a coin flip there in

56:10

terms of which direction you can go,

56:12

but showed him possibilities

56:15

within his own mind that then led to

56:17

a very, very, I'm not gonna call it

56:20

devout, although I should just

56:22

to bother maybe, diligent practice. So I

56:24

don't wanna take us too far off

56:26

the rails, but you go

56:29

to Southeast Asia. Well,

56:31

I just wanna say one more thing before

56:33

we move on, because we are talking about

56:36

this. It turns out for those who are

56:38

listening, that set and setting and

56:41

intention are extremely important if one

56:43

uses these psychedelics like psilocybin or

56:45

something to set the intention to

56:48

learn, to open, to have a

56:50

quiet. It's not as a party

56:53

experience. Absolutely. Brings your attention inward,

56:56

and then all the kind of discoveries become

56:58

right in front of you. But the other thing

57:00

is that whether it's

57:03

right for somebody to use psychedelics or

57:05

to use meditation, these are

57:08

all invitations to

57:10

step back and

57:12

see the mystery of your life, because

57:15

we tend to live in the daily

57:17

minutia and checking off our list of

57:19

tasks that we have to do and

57:21

completing them, our work, or eating, or

57:24

all the kind of things that make up a

57:26

day. And we go on to

57:29

automatic. And whether it's meditation

57:31

and difference or other spiritual disciplines,

57:33

or for some people, it also

57:35

can just be that they have

57:38

what in Greek is called a katamasa, a

57:40

blow. Somebody close

57:42

to them gets cancer or is dying,

57:44

or they have some accident or something.

57:47

And all of a sudden, you step

57:49

back and you realize, whoa, life is

57:51

uncertain the way I've been taking it.

57:53

It's not just checking off the list.

57:56

This is a mystery human incarnation. And what

57:58

am I gonna do? with it and wow,

58:00

look at this, how did I get in

58:03

this body? Look at plants and trees and

58:06

language, the air coming out of your mouth

58:08

that you shape it different ways and it

58:10

vibrates a little drum in the ear of

58:12

someone else and I can say Golden Gate

58:14

Bridge and they can envision it. And you

58:16

start to realize that all of it is

58:18

alive and made of consciousness. And

58:20

then the whole sense of who

58:22

you are and what matters

58:24

begins to shift. And you

58:26

start to realize that life is not

58:28

just getting through the hoops, but

58:31

it actually also can be a

58:33

celebration of the heart of something

58:36

that you have to bring

58:38

to the world that you come out of life. And

58:40

my friend Maladoma Somay, who's a West

58:43

African shaman and medicine man, also

58:45

true PhDs, a kind of remarkable

58:48

guy, he says with the Daghra

58:50

people in West Africa that he's

58:52

from, that they

58:55

say that every child comes into the world

58:57

with a certain cargo as their metaphor,

59:00

like the cargo ships that ply the

59:03

rivers of West Africa. And

59:05

that they're given gifts to

59:08

bring into the world and that we

59:10

have gifts to bring to

59:12

this mystery which include opening to it.

59:15

And as we do, love grows, connection

59:17

grows and a whole different way of

59:19

being in the world happens that we

59:22

need so much at this

59:24

time. So that's a little interlude

59:26

there before we move on to your

59:28

next question. I welcome as many interludes

59:31

as you would like to interject. And

59:33

I wanted to just ask

59:35

you to say one more time that it was,

59:37

I believe, Greek word for... Katamos,

59:40

which means a blow. It's like something

59:42

comes and it just sets your life

59:44

spinning in an entirely different direction. Right,

59:46

like a catalyzing event. Exactly.

59:49

I've had a few of those recently that I'd

59:51

like to selfishly ask you about later. But so

59:53

I can bookmark, just

59:56

so I can bookmark this name Stanislav Groff,

59:58

if I'm saying that correctly. That's

1:00:00

correct. When did you meet

1:00:03

him roughly what age or what date just so I

1:00:05

can come back to it? Because this is another thing

1:00:07

I've been meaning to ask you about for a long

1:00:09

time and get into but I haven't had the chance.

1:00:12

There's two things to say. When

1:00:15

I came back from the monastery

1:00:17

and now it's, you know, I

1:00:20

guess the year that I connected with Stan was maybe

1:00:23

1973, I made two really important connections.

1:00:25

I came back and started a psychology

1:00:28

and graduate school. It was in Boston

1:00:30

and first really important connection happened when

1:00:32

I went to a meeting of the

1:00:35

Massachusetts Psychological Association

1:00:38

and there was this guy

1:00:40

who looked like he'd he

1:00:42

didn't look just like the straight Psychologists

1:00:44

and it turned out he'd just come

1:00:46

back from India not long before named

1:00:48

Dan Goldman who was a graduate student

1:00:50

at Harvard and he'd projected on the

1:00:53

screen this Tibetan wheel of birth

1:00:55

and death that you see in the Tibetan Tonkas

1:00:58

that normally would be taken as

1:01:00

some kind of primitive Iconic

1:01:03

symbol and he said no, no, this

1:01:05

is a psychological diagram the Buddha was

1:01:07

actually more than anything else he

1:01:10

was a scientist of the mind

1:01:12

and a profound psychologist and here

1:01:14

is how craving turns into Contentment

1:01:17

and here's how aggression can be

1:01:19

transformed into Powerful

1:01:22

energy to heal yourself and others and he

1:01:24

was going through this diagram and I went

1:01:26

and I talked to him and he said

1:01:28

Oh you you come back from monastery you've

1:01:30

got to come over and

1:01:32

so he took me to David McClellan

1:01:35

who had been the chairman of the

1:01:37

Social Science and psychology department at

1:01:40

Harvard at that time The

1:01:42

one who hired Tim Leary and Ram Dass

1:01:45

and then later had to fire them for

1:01:47

their LSD work and his house He

1:01:50

and his wife Mary were Quakers his

1:01:52

home was a kind of soiree where

1:01:56

Ram Dass and Tibetan lamas like

1:01:58

Chobium Trumba I think Krishna Murti

1:02:01

and various spiritual figures would come.

1:02:03

People were going to India and

1:02:05

coming back. And I connected

1:02:07

with this whole group of folks who

1:02:09

have now been friends for 45 years.

