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Integrating Buddhism's Teachings in Our Daily Lives w/ Gary Gach - Connecting Minds Podcast Ep02
116 Plays5 years ago
In the episode of the Connecting Minds we welcome Gary Gach. Gary’s lifelong career is as a freelance writer and scholar of Buddhism. That is, he’s been writing formally since he was ten and meditating since he was eight. He teaches in the Plum Village tradition of Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh and has been facilitating a weekly practice group, Mindfulness Fellowship, in San Francisco for over ten years.
Gary has studied with wise teachers such as Alan Watts, Suzuki Rōshi and other great Zen masters, a Hasidic master who was the 15th in his lineage, and the venerable Thich Nhat Hanh. He has written 10 books, which I highly encourage you to check out! (Links to a couple I love down below.)
It was truly an honour to have him on the show! In this episode we discuss Buddhism and how to integrate its teachings in our daily lives.
Episode show notes here: https://christianyordanov.com/02-gary-gach/
Watch this interview in video: https://youtu.be/3bGdFKsL16g
Links to Gary’s books, website, and social media:
Gary’s website: http://garygach.com/
Links to Gary’s resources and social media pages: http://linktr.ee/GaryGach
Pause Breathe Smile – Awakening Mindfulness When Meditation Is Not Enough: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pause-Breathe-Smile-Mindfulness-Meditation-ebook/dp/B079GJGQXP
Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Buddhism: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Idiots-Guides-Buddhism-Lifestyle-Paperback-ebook/dp/B00AR183OW
Video of Thich Nhat Hanh speaking shared with me by Gary, Your Birthday is a Continuation Day : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ-y7Amn0F4
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'Connecting Minds' Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Connecting Minds is a space dedicated to honoring the amazing authors, researchers, clinicians, artists, and entrepreneurs who are contributing to our collective evolution or simply making the world a better place. These thought-provoking conversations are intended to expand our horizons, so come with an open mind and let us grow together. Here is your host, Christian Yordanov.
Gary Gach: Buddhism Scholar Introduction
00:00:41
Speaker
Hello and thank you for tuning into Connecting Minds. My name is Christian Jardinoff and I'm so glad that you're with us. Now, today on the second episode of the Connecting Minds podcast, we have Gary Gach. A little bit about Gary. Gary Gach's lifelong career is as a freelance writer and scholar of Buddhism. That is, he's been writing formally since he was 10 and meditating since he was eight. He teaches in the Plum Village tradition
00:01:11
Speaker
a Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, and has been facilitating a weekly practice group Mindfulness Fellowship in San Francisco for over 10 years. A dynamic speaker, he's well regarded for keynotes and panels and for training and coaching individuals and groups.
00:01:27
Speaker
With 10 books to his name, his work has also been published in over 100 periodicals, including The Christian Science Monitor, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Huffington Post, The New Yorker, Lion's Roar, Pathios, Tricycle, and Yoga Journal, and over a dozen anthologies such as A Book of Luminous Things, Chicken Soup for the American Soul, Language for a New Century, Technicians of the Sacred, and Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace.
00:01:57
Speaker
He's been honored with an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, a Nautilus Book Award, and a Northern California Book Award, and has been a recipient of grants from the Korean Literature Translation Institute and Lannon Foundation. He enjoys live music haiku and swimming
00:02:18
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the bay.
Embodying Buddhist Teachings and Mindfulness
00:02:20
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You can visit him at GaryGach.com and of course I'm going to have links to his website and his books in the episode shown out. Now Gary's not just a great storyteller, he's just a great guy altogether. He was so incredibly kind
00:02:36
Speaker
from the very first email I reached out to him, he was just so receptive, so kind and, you know, truly what you would expect a man who follows the teachings of Buddha to be like, you know, he really, you can see he embodies the teachings which are, what a terrific man, really. In this episode, this is what we talk about, you know, Buddhism,
00:03:01
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and how to apply its teachings into our daily lives really because beyond the stories that's really that the teaching is what we need to embody on a day-to-day basis and I've been trying over the last years with limited success to do that and
00:03:19
Speaker
This is why I had him on the show, just so he could give us some of his insights and wisdom on how we can be more mindful, be more present, and embody these amazing, incredible teachings more. Now, for those of you who are not very familiar with Buddhism, don't you worry.
00:03:39
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Gary will tell us a wonderful story of the Buddha and basically what his journey to enlightenment was, what he taught and then how Buddhism actually developed over the past couple of millennia.
00:03:55
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It's just really, really interesting. And if you're more interested in Buddhism, you would like to learn more. Gary has written the book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Buddhism, which is a terrific text. It's accessible pretty much for anyone, which is what I loved about it. It was well-written.
00:04:17
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Quite entertaining very lively books so you know just from the first page I was already learning stuff and I read a little bit about Buddhism here and there various books on Buddhism in my library but I'm
00:04:33
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This is just a really well-researched, well-written resource that I would highly recommend. Additionally, I also have a link to his other book that he was very kind to send me called Paul's Breathe Smile, Awakening Mindfulness When Meditation Is Not Enough. Now, if you are someone looking to
Mindfulness in Daily Life
00:04:54
Speaker
integrate and apply mindfulness practices in your daily life. I'm telling you, this is probably one of the best books out there. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Please check it out. There's just so many gems there for you that I really think you will find it a very good resource if you want to integrate the teachings and live them.
00:05:25
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So yes, I'll have links to all of those in the show notes. Unfortunately, we couldn't do video for this episode. It will be audio only. We had some technical difficulties. You can go to christianjordanov.com for the episode show notes. And I would like to once again thank you for tuning into Connecting Minds. I really, really appreciate you being here. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I enjoyed talking to Gary.
00:05:55
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So yeah, that's it. Without further ado, let me present to you our guest, Gary Gach. Okay. Today on the Connecting Minds podcast, we are honored to have Gary Gach. Gary, thank you so much for being with us today. Christian, thank you for inviting me. It's wonderful to be here with you.
00:06:20
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Now, this is our fourth attempt to begin the interview, the conversation. So without further ado, if you would please, as we already discussed, would you please, whatever way you would like to start the conversation by bringing our awareness to the present moment? Good idea. Thank you. I'm sitting.
00:06:50
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with a bell beside me, as I prepare to invite the bell, I'm already enjoying my conscious breathing. I'm breathing through my nostrils, even though I'm talking. And feeling the breath in my nostrils and coming out of my abdomen through my nostrils and staying with my breathing,
00:07:15
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When I hear a sound of a bell, it could be a literal bell or it could be anything that's awakening. I just devote all of my attention and awareness to that moment. So here is the sound of me waking up the bell. I don't hit the bell. I am nonviolent. So I'm going to wake up the bell.
00:07:41
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And now I'm going to invite the bell to speak to us of the present moment. Please enjoy.
00:08:20
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All right. That's a great start to the podcast. So, where do we start? Can you maybe start us off by telling the listeners a little bit about yourself? Obviously, I'll read your bio before we begin the episode, but tell us a little bit about yourself, how Buddhism came on your radar and kind of your history and your experience with Buddhism and mindfulness, since that is the topic of our conversation.
