Afleveringen
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00:05
Welcome to the Imperfect Buddhist, where we discuss present moment awareness and incorporating Buddhist principles into modern life. My name is Matthew Hawk Mahoney, and today's episode is titled Buddhism and Warry.
00:37
I have a long history with Warri. I remember being on a road trip with my family during the summer. It must've been like five or six coming up with all of these Warri thoughts about if we had enough gas or how far it was gonna be to the next place that offered food. And my dad, who was great with nicknames, came up with a nickname for me. He called me the designated warrior. My family laughed about it,
01:06
Worried what he meant by that.
01:10
Through my early adolescence and teen years, I was prescribed anti-anxiety medication and I took that up until I was about 18 or 19. My early 20s, I came into contact with my worried thoughts again. And from my early 20s up until now, I've been practicing meditation as a way to find some grounding in the midst of worried thoughts.
01:39
I just got back from a week long work trip up in Cincinnati. We do this a couple times a year. There's a bunch of people in the office and new people that I'm meeting for my new position as a business development representative. During this work trip, I noticed that my anxiety or worry was turning up to a new level, getting home from socializing, I would think, oh no, did I make a bad impression? What if they didn't like me? What if they thought I was too quiet?
02:08
We all do it, some of us more than others. Maybe not everyone, but most people will have these what ifs and if we're not careful, they turn into habits of negative thinking.
02:22
Worry, like many other patterns of thinking, compounds on itself. So we may have a worried thought. In my instance, I'd have the worried thought, oh, did I make a bad impressions on my coworkers? Then I think maybe I was too quiet. And then if I go to try to fix it and act from that worry, I might say, oh, tomorrow I'm going to do a better job of shaking people's hands and looking them in the eyes and smiling at them as we talk. I'm going to do a better job of that. Oh, but then what if they sense that I'm being fake?
02:52
Oh man, this doesn't feel very mindful. I'm not being a very good Buddhist. In those moments we are completely in our heads and our bodies and it's hard to step outside of it because the what-ifs feel so real. I'll continue worrying if I don't decouple from the thought that worrying is keeping me safe. We don't worry for no reason and in some way there's some justification inside. Whether it's subconscious or conscious that
03:20
Boring will keep me safe. It'll keep me on the right path. It's gonna keep me going in the right direction or the direction that I desire.
03:28
We can slow down enough and step outside of the worried habits of thinking and negative desire. Desire that's based on external circumstances being a certain way. So as we slow down, we use techniques that are available to us to become more present, whether that be awareness of our breathing, awareness of the room we're in, the sounds in the room, whatever we can do to bring our attention back. As we slow down, we can start to
03:57
Find our own intentions and look at what our intentions are in life. How are we coming at life? Some of the good news about the mental energy of wari is that it's a pretty pronounced energy. It's not as subtle as some other things that we may work with in our meditative practices. Wari is pretty obvious, it's pretty flavorful, pretty strong. It's a good opportunity for us to tune in and become more aware, more present.
04:25
Warring may have kept us safe in the past. We may have had to worry or think ahead or plan our next move to survive. And there's nothing wrong with planning or thinking ahead. We can really look out for the energy or thought when we start to notice it saying what if. We know that it's usually unnecessary worry. The energy of fear and worry, also usually referenced as anxiety, is like a 10-headed
04:53
monster, ten-headed dragon, where you chop one off and then another ten can pop up elsewhere. I know that through personal practice where I might work through some area of fear that I'm having and feel good about that and then subconsciously a new worry starts to pop up and then takes me some time to realize what's going on and I say, oh yeah, this is the pattern, this is the energy of anxiety. And I start to see that this is the exact same thing but only presented as a new...
05:22
thought or image in my mind.
05:33
It may be hard for us to find an equilibrium in the midst of worry if our environment isn't really conducive to peace. And while we can be peaceful in any situation, when we are starting out and we're working with worry in our life, it's important to use set aside time and space to step away from the objects of our worry and to step away from people and distractions. We do this through regular practices.
06:02
In Zen Buddhism, they set aside time for a practice known as Zazen, or in more modern mindfulness practices, they set aside time for meditation. Setting aside time in your day for quiet reflection, for cultivating awareness through different awareness practices, allows us to slow down enough and tune into a knowing presence beyond thinking. Once we experience this knowing presence beyond thinking,
06:30
we gain access to a new dimension of being.
06:35
Once we experience being through our practice, it gives us something to hold against other experiences and ways of being in life. We recognize when we're worried and spinning worried thoughts in our minds, how groundless and unreal that state of being is compared to present moment being. In some traditions, they call it zero, coming back to zero, nothingness. And the object isn't to get rid of anything, we're simply
07:04
Watching what is and in the instance of worry What is is that our minds are racing usually off to the future or to the past? And asking what if what if my car breaks down on this trip down to visit my uncle? What if I made a bad impression with my girlfriend's family last weekend over Thanksgiving? What if I'm single for the rest of my life? What if I end up being a virgin for the rest of my life?