1:02:12

Richie Davidson was another that I

1:02:15

met there who's now one of

1:02:17

the preeminent neuroscientists in the world

1:02:19

on studying contemplative neuroscience and affective

1:02:22

emotional neuroscience. It was a whole

1:02:24

collective of people. Dan Goldman who

1:02:26

wrote emotional intelligence that sold

1:02:29

10 million copies and

1:02:31

many others. And then I got

1:02:33

a job working for an

1:02:35

Esalen-like growth center in Boston at that time

1:02:37

because I was excited at all the new

1:02:40

Gestalt bioenergetics. What are the things that are

1:02:42

transformative here? And they asked me to help

1:02:44

set up programs. And I thought, well, who

1:02:46

do I want to meet?

1:02:48

So I set up a program

1:02:50

with John Lilly. And I set

1:02:52

up the program with Stan Groff,

1:02:54

who was still at Johns Hopkins

1:02:56

and married at that time, just

1:02:59

married to Halifax Joan Groff. And

1:03:01

we became friends. And so we

1:03:03

have, Stan and I have now

1:03:05

worked together for 45 years. I

1:03:07

went out to join him at

1:03:09

Esalen for many, many years, spending

1:03:12

many months together, helping during his

1:03:14

development of the holotropic breath work

1:03:16

that's a powerful breath transformation. And

1:03:19

he has been a partner

1:03:22

and a heart friend for exploration.

1:03:25

And we've traveled, we've taught in Russia

1:03:28

and in places in Europe and

1:03:30

various places around the world. So

1:03:33

this is definitely a

1:03:35

path that we're going to come down and

1:03:38

dig further into. But I'm

1:03:41

going to steer us to Ajahn

1:03:43

Chah because I want to know how do you

1:03:46

land with the Peace Corps in remote, well, what

1:03:48

most people would consider a remote corner of the

1:03:50

world and end up finding

1:03:54

a living master? How does that actually happen? I don't

1:03:56

know, but I assume you didn't speak Thai at the

1:03:58

time. I... I did

1:04:00

actually because the Peace Corps,

1:04:03

and then I had to learn Lao, I

1:04:06

did because the Peace Corps at that

1:04:08

time, it was very early in the

1:04:10

Peace Corps, had really good language training.

1:04:12

They borrowed it from the Monterey Language

1:04:14

Institute. So, initially

1:04:16

I didn't speak that well, but

1:04:19

because I'd also studied Chinese at

1:04:21

Dartmouth, it came more easily. And

1:04:23

I was there working in the

1:04:25

health, rural health department on

1:04:28

tropical medicine teams, mostly malaria,

1:04:30

but also typhoid, and teams

1:04:33

going out to different villages and drawing

1:04:35

blood and giving out medicine and

1:04:37

things like that. And then somebody said, there's a

1:04:39

Western monk in this province, we heard about, do

1:04:41

you want to meet him? I said, of course

1:04:43

I do. So, I went to this little

1:04:46

mountain and walked up 2,000 steps to the old

1:04:50

Cambodian temple ruined at the top. And

1:04:52

there was this very interesting guy who

1:04:55

had just finished a couple years before the

1:04:57

first Peace Corps, I think in Borneo, and

1:05:00

then got interested in Buddhism and common ordained

1:05:02

as a monk. And

1:05:04

I talk with him, he's now, he's

1:05:06

named Ajahn Sumedho is his monk's

1:05:08

name, because he's still a monk, and he became quite

1:05:11

famous in Thailand and then became

1:05:13

the abbot of a temple in

1:05:15

England. And I became

1:05:18

friends with him. And he said, oh, I found

1:05:20

a really fine teacher. He said, you know, a

1:05:22

lot of them, they kind of take you, you're

1:05:24

a Westerner, and they treat you special. He said,

1:05:26

this guy doesn't treat you any differently than anyone

1:05:28

else. He just wants you to do the work,

1:05:30

you know, and learn the deepest way you can.

1:05:33

And he's in this forest jungle.

1:05:36

And I said, I'm going there. So,

1:05:38

having heard that, I went and I visited

1:05:40

Ajahn Chah. And he was a

1:05:43

little bit like the Dalai Lama. He was

1:05:45

funny and wise and

1:05:47

very warm hearted, but also very

1:05:49

strict and very demanding, but he did

1:05:52

it in this loving way. And

1:05:54

I thought, okay, this is the real deal. This guy

1:05:56

looks like what I was reading about in all those

1:05:58

zen stories. I read that

1:06:01

he said to you, and I'd

1:06:04

love for you to tell us when he said this to you, I

1:06:08

hope you're not afraid to suffer. If

1:06:10

that's true, when did he

1:06:12

say that and why did he say that? So

1:06:14

I visited him a number of times and told

1:06:16

him I was going to become a monk. And

1:06:18

then I ordained in the village

1:06:21

where I was living in the Peace Corps. People

1:06:23

wanted me to do that. It was a beautiful

1:06:25

ritual. And then after some

1:06:28

days, made my way down to

1:06:30

his temple, that was his opening

1:06:32

gambit. I'm walking into the gates

1:06:34

and I see him right now. I say,

1:06:36

I'm here. And

1:06:39

he looks at me, kind of leans

1:06:42

back a little, a little skeptical. He said, all

1:06:44

right, I hope you're not afraid to suffer. Welcome.

1:06:47

It was like, you didn't come here just

1:06:49

to kind of do some interesting,

1:06:51

cool anthropological experiment or

1:06:54

something like that. If you're going to do it,

1:06:56

we're going to put you through the training. And

1:06:59

he did, but there was like this little smile

1:07:01

as he said it, like, okay, are you up

1:07:03

for it? All right, dude,

1:07:06

come on in. And what

1:07:08

did the training consist of? What were some of

1:07:10

the first things that you had to do? And

1:07:12

then what was the suffering that he alluded to?

1:07:14

What were some examples? Well, there will be some

1:07:16

examples. Okay. So

1:07:18

of course, the first training was just how to

1:07:20

walk around and not have my robe fall on

1:07:23

the ground and embarrass me and everyone else. They

1:07:26

all loved it. Oh yeah, right. Look

1:07:28

at the Western. He can't even

1:07:30

chew gum and wear his robes, right,

1:07:32

or whatever. So part of it was

1:07:34

just the unfamiliarity of it culturally and

1:07:37

otherwise. There were the two kinds of

1:07:39

suffering. The big suffering, of course, was

1:07:42

being alone with my own mind. I

1:07:44

mean, there you go, you know, having

1:07:46

to do hours of meditation when I

1:07:48

didn't know what the hell I was

1:07:50

doing. And then as I

1:07:52

talked about with anger or fear or confusion

1:07:55

or, you know, all those kind of states,

1:07:58

learning to deal in a very... do

1:12:00

these meditations where you would reflect on, well, this is

1:12:02

going to happen to the body that you're inhabiting as

1:12:04

well. Who do you think you are? Do you think

1:12:06

you're this physical body made

1:12:09

of hamburgers or lettuce

1:12:11

or whatever you happen to eat? Are

1:12:13

you hamburgers and lettuce? Or

1:12:17

are you your feelings? Or are

1:12:19

you your thoughts? Who are you

1:12:21

really born into this body? Like

1:12:24

co-op. So anyways.