Gary's Journey with Buddhism
00:08:50
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today? Sure, that's a great question. Without even thinking about it, just what comes up for me right now is that as I'm sitting here talking with you, I recall that through much of my life I was a thought of myself as a writer,
00:09:09
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who was interested in things like haiku and zen, as well as jazz and various things. And now I'm 72. It's like the hourglass has turned over and I'm a person who considers himself a practitioner of Buddhism, of mindfulness, for whom?
00:09:38
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writing and haiku and jazz and chopping vegetables are all part of the practice. And so I'm very grateful that I have this unifying field, if you were, in my life. It's not separate from my life, actually. It's just kind of waking up to the fullness of life. And that's it in a nutshell.
00:10:07
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Now, when you say chopping vegetables, what is, let's say for the layperson or someone who doesn't know much about the benefits of meditation, mindfulness, when you say chopping vegetables can be a significant event in a person's day, what do you mean? Thank you. For example, if I'm chopping the vegetables,
00:10:34
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while thinking about something that he said or she said, or that I'm supposed to say later on, I might chop my finger off. Being present with the chopping of the vegetables and nothing else, I might notice if I'm chopping on the out breaths, because there's a certain rhythm to chopping vegetables,
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And I might notice the chopping on the out breaths is it's it's much cleaner. And I'm aware of the aroma of the vegetables being opened. And I can consider if I want to give myself some extra.
00:11:19
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solidity to my practice that this vegetable that I'm cutting has come from the earth, Mother Earth, nourished by the sun. It contains the sun in it. It's got the cloud that watered upon it in it.
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It has the air that it's still exhaling and that will turn into steam if I steam it. So the whole universe is present in this present moment. And that presence gives me a reverence for life, whatever it may be, however it manifests. And so chopping vegetables or washing the dishes afterwards or going to the bathroom afterwards
00:12:11
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going to the next thing like folding linen or whatever the next thing is, I give my full attention and awareness to it. And what does it take to be like that? Does it take 20-30 years of practice? Is that accessible to each other? No! That's the wonderful thing about it. It isn't like it's something waiting off
00:12:35
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in the future, and some will say, ah, Christian, you've now chopped the vegetables in a zen way. It's just chopping vegetables. We do it all the time, but we don't often have the opportunity to recognize that it's an occasion for us to really fully enjoy what that might mean. The more that one practices in a way that's
00:13:06
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no longer based on preferences and aversions and, you know, all of our clings to things. And that is instead a culture based on breathing in the present moment. The more we're able to
00:13:30
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find myriad ways where that might be true that we hadn't noticed before. But it isn't something you have to wait. It's like, don't wait until you die for Nirvana. It's, you know, everything's here and now. So. Right. Right.
00:13:51
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So let's just go back a little bit, talk a little bit about your history. So I believe you have studied with some quite wise teachers. You were kind enough to send me your latest book, Paul's Breathe Smile, which we'll talk about a bit later. And in there, I saw that.
00:14:16
Speaker
You studied under Thich Nhat Hanh, which I hope you pronounce it better than I do. Can you tell us a little bit what it was like to study with these wise folks? What it was like to what? What it was like to study with them? What did you learn from them?
00:14:40
Speaker
Great question. You know, I've been very fortunate. I studied with Alan Watts and I got to study with Suzuki Roshi and some of the other great Zen masters who came here from Japan. I had a Hasidic master who was the 15th in his lineage of Hasidism. I count my lucky stars that I was able to meet Thich Nhat Hanh and
00:15:08
Speaker
find myself able to join with that community. And we have a lot of time, but I'm thinking of a Hasidic story about a guy in a shtetl in ancient Bulgaria or Poland or wherever, and he goes off to a big city to study with a rabbi.
00:15:34
Speaker
And he comes back, everyone's in town, it's like, you know, they're getting ready for dinner and they see him coming over the hill, it's been 20 years, and he's coming over the hill and everybody comes on and says, hey, Yanko's coming back. He's come back, let's see what he knows. He's studied with the master for 20 years and they can't wait and they all circle around him. And finally when he says, well, you studied with the great master, what was it like? What did you learn? And he swallows and he said,
00:16:05
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I can tell you how he ties his shoelaces, meaning that all the wisdom and compassion that's been nourished in me by these teachers isn't something that is contained
00:16:29
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in a book or a sentence or anything like that. It's more what you might call a transmission outside of words. It's always been special teachings. It's a presence of the connection between two people.
00:16:59
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And one of the, you know, one of the teachings that most of the really great masters that I've had the opportunity to study with, including Thich Nhat Hanh, is the teaching that you don't put anybody higher than you. You don't add a head on top of your own head. That the teachers are like a finger
00:17:29
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pointing to the moon in a foggy night. Because otherwise we might not know where it is. And when we see the full moon, which is often a symbol of our own awakened nature, our true self, then we no longer need to rely on the finger. So I could unpack this more.
00:18:00
Speaker
It's a great question, and I'll just add one thing as I'm thinking about it, and that is that in all of these transmissions, I call them or teachings, I say teachings, now that I'm 72, I've come away with the realization that with a teaching, sometimes comes a whole tradition behind it.
00:18:26
Speaker
It isn't just like I've taken a flower from my backyard and I've put it in a pot and I've given it to you. It's like the whole garden is there with all of the soil and the microorganisms in the soil. When I studied with Shlomo, for example, Rabbi Shlomo, may his memory be a blessing, I was aware that he was talking about rabbis from
00:18:54
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15 generations as if he knew them, and indeed he did. And that when I've studied with Thich Nhat Hanh, he might mention his conversations with Dr. King or Thomas Merton, or something that the Buddha said, or a disciple of the Buddha, and that all of that is kind of bound up with
00:19:20
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a teaching so that one is like, I am a descendant of these ancestors.
00:19:30
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And they are likewise, they have been disciples of deeper ancestors. In Buddhism, we're all kind of connected to one teacher, that's the Buddha, who says, you know, be a lamp unto yourself.
The Buddha's Journey and Teachings
00:19:57
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Well, that's actually a great segue. Now, you said something earlier, which I'm hoping you could weave the answer to this question into a bigger
00:20:12
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I suppose, story, but you said something where working with teachers, it's not something you can write down and transmit in a book. It's a type of experiential knowledge of one's true nature, right? So you don't have to answer that right now, but because you're
00:20:38
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You're such a scholar of Buddhism and I highly encourage folks that are interested in Buddhism to check out Gary's book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Buddhism. I think I'm at part three now. Just the way you tell the story is really, really accessible, but it's a very rich story of the many complexities of how Buddhism developed over the last
00:21:07
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two and a half millennia. But the question to you, Gary, or it's more of a request, would you please, for the listeners that may not know the story of the Buddha and how Buddhism became what it is today, could you
00:21:26
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talk a little bit about who was the Buddha, what did he learn is our true nature that he is teaching us, and how did Buddhism develop over the last couple of millennia into what it is now in the various different places? Great question, Christian. Thank you. I don't know if, and thank you for the kind words,
00:21:55
Speaker
I don't know if Gary Goch's one single crazy mouth is big enough to tell the whole of what you're asking in a few minutes, but I'd be happy to give a sketch. First of all, when we say Buddha, it's an honorific. He wasn't named the Buddha. He was named Siddhartha
00:22:25
Speaker
Gotama. They called him Shakyamuni. He had more names than, you know, you could count, but we call him Buddha because it means awakened one in the same way that we call Jesus of Nazareth the Christ, which means the anointed one. Anywho,
00:22:48
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The historical Buddha, Shakyamuni Gautama, was born about 2,600 years ago in what is now India.