1:12:26

And the alms bowl,

1:12:28

so you would be, did

1:12:31

you eat whatever you gathered in one meal? Was

1:12:35

it spread throughout the day? One meal. One meal. You

1:12:37

eat one meal a day, which makes you very easy

1:12:39

to, makes your life easy. And

1:12:42

at the same time, that monasteries things were shared.

1:12:44

There was other monasteries I stayed in where you

1:12:46

would just eat what was put in your own

1:12:48

bowl. And you didn't have to eat everything that

1:12:51

was given to you. There were some things that

1:12:53

were, you know, in the dry,

1:12:55

poor season, there would be

1:12:58

curries that were too hot for me to eat because

1:13:00

they used the chilies to kind of preserve

1:13:02

the food. Preserve the food. But you know,

1:13:05

when it was a really poor village or

1:13:07

something, you know, they would have to make

1:13:09

curries out of field mice or

1:13:11

field rats or bats or, you

1:13:14

know, I remember eating, there was a curry

1:13:16

that was made out of basically

1:13:19

grasshoppers that had come sweat through. And

1:13:21

there was this whole big insect

1:13:23

wave of insects that were

1:13:25

eating the crops and they collected them all

1:13:28

and made a curry out of them. So,

1:13:30

you know, okay, this is, this is what you get for

1:13:32

your food today, dude. I think I

1:13:34

might take the grasshoppers over the, over

1:13:36

the bats. I bet. Yeah, well, yeah.

1:13:38

When it's really highly spiced, you can't

1:13:40

tell what it's mystery. That's true. We

1:13:42

all had mystery meat in middle school

1:13:45

anyway. This was like mystery meat on

1:13:47

steroids. Exotic mystery

1:13:49

meat. What was the longest

1:13:51

period of time that you spent in silence

1:13:53

during that time in Thailand? Well, then I

1:13:55

went to a Burmese monastery because I wanted

1:13:58

to do this very meditative

1:14:01

training and I spent about 500 days, so

1:14:05

less than a year and a half in silence,

1:14:07

with the exception that I would talk to the

1:14:09

teacher. Every couple days I'd

1:14:11

have that little 10 minute conversation about what

1:14:13

was happening in my meditation. And

1:14:15

the rest, I was just sitting and walking

1:14:17

18 hours a day when

1:14:20

I could or was so sleeping a

1:14:22

little bit. And I

1:14:25

remember at one point,

1:14:27

it was relatively early on, I'd been

1:14:29

sitting and walking and pushing it, as

1:14:31

young men do, you know, I'm gonna

1:14:33

get enlightened and all of that

1:14:35

and not moving, sitting with a lot of pain,

1:14:38

which is also part of what happened at

1:14:40

the forest monastery, sitting on a stone floor

1:14:43

for hours without moving, really

1:14:45

had to learn how to deal with your own physical

1:14:47

pain. And I was exhausted

1:14:50

from sitting and walking in my little

1:14:52

hut that I had for that

1:14:55

long retreat. And after a couple

1:14:57

months, I thought, I'm

1:14:59

really tired, I gotta lie down. But

1:15:01

then I thought, well, but I'm not gonna nap

1:15:03

for very long cause I'm on my way to

1:15:05

enlightenment, whenever I'm gonna do this right. So I

1:15:08

said, all right, I'll lie down on the wooden

1:15:10

floor rather than on the little mat that I

1:15:12

had. And that way I won't sleep

1:15:14

so long. And I'm lying there and

1:15:16

then I wake up and I get up and

1:15:20

I walk very slowly doing this mindful slow

1:15:22

walking to the end of the hut and

1:15:25

look out the window toward where

1:15:27

some of the other monks and the teachers

1:15:29

live, some way down through the trees. And

1:15:32

then I turn around and I start walking

1:15:34

the other direction in this meditation hut that

1:15:37

I had, then he could walk probably, it

1:15:39

was maybe 15, 18 feet long, it

1:15:42

was long and narrow. And

1:15:44

I see this body lying

1:15:46

on the floor. And

1:15:49

all of a sudden I go, oh, that's

1:15:51

me. And then I realized

1:15:53

that I'm having an out of the body experience.

1:15:56

And what had happened is that I was

1:15:58

so intent, I'm not gonna sleep a little long.