00:22:59
Speaker
of a, when India was just sort of developing into nation states, and he was born into a high caste family that were next to the top caste, which is Brahmins, his family were warriors. And so he was raised in a castle with the finest teachers and
00:23:24
Speaker
every luxury he could possibly imagine, but occasionally he would go out of the palace on a little journey, and each time he saw something that sort of startled him. The first time he saw a man who was sick, and he'd never seen a sick person before, they kept sick people out of his way so he'd never see sickness.
00:23:51
Speaker
And then another time he saw someone who was old with a long beard and like, he'd never seen this before. They deprived him of the knowledge that people grow old. And the third time he saw a pyre, a person had died and was being carried away. And each time his faithful servant explained to him what this was. And each time he was kind of like, shock.
00:24:21
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And the fourth time he saw somebody walking along wearing only a cloth of orange or saffron and nothing else, and holding a bowl with sandals and a staff and nothing else. And he said, what's that? And the servant said, that's a mendicant holy person. So eventually, or not too long,
00:24:52
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The Buddha decided to leave the palace. Some people consider in this story the possible symbolism that it's like leaving the protection of our ego and finding out about the nature of reality.
00:25:12
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And so these four messengers of the fact that we're bound to get sick, we're bound to grow old, we're bound to die, set them off on the path to find out why is this so? Why are we born only to get sick and old and die? And so he studied with the great teachers of his time who were teaching yoga.
00:25:42
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which at that time was still kind of new. And he became, being the Buddha, being such a remarkable person, he soon mastered every possible level until they wanted him to become a teacher at this ashram. And he said, no, none of these things of controlling my breath or attaining the
00:26:09
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consciousness of non-being and being and all these various stages, none of them are answering for me the question of why do human beings suffer? Why are we put on Earth? And so he went out in the forest and he became a forest ascetic, ascetic meaning someone who is
00:26:32
Speaker
using the discipline of self-control to completely cut off from any desire in order to then allow the mind to expand and get refined and be subtle and probe. You sometimes see people sitting on nails and that's an extreme example, but he sat and he sat with some other
00:26:57
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forest mendicants until one day he was so thin and emaciated that you could touch his spine through his navel. He was just a skin and bones and there was a goat girl, a girl leading the goats of her family who threw the forest and she'd see him and she noticed every time he was getting
00:27:27
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thinner and more wasted and nearer to death and she one day left a bowl of yogurt by his knee and coming out of his trance he saw this bowl of yogurt and he smelled and it looked really good and he had this decision to make. Do I eat this yogurt and renounce my asceticism or maybe do I attain what I've been looking for
00:27:55
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And he decided it wouldn't be any good to attain what he'd been looking for if he didn't have a body. That he'd be kind of this disembodied, busy body awareness. So he ate the yogurt. And the fellows that he was with saw him do this. And they picked up their cushions and they moved on. They had nothing to do with them anymore. So this is the moment that we call the middle way.
00:28:26
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that he had grown up in a life of self self. What do you call it when someone is all about themselves? He was just, you know, luxuries and self seeking. And then he became denying himself. And then he realized, you know, it's like if the guitars too tight, it's going to snap.
00:28:52
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And if it's too loose, it's not going to sound. And he started tuning this middle way between craving things and pushing things away, which are our natural tendencies. And so following the middle way and meditating beneath a tree we call the Bodhi tree, a tree that sheltered him during his meditation,
00:29:22
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Somehow, he became enlightened. He saw the nature of reality clearly and in great depth that he attained what he'd been looking for.
00:29:47
Speaker
And he came from the tree and he walked around the tree for a while, just giving thanks to the tree and thanks to the animals. And eventually he walked to where he found himself walking towards where the fellow monks he had been with were. And rather than say, Oh, there's that cop out Buddha, there's that cop out. They said, Oh,
00:30:14
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they could see that he'd attained what they'd been looking for too. And there was a moment, they say, when they asked him, you know, what should we call you? Should we call you the awakened one, Buddha? Anyhow, he gave a talk to those disciples
00:30:40
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they became his disciples, that's called the fire sermon where he sort of laid out how he became enlightened and what it was, which I will share with you connected minds. It's called the four noble truths, noble because they ennoble us.
00:31:03
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And you can think of these four as a medical terminology of a diagnosis of symptoms. No, symptoms diagnosis. First, the inventory of the symptoms, the diagnosis of the symptoms, the prognosis for the health and a prescription.
00:31:24
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And the first is the symptom that we are mortal and are going to die. And we're going to get sick and we're going to get old and we're going to suffer. You just can't, you can't get out of that and crave. Pardon? Life means suffering.
00:31:49
Speaker
I don't know if I'd say that because I'll pause here because thank you for letting me. People often say Buddhism is about suffering and I don't want to spend my life thinking about suffering all the time. It's sort of like, why would I want to go to a church where there's a
00:32:15
Speaker
a cross with a person crucified on it. Well, the crucifix is sort of the symbol of somebody who overcame all mortal suffering for all beings, or so I'm told. Anywho, the teachings of the Buddha are really one teaching, and that is the nature of suffering and liberation from suffering.
00:32:43
Speaker
And I said, that's one thing. But if you say, wait a minute, you said two things, the nature of suffering and liberation from suffering, they're not two separate things. Because when you understand the nature of suffering, then you understand liberation from suffering, which is great. So life entails suffering. Actually, the symptoms are
00:33:12
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suffering, but the diagnosis is that the suffering is extra. The diagnosis says, you know, well, yeah, we're all going to get pain and get older and it's going to be more difficult physically. But the suffering is extra. It's like the joggers mantra. You know, pain is inevitable. Suffering is extra. And a way to look at that wisely
00:33:41
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might be to recognize that we add extra pain to our natural pain that we call suffering. It's like a second arrow, meaning if I got shot by a dart and it hit my left shoulder, well, I pull it out and it would be hurting.
00:34:05
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And I want to go get, you know, salve and it would go away. But if the, if this was an enemy who hit me again in the same place, immediately the pain would now radiate all over my shoulder, my back into my head, all over my body. And that's what we do as human beings when we experience pain, which is an arrow. And then we hit ourselves with the second arrow saying, Oh my God,
00:34:35
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This is terrible. I'm not going to be able to have a good time at the garden party tonight. We start adding extra layers to it. So if you understand that we cling unnecessarily to a notion of
00:35:03
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What is pain? Is to say, what am I saying? That if you are always thinking about, oh my God, life is terrible. This happened to me and that happened to me and it's just, everything's happened to me. Why me? It's building up
00:35:26
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an awareness of life as if it were all personal, like it's all happening to you and you've been singled out for special punishment, right? But in effect, this is like what you were saying. The nature of life is that everybody experiences this. That's the first noble truth. That's the recognition. And the second is that this suffering is
00:35:53
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often unnecessary, that pain is inevitable, but the suffering is not. And so the third prognosis is that there's a way to stop hitting ourselves with a second arrow, as it were. And the fourth noble truth, the prescription, is the way. It's a definition of the way as eight steps that one can take.