1:16:00

long, I'll get up very soon." That intention was

1:16:02

really strong, but my body didn't want to

1:16:04

get up. So I got up, but

1:16:06

it wasn't in my body. And I walk

1:16:08

very slowly, and I peered down on my

1:16:11

body, and I turned around and walked the

1:16:13

other way, walked back. And then the second

1:16:15

time I walked back, I got closer, and

1:16:17

then I fell into my body. I woke

1:16:19

up, I said, oh wow, that's interesting. But

1:16:21

what I saw out the window wasn't just

1:16:23

like a dream, because I was watching, you

1:16:25

know, my teacher and talking to these other

1:16:27

monks, and then I got up again, and

1:16:29

that's exactly what was happening. And that was

1:16:31

the first of a series

1:16:34

of all kinds of very interesting

1:16:36

experiences that happened. What would other

1:16:38

examples of those types of unusual

1:16:41

experiences be? And was it your

1:16:43

time in Burma that

1:16:45

found you experiencing these for the first time? First

1:16:48

of all, the first experiences, even though

1:16:50

I had to experiment with meditation back

1:16:52

in college and so

1:16:54

forth, were experiences again that

1:16:56

came through psychedelics. And

1:16:59

so I was familiar with all

1:17:01

kinds of weird and powerful

1:17:03

and mysterious or mystical kind

1:17:05

of experiences. But there's

1:17:07

something about learning how to navigate it

1:17:10

without taking a substance and

1:17:12

learning that your own consciousness

1:17:15

is the field that you

1:17:17

can learn to navigate. First,

1:17:19

all the personality and emotions

1:17:21

and history and so forth. But then you

1:17:23

start to realize that you're bigger than that,

1:17:26

that who you are is not just your

1:17:28

thoughts and feelings in your mind. And

1:17:30

so whether it's out of body experience

1:17:33

or the experience of vastness of becoming

1:17:35

the sky within which everything

1:17:37

arises and passes, or the experience

1:17:40

of profound silence

1:17:42

or of the void where you enter a

1:17:45

stillness before experience

1:17:47

even arises, or the experience of

1:17:49

luminosity where my body would dissolve

1:17:52

into light, there are times

1:17:54

sitting as you get concentrated and somebody

1:17:56

or concentration builds that your

1:17:58

whole body and mind open. up and you

1:18:00

know first you get the elements your body

1:18:03

can feel heavy like a stone

1:18:05

the earth element or can feel so light that

1:18:07

you have to open your eyes and make sure

1:18:09

you're not floating because it feels like you're floating

1:18:11

in the air or can be filled

1:18:13

with fire and you feel like you're in

1:18:15

the middle of a raging fire or can

1:18:17

get icy cold you know or all

1:18:20

kinds of vibrations and Kundalini energies

1:18:22

and chakras start to open and

1:18:24

sometimes it's pleasant sometimes it's not

1:18:26

you know as deep energies start

1:18:28

to move through your body they

1:18:30

also kind of push open

1:18:33

the places that are held closed

1:18:35

so that when your heart starts

1:18:37

to open in deep meditation sometimes

1:18:39

it feels like you're having a

1:18:41

heart attack that's physically painful because

1:18:43

all the things that you've held

1:18:45

around your heart to protect yourself

1:18:47

start to loosen or when the energy

1:18:50

hits your throat and it starts to

1:18:52

open weird sounds come out you know

1:18:54

and then you get to visions

1:18:56

that come in the brow chakra and

1:18:59

you start to see all kinds of

1:19:01

colors and visions and hear

1:19:03

things that all possibilities of

1:19:05

the play of consciousness can

1:19:07

start to open after both

1:19:10

period of silence but also

1:19:12

really deeply training attention on

1:19:14

concentration these experiences just

1:19:17

to put them in or

1:19:19

at least part of what you

1:19:21

said in context for people listening

1:19:24

there are a number of things

1:19:26

you mentioned but one in particular

1:19:28

that opening in the chest that

1:19:30

I experienced in the 10-day

1:19:33

retreat done at Spirit

1:19:35

Rock for which you are one

1:19:37

of the the instructors of the lead instructor and

1:19:40

it was an incredibly

1:19:42

powerful experience and listening

1:19:45

to your description of some of the feelings it

1:19:47

makes me want to go to the

1:19:50

jungle and spend time doing this type

1:19:52

of training however the 10-day retreat as

1:19:54

you know from firsthand observation and interacting

1:19:56

with me was incredibly difficult for me

1:19:58

and terrifying at a

1:20:00

number of points where I felt like

1:20:03

I had crossed a boundary into maybe

1:20:05

even madness where I was fearful I

1:20:07

wouldn't be able to return from. So

1:20:10

I'm curious to know during that

1:20:12

period of time in Thailand and

1:20:15

Burma could be afterwards as well, but when

1:20:17

you were in the jungle and

1:20:20

doing this very intense work, were there any

1:20:22

particular points when you wanted to quit to

1:20:24

go home? How did you? Oh,

1:20:26

absolutely. And I remember I got

1:20:29

what I think was malaria, a really high fever,

1:20:31

and I was sick as a dog and I'm

1:20:33

lying in the bottom of my little

1:20:36

hut there. High fever

1:20:38

and shivering and Ajahn Chah came to

1:20:40

visit me. And in

1:20:42

the Lao language, and he was also funny

1:20:44

and quite blunt, and the Lao language is

1:20:46

a very straightforward kind of, the

1:20:49

sentence structures are really simple. So he looked

1:20:51

at me and he said, sick, huh? And

1:20:54

I said, yeah. And he said,

1:20:56

hurts all over, huh? I said, is

1:20:58

your tuss? He said, hot and cold,

1:21:00

yeah. He said, makes you afraid.

1:21:02

I nod. He said, makes you want

1:21:04

to go home and see your mother, doesn't it? And I'm

1:21:07

nodding there. And then he looked at

1:21:09

me and he said, you know, this is the

1:21:11

jungle fever. This is malaria. We've all had it.

1:21:14

But now there's some good medicine. I'll send the

1:21:16

medicine monk over and in a couple of days

1:21:18

you'll be fine. And then he looked

1:21:20

at me and he said, you can do this, you know, you can do

1:21:22

this. So I mean, that was an example

1:21:24

of what I'm sure. What

1:21:26

am I doing? What

1:21:29

kept you going? I mean, I don't want to interrupt,

1:21:31

but it's like, what kept you going? I'm imagining 500

1:21:33

days of silence. I could barely

1:21:35

handle 10 days. You know,

1:21:38

Tim, I mean, what's kept you going?

1:21:40

What keeps any of us going about

1:21:42

things that we care about? I had

1:21:44

somehow, I don't know, kind of wacky,

1:21:47

but I think also important

1:21:51

kind of passion to say, I want to

1:21:53

understand, or I've started down this road and

1:21:55

I want to see where it goes. And

1:21:58

I think all of us find a solution. certain

1:22:00

point in our life that they're, or if

1:22:02

we're lucky, that something really matters and you've

1:22:04

done it in your work and your travel,

1:22:06

you want to explore what your human capacity

1:22:08

is. And I've read these old

1:22:10

Zen stories and I want to see if this

1:22:12

is true, I want to find out. And then

1:22:15

as I started, things started to happen like that,

1:22:17

out of the body experience and rapture and

1:22:19

changes in openings and

1:22:22

I realized there's really something to learn here.

1:22:24

But there are a couple other things that

1:22:26

I want to add to this, one

1:22:29

of them that's the most important is

1:22:31

that it turns out that it wasn't

1:22:33

and it isn't so much about

1:22:35

the actual experiences. So

1:22:38

Ajahn Chah, my teacher, talked

1:22:40

about how in his own training for

1:22:43

the first eight years in the jungle, he

1:22:46

had been a very ardent meditator and had

1:22:48

all kinds of insights and

1:22:50

dissolving and Samadhi and Chah experiences,

1:22:52

all kinds of special, Samadhi is

1:22:55

awakening. Samadhi is, yeah, or is

1:22:57

there a profound, Samadhi

1:23:00

has a lot of meanings as

1:23:02

a word, but it can mean

1:23:04

profound states of concentration in which

1:23:06

the mind dissolves into light or

1:23:08

into joy or bliss or becomes

1:23:10

absorbed with any one of all

1:23:13

kinds of states. So he went

1:23:15

to the most famous teacher of

1:23:17

that time, another Ajahn, Ajahn Man, and

1:23:19

told him about all these experiences and

1:23:21

the master looked back and said, Chah,

1:23:24

you missed the point, these are just

1:23:26

experiences. You know, it's like going

1:23:28

to the movies and you have a romantic comedy and

1:23:30

you have a war movie and you have a documentary

1:23:32

and you have, you

1:23:35

know, a Disney movie, he said, they're

1:23:37

just movies on the screen, some pleasant,

1:23:39

some unpleasant. The only question is to

1:23:42

whom do they happen? Turn

1:23:45

your attention back and

1:23:47

ask, look to see who

1:23:50

is the witness of these? What

1:23:52

is the consciousness that is

1:23:55

knowing these ever-changing experiences?

1:23:57

This is where your liberation

1:23:59

will come. He said, become,

1:24:02

his language, if I translate it, is

1:24:04

the one who knows, become the knowing,

1:24:07

rather than the experiences. And then

1:24:09

you can tolerate anything and you

1:24:11

can respond with love and understanding

1:24:14

because you rest in the timeless

1:24:16

consciousness, which is your true nature.

1:24:18

So part of what I also

1:24:21

learned in meditation and teach is

1:24:24

that it's not so much about the experiences,

1:24:26

oh, I want to have this or that

1:24:28

experience. But it's this profound

1:24:30

turning back to ask, who am I?

1:24:33

What is this consciousness itself that

1:24:36

was born into this body and that will leave

1:24:38

it? We can talk about death at some point

1:24:40

if you want. What

1:24:42

is this mysterious consciousness itself?

1:24:45

So there is that. And

1:24:47

then I also had the

1:24:49

opportunity of being with a

1:24:52

few other teachers. And one of the people

1:24:54

that I was very close to and inspired

1:24:57

me profoundly was a Cambodian

1:25:00

monk named Maha Gosananda, who

1:25:02

was the Gandhi of Cambodia.

1:25:05

And when I met him, we were living

1:25:07

and training together in a forest monastery in

1:25:09

Thailand. And it was during the time that

1:25:11

Khmer Rouge came to power and

1:25:13

eventually killed two million

1:25:16

Cambodians in a kind of genocide.

1:25:18

He survived because he wasn't in country,

1:25:21

but all 19 of his

1:25:23

family members were killed. His temple burned,

1:25:26

all the Buddhist texts and so

1:25:28

forth were destroyed. And when he

1:25:30

was able to, he went to

1:25:32

the refugee camps. Refugees were pouring

1:25:34

out of Cambodia by the

1:25:37

hundreds of thousands. And he went

1:25:39

to the refugee camps on the border of Thailand

1:25:41

and Cambodia. And I was able

1:25:43

to go with him at a certain point.

1:25:46

Then he decided to open a temple in

1:25:48

the middle of one of the biggest

1:25:50

refugee camps. Here's 50 or 100,000 people

1:25:52

of these tiny little bamboo huts and

1:25:55

got permission from the UNHCR, High

1:25:57

Commissioner of Refugees. and built a

1:26:00

platform with a little roof over

1:26:02

it and put an altar with

1:26:04

a traditional Cambodian Buddha on it

1:26:06

and so forth. But it was

1:26:08

a camp with the Khmer Rouge

1:26:10

underground, lots of them. And

1:26:13

so they put the word out that if

1:26:15

anyone went to be

1:26:17

with this monk, when they got out

1:26:19

of the camp, back to Cambodia, they would all be shot.

1:26:22

So we wondered who would, if anyone

1:26:25

would come. And went through

1:26:27

the camp, the day, the opening day, with

1:26:29

a big kind of temple gong

1:26:32

ringing it. And 25,000 people

1:26:35

poured into the central square around this

1:26:38

little temple. My God. And

1:26:40

he, Mago Sananda sat there,

1:26:42

and he was a scholar.

1:26:44

He spoke 15 languages, and

1:26:47

he was an extremely kindhearted

1:26:49

human being who had

1:26:52

suffered enormously and had

1:26:54

transformed it into the kind of compassion that

1:26:56

we think of with the Dalai Lama or

1:26:58

something like that. In fact, they became friends.

1:27:01

And Goh Sananda became the head of all of

1:27:03

Cambodian Busan. But there he was at

1:27:05

this point, sitting, looking out at

1:27:07

25,000 people who had suffered immense traumas. And

1:27:13

you could see there was a grandmother and

1:27:15

the only two surviving grandchildren that

1:27:17

she had, or an uncle and

1:27:19

one niece, and their faces were

1:27:22

the faces of trauma and of

1:27:24

survivors. And I thought, all right,

1:27:26

what is he going to say to them? And

1:27:28

he sat very quietly for a

1:27:31

long time, just in their presence.

1:27:34

And then he put his hands together in

1:27:36

this kind of modest way and

1:27:39

began to chant in the microphone. He had

1:27:41

a sound system in Cambodian

1:27:43

and in Sanskrit or

1:27:46

Pali, the Buddhist language. One of

1:27:48

the first verses from the Buddhist

1:27:50

texts that goes, hatred

1:27:53

never ceases by hatred,

1:27:56

but by love alone is healed. This

1:27:58

is the ancient. and eternal law.

1:28:02

And he chanted it over and over in Cambodian

1:28:05

and in Sanskrit

1:28:07

Pali. And pretty soon

1:28:10

the chant was picked up and in

1:28:13

a little while 25,000 people were

1:28:16

chanting this verse with him. And

1:28:18

I looked out and they were weeping, many

1:28:20

of them because they hadn't heard their

1:28:23

sacred chants for years, but

1:28:25

also because he was offering

1:28:28

them a truth that

1:28:30

was even bigger than their

1:28:32

sorrows. That hatred

1:28:34

never ends by hatred, but

1:28:37

by love alone is healed. This is

1:28:39

the ancient and eternal law. And

1:28:41

they were sitting in the middle of the healing

1:28:44

energy of the Dharma, of the

1:28:46

teachings of the heart that can

1:28:48

liberate us. Later on, Go Senanda,

1:28:50

who was nominated for the Nobel

1:28:53

Peace Prize a number of times, spent

1:28:56

15 years walking

1:28:58

through the killing fields and the

1:29:00

mined areas and so forth, leading

1:29:02

people on foot back to their

1:29:04

village. And he said

1:29:06

to the refugees, you can't go back

1:29:08

in a bus or the

1:29:10

back of a truck or something like that.