00:36:23
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And they can be collapsed into three areas, which are our view of the nature of things, our conduct of how we enact ourselves for ourselves in the world, and the third is meditation. So, I don't know, is that kind of clear?
00:36:52
Speaker
Yeah. Did I leave any glaring questions about the teachings of those four teachings? So actually, maybe so. Yeah. So we know life entails suffering. Pardon? So the first noble truth is that life entails suffering. The second noble truth is that, correct me if I'm wrong, what is the cause of suffering? Is it desire?
00:37:22
Speaker
Clinging. No, a plant wants desires to be watered. You know, desire is OK. People always say, well, they don't have any desires. And then you're back to the ascetic in the forest whose skin and bones it's the it. Well, and clinging can also be aversion. Like I just had this terrible toothache and I had pain, but also I wanted the pain to go away now.
00:37:51
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You know, and so I was I was heating up over This pain until I said look just sit with it and just really Feel what it's like in and of itself and then like do you feel that in your pinky? Do you feel it in your toe? Where do you feel it a scale of one to ten? which is being realistic rather than Clinging to this notion of like I'm in pain
00:38:21
Speaker
So you put some space between yourself and the pain when you say, there is pain. I recognize the pain. I understand the pain rather than saying, I'm in pain, which you and the pain become one and the pain pulls you by the nose. So the second noble truth is not to cling because maybe the next minute the pain won't be as bad.
00:38:50
Speaker
Um, maybe the next minute, you know, the aspirin will kick in. Um, you know, or maybe you will have a pleasurable experience the next minute. And then you, you ought not to cling to that because if you do, when it finishes, you will suffer again. That's kind of, yeah. Yeah. You got it. Okay. So what, what have, uh, what have I left out that I need to, um,
00:39:20
Speaker
I suppose clarify before I move on to the, the third part of your question. I suppose maybe you could elaborate what the, um, the eightfold path entails. You already kind of mentioned a few things. Yeah. I mean, it's like, it's like, if you imagined, um, somebody drew in the sand, um, a, uh, circle and then they divided it into, you know, four.
00:39:51
Speaker
And then they divided it again and you have this nice eight pie divided into like a pizza with eight slices, okay? And it's very simple to remember. You could like write them down and put them in your purse or wallet. The first two are about wisdom.
00:40:21
Speaker
One is view and the second is thought. The view that we are not the center of the universe but that we are like a flea on the back of a dog in relation to the cosmos and that everything's all connected and everything changes and that actually it's very hard to come up with a single view and hold on to it.
00:40:49
Speaker
That's sort of a correct view. And then thought is the nature of thinking about our suffering, how do we go about our life. The next three are speech, action, livelihood, and they're kind of interrelated. The way I think will kind of determine what I say
00:41:19
Speaker
which may determine how I act. So if I say, I can't talk to you right now. I've got a deadline. I've got to do a photo shoot. I might pause and say, wait a minute, deadline photo shoot. You know, what's with this language? Otherwise I might behave violently.
00:41:42
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which I don't want to do so recognizing the importance of speech as coming out of thought and as a Mediator with action because our body our speech and our mind are one These are ways of our behavior in the world that are places where we can
00:42:10
Speaker
engage our Reality in an ennobling way and the the third a livelihood. I mean the Buddha You know, he made it very simple in his day was sort of like, you know, don't deal in poisons don't Don't poison the eco the ecosystem Do no harm today it becomes kind of there's more ambiguities to answer and
00:42:39
Speaker
But that our livelihood should be something that we don't come home afterwards and say, gee, I hated doing all that. Now it's time to begin my life. We don't separate our work from who we are. And then the last three have to do with meditation. And they are effort, concentration, and mindfulness. Effort meaning that
00:43:08
Speaker
A frog sits all day, but it doesn't mean that by sitting all day, a frog becomes enlightened. That's like saying that if I polished a brick, it'll become a mirror eventually. But it takes a certain amount of effort, of dedication, of intention to the path and the meditation techniques or
00:43:36
Speaker
practice involve concentration. For example, I'm kind of aware of my in-breath and my out-breath so that people listening can stay in touch with their in-breath and out-breath rather than think that I'm talking 120 miles a minute, which sometimes sounds to me like I am, and to be mindful, meaning just to be aware without judging, without adding anything or
00:44:05
Speaker
taking anything away from the nature of what is in front of our nose right now, the gift of life. View, thought, speech, action, work, effort, mindfulness, concentration are the touchstones of a life
00:44:35
Speaker
where we can be who we were meant to be. You'd ask me true nature, right? Yeah, exactly. And that is like, that's who we were meant to be. It's not like, oh, there's some better life waiting in the wings on the other side of a door. That's our true nature that we want to attain. There's nothing to attain. Our true nature means that we are, we've already been born. We've been given the greatest gift of all, which is life.
00:45:02
Speaker
And of all life forms, to be born as a human being has a lot of potential. And so to recognize ourselves as beings in the web of life who live harmoniously with joy in that web is awakening to our true nature rather than, let me see, what's my password?
00:45:30
Speaker
What's my date of birth? What's the social security number I have? What's the depth of my shadow? What's the width of my sincerity? You know Which we often do because we we Just it's more than putting a dotting an eye on it just to make this clear we have a notion of ourselves and
00:45:58
Speaker
as a fixed notion that therefore isn't real, it isn't true, because nothing is fixed. Everything is always changing. And we have a notion of ourselves as being separate. This is happening to me, me, me, and only me, me, me.
00:46:22
Speaker
rather than recognizing that it's happening to everybody. Everything is happening to everybody and everything all at once. And we're all interconnected in life. So not having a
00:46:36
Speaker
or letting go of the way the Buddha went out of the gates of the palace to a recognition of a larger world out there means that we no longer think of ourselves as these what Alan Watts used to call skin encapsulated egos, little skin encapsulated egos like hairy bags of water that are separate from everything else.
00:47:03
Speaker
where actually, well, Alan, who'd studied Eastern religion in various forms, would say that we're portals of the universe observing herself through us. So questions about who the Buddha was,
00:47:29
Speaker
and what his basic teachings were are welcome. Otherwise, I'm going to keep talking. Yeah, keep going. That was great. Okay, so I'm going to keep talking. So his disciples, he suddenly had disciples. They called him Buddha. They called the teachings Dharma.
00:47:53
Speaker
which already was a Hindu word with a dozen meanings. It means teachings, it means reality, it also means phenomena, which is to say that everything is Dharma. Dharma includes everything and everything leads to Dharma, the truth, and that they call themselves Sangha, meaning a community.