1:29:13

You have to reclaim your land with love.

1:29:15

And so he would lead a thousand people

1:29:17

and he'd be in the front with a

1:29:19

bell and a gong and a few other

1:29:21

monks. And the whole way back

1:29:24

they would be chanting the chants of loving kindness

1:29:26

so that by the time they got to

1:29:29

their village, whatever had

1:29:31

been destroyed, there was this

1:29:33

sense that they were reclaiming not just the

1:29:35

land, but they were reclaiming

1:29:37

their own hearts. That's a

1:29:40

beautiful, really beautiful story.

1:29:42

And it prompts me to

1:29:44

ask a question that I

1:29:46

struggle with answering myself. And it's also

1:29:48

a question many of my friends have

1:29:51

asked themselves. And I'll

1:29:53

take a stab at it. How do you

1:29:55

decide when to do deep

1:29:58

inner work? take an extended

1:30:01

period to do that versus

1:30:04

being in the world and trying to impact

1:30:07

others in

1:30:10

the world. And to just provide a little bit of

1:30:12

background on that, I have

1:30:14

friends who are building businesses or

1:30:16

building careers of some type or

1:30:18

families. And I, at this point,

1:30:20

do not have wife, kids,

1:30:22

or company to build, at least with

1:30:24

a large organization. And I've

1:30:27

come back from various experiments,

1:30:30

sojourns, experiences over weeks

1:30:32

or months and shared these with them.

1:30:34

And they've expressed this longing, this deep

1:30:36

yearning to do something similar. And then

1:30:38

they asked this question, like, how do

1:30:42

I best decide if and when

1:30:44

to do the deep extended work versus being

1:30:46

in the world? And I know it might

1:30:49

be a false dichotomy. You might not have

1:30:51

to choose, but I'll

1:30:53

talk a little bit more just to fill

1:30:55

the space. But I had this experience personally

1:30:57

not long ago when I was in South

1:31:00

America and had someone telling me in Spanish,

1:31:02

which was not their native language, this indigenous

1:31:04

tribe, but this apo, this mayor, effectively, who

1:31:06

worked a lot with different

1:31:08

plant medicines. And he said

1:31:10

that he recommended one 15-month

1:31:13

diet, very, very strict 15-month

1:31:15

period with many different

1:31:18

restrictions, no sex, no alcohol,

1:31:20

no pork, et cetera, to

1:31:22

develop certain capacities and

1:31:24

to practice, in effect,

1:31:26

I mean, at certain types of meditative practices.

1:31:29

So I struggle with this myself as well. How

1:31:31

do you suggest someone think through? So

1:31:33

did you give up sex and pork? I've

1:31:36

done it for short periods of time. I've

1:31:38

done it for weeks at a time, but

1:31:40

not for 15 months. But

1:31:43

what appealed to me about that, definitely not the

1:31:45

lack of sex and pork. I like both of

1:31:47

those things. It was, he said, that's

1:31:49

something you only have to do once in your life.

1:31:51

And it opens doors and

1:31:53

creates opportunities that are difficult, if not

1:31:56

impossible, to achieve otherwise. So, of course,

1:31:58

that's what I'm talking about. That's very

1:32:00

tantalizing, but 15 months is a

1:32:03

really, really long time to opt out of everything

1:32:05

else. And I'm not saying it has to

1:32:07

be 15 months for some people, as you know,

1:32:09

setting aside even 10 days to do a silent retreat

1:32:11

is hard. And I know there are things that they can

1:32:13

do on an ongoing basis, like

1:32:15

morning meditation and so on, but for

1:32:17

those who are really drawn to this

1:32:20

extended deeper work, how do you think about, and

1:32:22

that's why Gosananda brought it up for me, because

1:32:24

he'd spent so much time outside of his country

1:32:26

and then went back and was really on the

1:32:28

ground doing work with locals.

1:32:31

How do you think about that or suggest someone

1:32:33

think about it? First, my answer is yes, because

1:32:36

all of the things that you say

1:32:38

are true that, yes, most cultures encourage

1:32:41

at some point human beings, most wise

1:32:43

cultures, human beings, to step out of their

1:32:45

ordinary roles and their ordinary routine, whether

1:32:47

you go to the mountains or the

1:32:49

ocean, you know, or a temple

1:32:52

or a change, how you're living,

1:32:54

so that you can open up to the

1:32:56

mystery. And so that you also

1:32:58

can open up to love, because what I saw

1:33:00

with my teachers in Gosananda was one, Raja and

1:33:02

Chah, another, is that they were

1:33:04

able to love no matter what. It was

1:33:07

really because they inhabited consciousness

1:33:09

in a very different way than

1:33:11

just a small sense of self.

1:33:13

There was something, a possibility

1:33:15

that we could live with forgiveness

1:33:17

and love and be really effective

1:33:19

in the world at the same

1:33:22

time. So they're not separate. And

1:33:24

that's sort of what your question is. How do

1:33:26

we live in the world and at the same

1:33:28

time, you know, what trainings and how do we

1:33:30

connect with something deeper? And part

1:33:32

of it is just intuitive, you know,

1:33:34

Tim, if you have newborn, you know,

1:33:36

or young children and so forth, it's

1:33:38

not the time to go on a

1:33:40

long retreat. Your kids are

1:33:42

your practice. And in

1:33:45

fact, you can't get a Zen

1:33:47

master who's going to be more

1:33:49

demanding than, you know, an

1:33:51

infant with colic, right? Or,

1:33:54

you know, or a teenage, you know, certain

1:33:56

teenage kids, but with the young ones, you

1:33:58

know, you're saying. The Zen master might say,

1:34:00

you've got to get up early in the

1:34:02

morning. And once in a while you might

1:34:04

roll over. The kid is crying and sick.

1:34:06

You have to get up. Your family needs

1:34:08

tending. And if you're even

1:34:11

vaguely a responsible

1:34:13

and caring parent,

1:34:16

that becomes your practice. And if you

1:34:18

think, well, if only

1:34:20

I could be in the great Zen

1:34:22

temple of Kyoto or in Ashram in

1:34:24

India or down in the Amazon with

1:34:26

Tim taking ayahuasca or whatever plant medicine

1:34:29

they give, your

1:34:31

kid can be

1:34:33

like ayahuasca on steroids. Okay, you want

1:34:35

to face yourself and your own limitations

1:34:37

and your own, you know, you want

1:34:39

to look at the small sense of

1:34:42

self and find out how to live

1:34:44

with a freer and bigger spirit here.