00:48:17
Speaker
And I'll just mention that this was a pre-existing form of a spiritual community 500 years before Jesus formed his communalist tradition of followers. Was he a Christian? No.
00:48:41
Speaker
Was the Buddha a Buddhist? No. Instead, he and they kind of went around and they didn't proselytize. They just sort of began leading this life together because one finds that it's very hard to practice this way in solitude all one's life because one can get visions or notions that aren't necessarily true.
00:49:10
Speaker
And to practice as a community, we balance each other out. And also there's this great energy of being part of a greater body than ourselves. So he formed a sangha and they would travel kind of aimlessly. You know, being aimless is one of the teachings of the Buddha.
00:49:35
Speaker
And if they saw someone who said, you know, why are you wearing robes or whatever? He just sort of explained maybe the Four Noble Truths, just the way you say, look, don't you agree that the three sides of a triangle equal 180 degrees? And so it went in India that there became a large following.
Buddhism's Cultural Assimilation
00:50:00
Speaker
And this was in a time when in India,
00:50:05
Speaker
there had been the Upanishadic traditions and the Vedic traditions were coming in and Buddhism became a kind of a very identifiable path along with Jainism which was just coming in at the time and these teachings then
00:50:30
Speaker
got adapted by other countries who adopted them, bringing to them the teachings, the practitioner's own culture, which is like
00:50:46
Speaker
If I look at it this way, it's true for me on an individual level. Here, I, Gary Gach, a Jewish American, am now a call myself a practicing Buddhist, which means that I bring to Buddhism my love of haiku and of jazz, things that the Buddha never would have heard of, but that are very, for me, an essential part of my life and my life as a Buddhist.
00:51:15
Speaker
And so too, on a greater level of scale, when the teachings of the Buddha were heard in Japan, when they were heard in China, when they were heard in Tibet, they took on a life in conjunction with the cultures where they were. Like, for example, in China, when they, and you got to realize that between India and China, there had never, and kind of today,
00:51:43
Speaker
has rarely been much communication of culture because they're two different cultures. They really are very different civilizations separated by the enormous Himalayas. And the Chinese heard these teachings from some monks who came from India and they said, that's our guy, Lao Tzu.
00:52:05
Speaker
You know, the guy used to talk about Tao, Tao, the way. And it sounds like he got enlightened. That's great. He finally made it. Our guy, he made it. We should find out what the teachings that he transmitted when he was in India. That was kind of one of the premises of an adoption, a nurley kind of buy-in. And China was, and I say this too, because China was a highly sophisticated, evolved civilization.
00:52:33
Speaker
when they heard the teachings of the Buddha. So it took a while for the teachings of the Buddha and the great traditions of Taoism and Confucianism to all kind of find each other and find some kinds of harmonious blends. And from China that went to Korea, most people don't recognize that Korea, no people don't recognize yet, but Korea was just
00:53:03
Speaker
A great, great lover of the Buddhist teachings through China, and some Chinese teachers felt that they surpassed, the Korean teachers surpassed them, and then Korea passed along the teachings through Japan. So you have East Asia.
00:53:23
Speaker
South Asia, like Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, the teachings are more traditional. There's less additions of other ramifications or culture. And so that's called the original teachings or the original path or Theravada, the way of the elders.
00:53:53
Speaker
The East Asian is called Mahayana because they got translated differently. The question of motivation in Mahayana becomes different. Why do you want to do this from the get-go? Do you want to be clear?
00:54:15
Speaker
once and for all, so that then you can go out and teach others and behave in a completely lucid, compassionate, wise way? Or do you kind of say, no, I don't think I could do that alone. And frankly, I wouldn't want to. I wouldn't want to live in a world in which I'm the only one. I would like to see changes in the world the same time as I see changes in myself.
00:54:44
Speaker
So I'm going to engage in the world as I engage in my practice, and that's called the Mahayana tradition. That's a different approach with some different emphases. And then it goes over north into Bhutan and Ladakh, Mongolia and Tibet.
00:55:07
Speaker
where it's like a boat that docks, and every time it docks, it mingles with the native cultures. And in, for example, India, there were deities in a religion called Bun,
00:55:24
Speaker
And so in a way, it said that the Buddhist teachings converted the bond deities to Buddhism. So you still had the bond deities, but now they were Buddhist deities. They're Buddhist deities. So you have
00:55:42
Speaker
For example, if you ever look at anything Tibetan, you'll see icons called, what do you call them? Hello. I want to say tantra, but that's not the word. It's a word like tantra, scrolls of images in Tibet. Tonkas, it's like tantra. Tonkas usually of deities
00:56:11
Speaker
arranged in a very precise way. It's very Baroque. A difference between, if there are differences, Tibetan Buddhism say, and others, is that it's very analytical and compassionate at the same time. Anyhow, the idea that there are differences
00:56:41
Speaker
in Buddhism is kind of, and that the Buddhism spreads, isn't something that I kind of like going, subscribing to or going into, going down that kind of presumption, because the truth doesn't spread. It just, it's always there. And the fact that it manifests differently in each human being, in each culture,
00:57:05
Speaker
is natural rather than kind of assuming that it's something that has a lot of differences. Like there's huge differences between Christianity and Buddhism. Well, I suppose there are, but I'd rather see the similarities. And so to kind of put a period on the sentence,
00:57:30
Speaker
One of the things that I did when I decided that I wanted to write about Buddhism and I got a contract from the complete idiots guides was that I wanted to give an equal spotlight to four of the major schools of practice, which hadn't happened yet in my awareness because the Dalai Lama doesn't teach Zen. Zen Buddhists don't really teach Tibetan Buddhism.
00:58:01
Speaker
Theravada, you know, mindfulness, insight meditation might teach a little Sufism, might teach a little of this and that, but they still kind of keep to their own knitting, as it were.
00:58:17
Speaker
And so my presentation has the Theravada from which we get mindfulness as a major factor and insight, which is that we can use our stability and calm and mindfulness as a vehicle for understanding the nature of our lives and the nature of truth.
00:58:40
Speaker
Zen, which is a practice we kind of started with of just being aware in the present moment fully, and Pure Land, which rarely still gets talked about outside of the Pure Land schools, and yet is one of the largest schools in the world, and Tibetan Buddhism.
00:59:07
Speaker
So the Buddha, his teachings, and how they became known throughout the world are the first three chapters of my book. And that's my story and I'm sticking to it. And which of the traditions do you have the greatest affinity to, Gary? Personally? Yeah.
00:59:41
Speaker
Well, having done that project, which is to say, going into four of the major schools, I have a great love for all four. And it's hard for me to have a preference because the way is one of not having preferences. I'll answer your question, though, this way by saying that my root
01:00:08
Speaker
lineage or tradition or teaching path, uh, is Vietnamese through Thich Nhat Hanh, the Plum Village community of engaged Buddhism.
Gary's Book and Mindfulness Message
01:00:23
Speaker
And then if you looked at India and China on a map and you looked at Vietnam, you'd see it's right down below the two and Vietnamese
01:00:36
Speaker
Buddhism is, I love in many ways. And one is that in, not always, but for example, in my tradition, it marries what I'd refer to as the Theravada and the Mahayana. So for example, when considering the Four Noble Truths, you have this very traditional Theravada approach, which is kind of what I did.
01:01:03
Speaker
But also, you could do it from a Zen point of view and say, look, if you understand the nature of suffering, you understand the nature of liberation from suffering, so there's really only two truths. And the two truths are one, which I kind of did too. So it looks at Theravada with a Zen perspective, and it looks at Zen with a Theravada perspective.
01:01:32
Speaker
And also that I know so little about still about Vietnamese, this Vietnamese culture and tradition in which I practice with European Americans and Vietnamese Americans and sometimes Vietnamese. And so that for me offers the opportunity of knowing that there's a great deal I have yet to learn.
01:01:58
Speaker
I mean, I'd have a great deal for the rest of my life to learn about China or Korea or anywhere, but there's so little known relatively in my universe about Vietnam and Vietnamese Buddhism that I find that a great, um, there's a kind of a charm to it that I, um, studying something that, um, you know, it's sort of like, I don't want to be the member of a social club of which I'm the only member, right?
01:02:26
Speaker
So that's my affinity, I guess. I also practice Qigong, I practice Taoism, I practice a certain number of other things. But yeah, Vietnamese Buddhism in this tradition is my current path, my central path.
01:02:50
Speaker
And can you, let's talk about your latest book, Pause, Breathe, Smile. Now we, mindfulness meditation is very much an vogue, you know, in the past couple of decades. Why did you write this book and what is the significance behind the practices you teach in it?
01:03:18
Speaker
Well, I wrote it partly because it's been in vogue for a couple of decades, which means which has meant that now it's kind of this trend where and such that where every everything is calling itself mindfulness. You know, it's like it was with Dan in the fifties, a zen of our motorcycle maintenance. And in some ways it can be, as I was kind of saying earlier, if I gave you a
01:03:49
Speaker
an orchid in a pot, it might stay in that pot. If I gave you a bunch of lavender in a pot, it might stay in the pot. But if I gave you a bunch of lavender and you had some soil, you'd want to transplant it in your own soil. But you might also want to know about the lavender zone soil that it came from. And I think in this transmission, see, I think
01:04:17
Speaker
There's wonderful things about mindfulness, but there's also some things that I felt needed to be added into the conversation at this point, which is that if we're talking about Buddhism in a secular way by calling it mindfulness, but then emitting those other parts of the path that I'd mentioned that were about intentional action and about
01:04:46
Speaker
deep, wise, compassionate view as essential trainings, as integral to meditation. Then we could go down the garden path. My guy I know, a friend of mine, Ron Perser, calls mindfulness as the new capitalist spirituality, which is to say totally denatured.
01:05:17
Speaker
totally taken out of its roots and totally used for maybe other purposes than for what it was intended. I don't know. So I don't think there's anything wrong with mindfulness as a secular path, actually. I don't take the same position quite as Ron does, although I recognize his
01:05:48
Speaker
you know, his critical thinking. But I think that there's more than mindfulness if people want to take a next step. Having learned to be aware of their mind and observe their mind and be able to distance themselves from their sensations, perceptions and thoughts,
01:06:16
Speaker
to be able to thus witness as well as participate in the life of the mind, to train the mind to be able to be an ally rather than an obstacle, then they may want to go further. And so I'm offering mindfulness as it was taught to me by Thich Nhat Hanh, who,
01:06:46
Speaker
wrote a book called The Miracle of Mindfulness. In the 70s, it sort of started the trend of the word. Wow. So. So can you. I think you asked what the significance of Paul's great smile as the theme. Maybe you can give us a bit of a tour of Paul's great smile. Yeah, I didn't understand when you said significance. It was like, what?
01:07:15
Speaker
Um, no, it's a good point. Um, the title is, uh, it has two, there's two levels. Uh, it's like an invitation. Anybody can practice at any time. Uh, you know, as I've been talking to you and I have my headphones, there's this little bell that goes off every 15 seconds. I mean, every 15 minutes and I stop and I take a breath and I, uh, pause and I smile.
01:07:43
Speaker
When I offered our bell meditation in the beginning, I didn't offer the mouth yoga, but for those who would like, while you're listening and breathing and sitting aware of your body, you can relax all, try this on your next in-breath, relax all the muscles of your body except for one, and sort of tug on the muscles on the side of your mouth a little. Just exercise a little mouth yoga,
01:08:13
Speaker
and bringing a smile to your breathing, notice if you feel a little happier for just giving yourself the gift of a smile. And if so, that's kind of the recognition that sometimes joy precedes a smile, but sometimes a smile precedes the joy, and that the joy is always there. It's the joy of being alive, joie de vivre.
01:08:42
Speaker
And so that's the invitation of the title. And maybe if I'd done a 14th draft or went back to the 11th draft before I published the book, maybe I know a better way to explain in a nutshell that that's not what the book is. And so the book just offers that in the first five pages and says the rest is commentary.
01:09:09
Speaker
The book just offers a three-breath meditation. And then the commentary is these three words that you can practice in any order, that pausing is intentionality, ethics, conscious conduct, breathing is meditation using the full awareness of breathing as a focus, and that the smile, my editor said I'd have a hard time with that part,
01:09:38
Speaker
The smile refers to the traditional ancient wisdom of the Buddha's teachings of impermanence, interconnectedness, and the fluid nature of the self. So pause is also the outline of the book.
01:10:10
Speaker
Pause, breathe, smile. I like it. Can you give the listeners some little practices they can use in their day without a formal sit-down meditation? How can we bring the Buddhist teachings into our life? How can we embody them more fully in our day-to-day?
01:10:39
Speaker
Yeah, well, let me review the ones that we've done today or tonight. We've taken a moment in the Connected Minds episode to pause and become aware of our breathing. Just now I've offered the mouth yoga.
01:11:08
Speaker
And I really like that you said, um, you brought up the word formal and, and that also implies informal, that informally we can do that anytime that we can recognize. Oh, so life comes down to this. I'm chopping vegetables. Oh, so it's a, this is what I'm doing now. I'm waiting for a bus. Um, whatever it is informally in our life.
01:11:37
Speaker
rather than just go through it like a routine, we can recognize we've never done it this moment, this way, and we'll never do it this way again, and that we can bring our full attention to it. And one way to bring our full attention to it is to focus our awareness on the presence of our breathing in and breathing out.
01:12:09
Speaker
so that we're more present to what we're doing. I also would encourage people to have an opportunity to try a formal practice too of waking up and finding a place in the house
01:12:26
Speaker
or before one goes to bed, to just sit, or if you have difficulty sitting, laying, or stand, and take some time just to do nothing. You know, when your hands are in your lap, and you are in a nice posture relaxed with quiet dignity, your hands have let go of whatever they were doing, and so can you. So can you.