1:34:47

We just hired someone to live with you

1:34:49

and train you full time. So it's really,

1:34:51

and that's an important thing, but

1:34:53

what makes it work is

1:34:55

that you have that

1:34:57

intention not just to soldier through

1:35:00

it, but to say,

1:35:02

let this be a place where I

1:35:04

awaken graciousness and inner

1:35:06

sense of freedom and peace as

1:35:08

things come and go, where I

1:35:10

awaken the possibility of presence in

1:35:13

pleasure and pain and joy and

1:35:15

sorrow and gain and loss and

1:35:17

all the changes that I find

1:35:19

an inviolable or a timeless place

1:35:22

of becoming the loving witness

1:35:24

of it all, becoming the

1:35:26

loving awareness that says, yeah, now

1:35:28

I'm having a family experience and

1:35:31

this is the place to find freedom because

1:35:33

freedom is not in the Himalayas or

1:35:35

in the Amazon. The only

1:35:38

place it's found is in your own

1:35:40

heart exactly where you are. And that's

1:35:42

what goes to Nanda Todd and what,

1:35:44

what Ajahn Chah, that's really what they

1:35:46

wanted to communicate. Now that being said,

1:35:48

if you have an opportunity and you're

1:35:51

drawn to it, like somebody

1:35:53

you might, do you know Jack Dorsey? I

1:35:55

do. I do know Jack. Yeah. So

1:35:58

Jack just did his first 10 day. meditation or

1:36:00

a good friend and he

1:36:02

tweeted about I wouldn't say it otherwise but

1:36:04

he treated about it and it was you

1:36:06

know one of the top transformative

1:36:09

experiences of his life and it's not the

1:36:11

same ten-day retreats for the be all and

1:36:13

end all they are they're very powerful compelling

1:36:16

even if you have a company or

1:36:18

even if you have a family there might be

1:36:20

a period of a week or some days where

1:36:23

you can in fact get

1:36:25

away and step out of

1:36:27

those roles and turn inward and

1:36:29

that can be tremendously valuable so i think

1:36:31

both are important you just have to listen

1:36:33

what that when the times right there's

1:36:36

so many things that this brings up the

1:36:38

first though is just a housekeeping

1:36:40

for people may not recognize the name

1:36:43

jack dorsey that's jack at jack i

1:36:45

believe it is on twitter of you

1:36:47

might at then wonder how did he get that user

1:36:50

handle well he he he

1:36:52

he is one of the people behind twitter

1:36:54

so he is of twitter and square fame

1:36:56

among many others fascinating fascinating guy so

1:36:59

people can check him out the comment

1:37:02

on the infant being the full-time

1:37:04

trainer working with you twenty four seven

1:37:06

reminded me also since you mentioned

1:37:08

rom das earlier of

1:37:10

a a quote of his that i like and

1:37:12

i'm gonna paraphrase i'm sure but if you think

1:37:14

you're enlightened to go spend a week with your

1:37:16

family well and what i

1:37:18

have to tell you i think it's a

1:37:21

fantastic one and that's part of the reason

1:37:23

and you know some of the backstory but

1:37:25

we all have i would imagine we all

1:37:27

have tough things that happen to us experience

1:37:29

traumatic experiences as children have

1:37:32

a lot of triggers related to family members

1:37:34

typically and for me

1:37:36

the forced to break takes a number

1:37:38

of different forms but that includes a

1:37:41

trip every six months extended trip of

1:37:43

two to four weeks with my parents

1:37:46

and my brother when he can make it so

1:37:48

that's only after being

1:37:50

introduced to meditation something that i would even

1:37:52

consider as a practice and the

1:37:55

last point i'll mention just out of my personal

1:37:57

experience is there's a piece of paper i have

1:37:59

in my wall and I've had my wallet for

1:38:01

a few years now, it's getting a bit worn

1:38:03

down. It's a piece of

1:38:05

construction paper, an ex-girlfriend gave it to me

1:38:07

who knew me very well, and it says,

1:38:09

the task that hinders your task is your

1:38:12

task. Beautiful.

1:38:14

Beautiful. And that's a good reminder

1:38:17

for me, I wanted to ask

1:38:19

you two questions

1:38:21

that are personally

1:38:23

important, but also may apply

1:38:25

to other people. The first is the question

1:38:27

that I believe you mentioned, perhaps

1:38:30

others have indicated is the question,

1:38:33

versus the experiences or movies of these,

1:38:35

say out of body experiences and so

1:38:37

on, to whom do they happen, right?

1:38:39

To whom do they happen? Is this

1:38:42

a co-on, like what is

1:38:44

the sound of one hand clapping, where there isn't

1:38:46

really an answer you're expected to arrive at? Is

1:38:49

the value in contemplating the question more

1:38:51

than any answer? Yes,

1:38:53

both, no. Yes,

1:38:56

both and no. Yeah, because

1:38:58

it's a profound

1:39:00

contemplation for us. One

1:39:03

of the great questions of human incarnation, who

1:39:05

are we? How do we get into that?

1:39:07

How do you get into this body with

1:39:09

the wiggly things on the end of

1:39:11

your limbs, and the little bits

1:39:14

of claws that you have, stuffed as

1:39:16

nails and a vestigial tail, and a

1:39:18

hole at one end into which you

1:39:20

stuff dead plants and animals and glug

1:39:22

them down through the tube. I mean,

1:39:24

the whole incarnation thing is really pretty

1:39:26

wild. So who are we? And

1:39:29

then how do we make meaning of

1:39:31

it? This is a lifetime question, and

1:39:33

that way it's a co-on, but

1:39:35

in another way it also actually does have

1:39:37

an answer. And the answer, of

1:39:39

course, has to be found by each person. The

1:39:42

answer to point toward it, it's very

1:39:44

clear that you're not just your salad

1:39:47

and vegetables and hamburger body, and you're

1:39:49

not just your emotions, I hope, because

1:39:51

they're always changing, and your thoughts, good

1:39:53

God, I hope you're not your thoughts.

1:39:57

So you start to realize, all right, what? What

1:40:00

is there, then, what is this self?

1:40:02

Who am I? In neuroscience, you know,

1:40:05

there was a Time magazine

1:40:07

issue on modern neuroscience where it

1:40:09

said, neuroscientists have searched throughout the

1:40:11

brain over many decades now and

1:40:13

come to the conclusion that they

1:40:16

cannot find the self located anywhere

1:40:19

in the neural mechanisms of the brain

1:40:21

and that it simply does not exist.