01:12:56
Speaker
realize that whatever you were doing a minute ago isn't there and you can just recharge. You can let go. You can enjoy the nature of awareness without any object, without any worry, without any hurry. I can offer a tip, if I may, that one of the central parts of this practice is you'll notice that the mind will wander
01:13:26
Speaker
And the mind will set up barriers and barbed wire saying, I don't want to be part of the infinite. I want to be in my little tiny world. And that when one recognizes that one's reviewing the past or rehearsing the future or whatever, that you bring it back to the present moment without beating yourself up over the head over it, but just recognizing you're coming to know your mind.
01:13:55
Speaker
So all the practices of daily life are opportunities for informal practice. Formal practices besides sitting are a meal, for example, putting the fork down, enjoying the bite fully from the beginning, middle and end. Maybe looking at it the way I suggested that you could see the whole universe in it when you're chopping the vegetables.
01:14:27
Speaker
Another is walking. A walking meditation that's formal is where you're coordinating your steps to your breathing. But informal, you're just counting your steps and being aware that the in-breath might be, what is it right now? Three. And that walking your out-breath is maybe three. And then just noticing that pattern and noticing if it lengthens.
01:14:54
Speaker
if the outbreak then becomes four and then saying, okay, now I'm three and four. But that year when I do this, I kind of do it every day when I come from the grocery store and I have to remind myself to do this. Otherwise I'm already putting away the groceries as I'm walking. As I'm walking, I'm thinking about my email. As I'm walking, I'm thinking about my 10,000 things to come. And I'm not enjoying the solidity of the earth beneath my feet, the beautiful clouds in the sky,
01:15:25
Speaker
the wind in my hair, the sound of the kids from the playground. So there's formal and informal. Teachings of the Buddha are things that are good to study, like you get a good book on the teachings and then you can study them and observe them in your life and see what you want to put into practice.
01:15:48
Speaker
If you want to start with the eightfold path, you could take one of those elements and study each for a month or the Four Noble Truths and just study each for a month and maybe journal. And see, you know, that you probably are already doing this in many ways, that it's not something you're trying to import, that just noticing that these teachings help bring out
01:16:17
Speaker
in what's already within you and that there's watering these seeds of your own awakening that are already present. Yeah, it's unbelievably difficult for, I think, at least my generation, maybe the previous one as well, but definitely my generation and younger generations, it's extremely difficult to just be idle and even sitting is hard enough
01:16:46
Speaker
Tell me why is why is it difficult for your generation because of all the distractions of social media it's just a habit and. The older i get the kind of the more i'm starting to appreciate the value that we were camping start of the month and.
01:17:03
Speaker
We're just out there, nothing to do, just to feel the wind blowing on you, to feel the sunshine on your skin, to listen to the birds, to hear and see the trees' branches rustle. And it just, this is what I think, it's not sexy, it's not glamorous for folks now, but there's something, it unlocks deep
01:17:35
Speaker
dimensions, a type of satisfaction inside you that it's kind of inexplicable in some ways. And I think this is where I like that we always like quick fixes in our day and age. Oh, how can I do this while I'm on the go? How can I be mindful on the go while I'm being productive? I like the fact that you still kind of reiterated
01:18:00
Speaker
Uh, that a formal somewhat formal, you know, sitting at home in the morning or evening is not that formal, but a formal sit down meditation is actually very beneficial and quite important. And this is something I've been trying to more and more integrate into my life. And it's only, you can only see benefits from it. You know, there is no downside. Yeah. Do you think you could practice in your whatever your,
01:18:28
Speaker
is for you formal meditation, something that allows the same capacities for living in a certain way that you experience in camping in your own home, whether it's working or day to day chores. Oh, yeah.
Modern Challenges to Mindfulness
01:18:52
Speaker
Well, I mean, and from time to time, we do need to
01:18:57
Speaker
go out and go camping, certainly. In the time of the Buddha, it was like practically all camping. Nobody took cars. Everything was walking. There was so much more opportunities for living with nature. I live in San Francisco. It's a city. But I can tell the time by what time the wild parrots fly by. Wow.
01:19:24
Speaker
I find nature in the city just as undeniable as in the country, although it's not quite as, you know, saturating in the same way. I don't know if your generation has more.
01:19:43
Speaker
It may be true. I mean, it's something I'd be curious to hear more about because I'm very much right now, not so much interested in Buddhism from a Western point of view, being an early adopter in a way of Western Buddhism, but more of intergenerationality of what was different from my generation, what is different from your generation. I'm on the board of a local chapter of an international group
01:20:13
Speaker
of people that practice in the Thich Nhat Hanh tradition called Wake Up. And although people think of me as a senior or whatever, or as an elder or whatever, I'm there basically to learn. I'd have nothing, not a lot to teach because they are putting it together in remarkable, innovative, fresh, new ways that I'm learning a lot from.
01:20:44
Speaker
But the idea that, I'll just say this, it may be true that there are more challenges to your attention, but maybe not. But it may be another way of looking that is, especially now, that it may be true on some level to look at things from time to time as if it weren't that there is more suffering in the world now than ever today.
01:21:13
Speaker
But rather, it's as if the ocean has evaporated and now we can finally see the seabed. And we can see these mountains and valleys in the seabed that we hadn't seen before that were underwater. And they've always been there. But through media, through polarization of beliefs and various factors,
01:21:43
Speaker
we have more opportunities to see them, but it isn't like they've never been more or less present in human life. And the fact that we have more opportunity to see them, I think that that's an interesting challenge because it gives us more of an opportunity to work with them on a level where it's not just personal, you know,
01:22:10
Speaker
so that if I'm able to understand that knot of busyness and untie it, then those that I come in contact with will have more opportunity to see, boy, I don't get paid not to laugh. You know?
01:22:34
Speaker
I think it's also why it's called meditation practice. Maybe that's another thing where we want everything yesterday and it can take some time for you to settle into a practice and allow the mind to slowly
01:22:55
Speaker
become less noisy and then you can perhaps get into a deeper state. Maybe that's just one of the factors that so many of us are, you know, we tried, and this is coming from someone who for 15 years I've been introduced to Buddhism when I was 19, I'm 34 now, and I've tried to multiple times with apps, without apps, with music, guided, unguided.
01:23:22
Speaker
in nature, you know, in the morning and the evening. And it's just one of those things where, you know, you need to actually deepen the practice and maybe that's kind of the missing piece for many of us is just we expect too much too soon when there's actually many layers of the mind need to kind of subside or melt away before
01:23:52
Speaker
the jewel of our own, you know, true nature can emerge because there's just so many psychological layers that the ego has. I'm not sure if there's more than 2000 years ago or whatever, 500 years or 50 years ago, but you know, that's kind of the way I see it anyway. Yeah. Well, I really appreciate and respect and honor how you phrased all of that.