1:40:24

But what does exist is a sense

1:40:26

of self that's built out of a

1:40:28

sense of identification with our thoughts and

1:40:30

body and so forth. It's all wise

1:40:33

and appropriate. We should be, but

1:40:35

we also know that it's not the

1:40:39

end of the story. And you

1:40:41

know it from walking in the high

1:40:43

mountains or listening to an extraordinary

1:40:45

piece of music or making love or

1:40:48

taking some sacred medicine, you know,

1:40:50

or sitting at the bedside of

1:40:52

someone when they die, that mysterious

1:40:55

moment when spirit leaves the body.

1:40:58

Or when a child is born, we

1:41:00

have these moments where we open to

1:41:02

mystery and realize that who we are

1:41:04

is not just our personal history or

1:41:07

our body and emotions, that

1:41:09

we become the consciousness itself,

1:41:12

the witnessing awareness, that

1:41:14

we are the loving awareness that was

1:41:16

born into this body. And

1:41:18

that becomes actually a direct

1:41:20

knowing, a direct experience. So there is

1:41:23

a way in which we

1:41:25

also can come home to ourselves

1:41:28

and it brings a tremendous sense

1:41:30

of freedom and well-being as

1:41:33

all the movies of ever-changing life

1:41:35

happen to us. So that's

1:41:37

why I said yes and no and both. And

1:41:41

just a little aside, thinking about you

1:41:43

going back to your family as a

1:41:45

practice, twice a year as you're doing,

1:41:48

I just want to remind you and the

1:41:50

listeners that Buddha and Jesus both had a

1:41:52

hard time when they went back to their

1:41:54

family. So you know, don't think that, you

1:41:56

know, there's something wrong with you. That's

1:42:00

why they call it nuclear family, I think. Anyway,

1:42:03

there's another, I guess

1:42:06

it's a word, more than a question that

1:42:08

I'd love to ask you to define, and

1:42:10

that is compassion or compassionate. When you use

1:42:12

that word or those

1:42:14

words, what do you mean exactly, or what would you like

1:42:17

it to mean for people? I would

1:42:20

like to distinguish compassion

1:42:22

from empathy, and

1:42:26

I'll use a simple illustration. If

1:42:28

you're on the playground and you see

1:42:31

a kid being bullied and

1:42:33

you feel, oh, that must feel terrible,

1:42:35

that hurts, that's an

1:42:37

empathy. An empathy can be useful,

1:42:40

it also can be, you can get overwhelmed by empathy

1:42:42

if you don't know what to do with it, but

1:42:44

there's some way in which you start

1:42:46

to feel resonating because

1:42:48

we are not limited to

1:42:51

these bodies. We are actually

1:42:53

an interconnected system of consciousness,

1:42:56

and I'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute,

1:43:00

but we all know, whether it's

1:43:02

mirror neurons from neuroscience or

1:43:04

the field of presence, as

1:43:08

scientists like Dan Siegel talk about,

1:43:10

extended presence, that we can feel

1:43:12

empathy with one another, when someone's

1:43:15

sad, someone's angry, someone's hurting. Compassion

1:43:18

is the next step. You see or

1:43:20

recognize, you feel, and then

1:43:23

you care. You care about it and you

1:43:25

want to, if you can, do something that

1:43:28

helps, so that you see the

1:43:30

kid being bullied and you realize, I want

1:43:32

to tell the teacher or the principal, or

1:43:34

I want to just walk over there and

1:43:36

say something or intervene to help stop it.

1:43:38

And so compassion, it's

1:43:40

called the quivering of the heart

1:43:43

when it wants to move to alleviate

1:43:46

the suffering of yourself, because you

1:43:48

can have self-compassion, it's very important,

1:43:50

or of those around you. And it's

1:43:53

born into, in the earliest studies of

1:43:55

infants, you know, at

1:43:57

Yale and various places like that, show that,

1:44:00

even very, very, very small children

1:44:02

have this resonance and this kind

1:44:04

of care. And so

1:44:06

it's not shut down in us. We're

1:44:08

a species that's interconnected and we

1:44:10

care for one another. And this

1:44:12

is your birthright, this natural

1:44:15

compassion. And through practice and meditation,

1:44:17

you can reawaken it, you can

1:44:19

extend it, and it can

1:44:22

become your way of living

1:44:24

and moving in the world. As

1:44:27

a little aside, and I'll just bookmark

1:44:29

this one, just got back from a

1:44:31

conference with our dear friend Adam Gazzali,

1:44:33

our mutual friend, Richie Davidson,

1:44:36

who's another of the most

1:44:38

famous neuroscientists, especially in this

1:44:40

area, and a number of

1:44:42

other, some contemplatives and neuroscientists

1:44:45

and some technologists from the

1:44:47

Valley and VC talking about

1:44:49

how to build compassion into

1:44:52

our interface with the

1:44:54

technological world, compassion tech. And

1:44:56

starting from the very simplest things of

1:44:58

projects, like can you build a fitbit

1:45:01

for compassion where instead of

1:45:03

your body, where you can either note

1:45:05

moments of care around you or

1:45:07

in yourself, or be prompted to

1:45:10

care for yourself? Or

1:45:12

when you say to Siri or Alexa,

1:45:14

I'm feeling lonely and

1:45:16

so forth, what kind of response

1:45:18

do you get from the algorithms and

1:45:21

all of that? Because in

1:45:23

the UK, England just pointed

1:45:25

their first minister of loneliness

1:45:27

for the country. You'd

1:45:30

think it was a joke, but it's

1:45:32

not. It's like an old Beatles song,

1:45:34

All the Lonely People. There are 10

1:45:36

million lonely people in England, they've estimated.

1:45:39

And it's for isolation and loss of

1:45:41

capacity and health and all kinds of

1:45:43

reasons that loneliness makes things way worse.

1:45:46

But there's some way in which

1:45:49

compassion is that which connects us.

1:45:51

And it's a beautiful thing, even if you walk

1:45:54

down the street and you see someone who's struggling

1:45:57

and so forth, it doesn't mean you have

1:45:59

to fix the whole world. world, that's not

1:46:01

your job that would be egotistical. But you

1:46:03

can reach your hand out and mend the

1:46:06

things that you can, you can tend the

1:46:08

things that you can. And you can do

1:46:10

it not because oh you pity them, those

1:46:12

four people, but because they're your family. You

1:46:15

recognize that we are common

1:46:17

humanity, we're in this together. I'd

1:46:20

like to build on that and

1:46:22

preface it with a comment on the

1:46:24

text. You mentioned collaborating with Adam and

1:46:27