01:24:17
Speaker
that you didn't say you're trying to quiet the mind, that you're allowing a space for the mind to quiet of its own. That alone is a great recognition. The observation that it takes training
01:24:34
Speaker
for something that's already there, but we need to. How do you put it? You can't. Enlightenment happens as an accident, but training makes us accident prone. Yeah, I like that. And you know, there's a story about the kid who's come to New York City for the first time, and he's holding a violin case and he's
01:25:02
Speaker
lost. And he sees a man coming out of the subway who looks wise and friendly. And he says, Mr. Mr. How do I get to Carnegie Hall? And the old man coming up the steps, looks at him and looks down at the violin case and says, practice, practice, son. That's why they call it a practice. Yeah. Really like that. Can I ask you a question? For me, like writing is a practice.
01:25:31
Speaker
And it's easy to write on a sunny day. No, what is it? It's easy to write on a rainy day. It's hard to write on a sunny day. On a rainy day, you got to stay in. On a sunny day, you want to go out. It's easy to practice when you've got a lot of things going on in a way, if they're not too much. Sometimes it's hard to practice when it's kind of like there's nothing going on.
01:25:56
Speaker
And you sit and you're just kind of like everything's nothing's happened, except you just kind of your awareness is now nicer, no big electric blue sparks or, you know, neon signs are going off. It's just kind of maybe even boring, but it's the dailiness, it's the regularity, the consistency that allows the ingrained
01:26:24
Speaker
wiring of our human experience of 50,000 years of being a Homo sapiens to enable our higher capacities to come alive for us, I think as they were meant to do. I mean, we have endorphins, right? We have receptors in our bodies to be happy and create our own chemistry of happiness.
01:26:54
Speaker
So how do we do that, I think, is the challenge. Yeah. Well, that's the other thing. It's sort of like evolutionary sport. Yeah. It's all in there. It's all in the mind. Everything we're looking for is there, not outside. And I think this is something I'm kind of waking up more and more to the older I get. That's a really good attitude.
01:27:24
Speaker
I remember being in a Unitarian church and large one and on the wall and huge letters that said, the kingdom of God is within. And there was a teacher who was a, actually it was a conversation with a rabbi and a Zen priest. And the rabbi was saying, oh yeah, they got that thing up there. The kingdom of God is within. Yeah, well, God is everywhere.
01:27:52
Speaker
But we're human beings and we got to understand things for ourselves first before we can recognize it in everywhere else. And so we got to look within first. And when you look within, you realize, well, yeah, it is everywhere. You know, that in our six foot frame, we do contain the whole universe. But you really got to find it first.
01:28:18
Speaker
for yourself, because if you can't find it for yourself, it's not going to be good for anybody else. It's like compassion. You really can't be compassionate for other people until you're compassionate for yourself. So maybe that's a model for how to look within without thinking that you're being too self-centric.
01:28:43
Speaker
I have just one more question before you can kind of let the folks know where to find your work, Gary. I've read in certain places, Buddhist kind of texts, that the ego is an illusion. Could you tell us, what do they mean by the ego is an illusion?
01:29:18
Speaker
If I sit here talking as if I am six foot tall, white Jewish male, 72 years old, that's true. And I need to recognize that. But if that's all I am, what am I? You know, I'm more than, you know, it's like I'm a
01:29:48
Speaker
I'm not a human being having a human experience. I'm sorry, I'm not a human being having a spiritual experience. I'm a spiritual being having a human experience. The ego is useful, very useful for letting me know that if the stove is hot, I shouldn't touch it, you know, making discerning wise decisions. But if I'm walking down the road,
01:30:16
Speaker
And I see something in the road and I jump because I think it's a snake and it's only a stick. That's an illusion. And it's an illusion created by something we call ego. And that ego is something that's been implanted and imprinted and stamped within us from practically birth and for 50,000 years of being a human being. And we as
01:30:46
Speaker
human beings are capable of recognizing that so that we don't get trapped in the illusion that everything occurs for us, that we are separate from everything else, that everything that is will always be this way, and all the various illusions
01:31:10
Speaker
that the ego likes to create because the ego also craves and pushes things away and likes putting its head in the sand, although the ego is also capable of being the finger that points us to the moon. So I'm answering your question by giving you an extra bonus track, which is that
01:31:36
Speaker
Don't think that because there's teachings about the ego as being an obstacle, that we need to throw our ego in the river and get rid of the ego like the Macbeth's wife trying to rub out the damn spot. Ego is useful. It's helpful. But in many ways, it's also like a convenient fiction.
01:32:04
Speaker
That's it in a nutshell. Does that make sense? Do you think, I don't know, let's say the Buddha or someone like Thich Nhat Hanh, what goes on through these guys' minds like when they meditate?
Concluding Thoughts and Gratitude
01:32:21
Speaker
Do they think, oh man, I have to get my
01:32:25
Speaker
my laundry done on Wednesday. Oh God, I have to call Joey. Have they completely transcended that or are they still operating with a human mind like us from time to time at least? Well, I'll put it another way. I know Thich Nhat Hanh well enough to know he's never talked on a telephone. He has people who do things for him.
01:32:52
Speaker
But I also know on the other hand that he has human characteristics. That when one becomes enlightened, there's still the laundry and that one still has back pain and the various things that cause ego to come up and that the enlightened
01:33:18
Speaker
view is to recognize ego as kind of not something to eradicate, but being part of a landscape that one understands and recognizes and that in packing for oneself enables one to do so when dealing with others. You know, I've
01:33:47
Speaker
practiced Western psychology and Eastern psychology. And ego is a Western psychological term used to refer to something in Buddhism that is far more complex, subtle and discerning.
01:34:15
Speaker
And so I kind of get reluctant to try to talk about Buddhist terms using Western terms after a certain point. Because if you study Eastern psychology, it makes Western psychology look like kindergarten in some ways.
01:34:45
Speaker
But what goes on in the mind of the Buddha or Thich Nhat Hanh or Christian or the listeners? I don't know. I only know what goes on inside of my own mind. Yeah. Gary, thank you so much for spending the last 90 minutes with us. Gosh, has it been 90 minutes?
01:35:11
Speaker
Yeah. What a privilege, a pleasure, and a heavenly delight to fall into a conversation with you of such a duration with such
01:35:23
Speaker
carrying wise encouragement and support. Thank you. Thank you. You're a great storyteller. We could probably talk for hours and hours, and I think the listeners would really enjoy that. But before we wrap it up, can you tell us where we can find your awesome book, The Idiot's Guide to Buddhism, and your more recent book, and all the rest of your teachings? Sure. I have an author page. It's simple.
01:35:53
Speaker
It's my name. G-A-R-Y-G-A-C-H dot com. Which should be C-A-L-M, but it's C-O-M dot com. I also have a page with all my links, but it's, let's see, it's L-I-N-K-T-R stroke E-E dot Gary Gock. And that has like 32 of my social media links and things.
01:36:23
Speaker
Perfect. We'll include those in the show notes. Okay. Okay, Gary. Once again, thank you so much for your time and for honoring us with your presence. Thank you for being a host of one of the newest and best podcasts in the podiverse, Connected Minds. Thank you. Take care, Christian.
01:37:02
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Connecting Minds. We hope you enjoyed this conversation and found it interesting, illuminating, or inspiring. For episode show notes, links, and further information on our guests, please visit christianjordanov.com. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with someone who might also enjoy it. Thank you for being here.