07:34
I know how tempting these what-if thoughts can be. As mentioned, some people are more prone to falling into the traps of what-if. Whether that be because of their wiring, being more prone to anxiety or anxious states of being or their past where they had to worry and think ahead to survive. I know that with my own worry, some of it comes from a sense of control or desire for a sense of control. I worry, hey.
08:03
I didn't do a good enough job of making sure everybody I came in contact with today liked me. Is that really up to me? Yes, I have influence. I can present myself in the best way I can, be kind, concerned, learn how to listen well, and maybe even, would you believe it, I actually developed some genuine care for the person I'm talking to. It's all fine. But do I really have control over how people perceive me? And...
08:32
What my worry is telling me is, what if every person you saw today didn't like you? Or what if this person didn't like you? It's asking, what if you don't have complete control of the world around you? News break, no one has control of everything. No one has control of most things. A lot of my worry comes from a desire to hold on to the status quo. I have a job that pays well and I'm moving into a position that's going to pay more.
09:00
I'm worried that I didn't make good impressions on some people that I'll be working with in this new position. The warrior says, okay, well, if he didn't do well there, they may not like you and man, you're gonna get fired. But it comes from a desire to hold on to what I have or a desire to keep things going in a certain way out of fear of loss. Buddhism talks about that a lot. Desirelessness is maksha liberation. That if we didn't...
09:27
desire anything other than what was, we would be perfectly content and at ease.
09:42
If you're looking for actionable steps when it comes to your own worry, here's some of the things that have worked for me. Cultivate awareness, whether that's through a daily meditation practice or through present moment awareness in your daily activities, whatever you're doing, trying to bring a sense of awareness to the moment. This leads to the ability to be aware of what's going on.
10:11
The options available to us become limited. But through meditation and mindfulness practices, we cultivate an awareness that allows us to witness our own state of being, state of mind, which then allows us to recognize when we're worrying. When you see the worry and you ask, what if? You see, oh, this is a what if thought. You can ask yourself, is there anything actionable that I can do in this moment that would be beneficial to avoid the circumstance or outcome that I don't want?
10:41
and see what you come up with. And then if there isn't, there's really nothing you can do that's actionable, then it's okay to just stay in that labeling, witnessing presence, labeling the thought as what if, recognizing the patterns of worry, metacognating on the thoughts that are floating by, and really just step back into your witnessing presence, watching things float by. As Pima Chodron says, I am the sky, everything else is the weather.
11:11
We come back to the truth that no matter what happens in our life, whether it be experiencing worry or the objects of our worry coming true. Everybody does hate me at my workplace. I'm fired because I just could not fit in. Come back to the reality of being that who we are, what we are made of, is not dependent on any external circumstance, positive or negative.
11:37
We are the being, the presence that witnesses and experiences life. You might say to yourself in those moments where it gets stressful and all the anxious thoughts come in and the worrying starts up. You can tell yourself, I am forever and always whole and complete. Nothing can change that.
11:58
We need to experience that state of being for ourselves, for it to really stick.
12:20
Thanks for stopping in and spending some time with me. And my wish for you is that you be peaceful, you be joyful, and you be free from suffering. I hope you have a wonderful week. And if you enjoyed this episode, I would appreciate your support through liking, subscribing, and sharing the podcast with your friends. I'd also love to hear from you in the comments section about your own practice and your thoughts on the podcast. I look forward to talking with you next time. All right, bye.
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00:00
Hey, so before we start this episode, I do want to give you a heads up that we will be talking about some adult subjects. So if you have any people in your life that you're listening to this podcast with, or you yourself are somebody that feels like you don't want to hear about some very personal subjects, then you might want to listen to one of the other episodes or put on a different podcast. You've been warned.
00:27
Aware of the suffering caused by sexual misconduct, I undertake to cultivate responsibility and learn ways to protect the safety and integrity of individuals, couples, families, and society. I am determined not to engage in sexual relations without love and long-term commitment. To preserve the happiness of myself and others, I am determined to respect my commitments
00:57
and the commitments of others. I will do everything in my power to protect children from sexual abuse and to prevent couples and families from being broken by sexual misconduct. That's out of Thich Nhat Hanh's 5 mindfulness trainings.
01:25
I want to welcome you to the Imperfect Buddhist, where we discuss mindfulness and incorporating Zen principles into modern life. My name is Matthew Hawk Mahoney, and today's episode is titled Buddhism and Masturbation.
01:44
Bye!
01:59
First, I want to say thank you so much for joining me on this path together as we learn about and share experiences of incorporating mindfulness, Buddhist or Zen teachings into our modern lives. Thanks for choosing this podcast out of all the other Buddhist podcasts and mindfulness podcasts that are out there. It really means a lot.
02:23
Understanding Buddhism, Zen, and Sexuality. Anybody familiar with Zen or Buddhism will be familiar with the concept of mindfulness, which is the teaching that one can train themselves to place their awareness in the present moment and through this awareness one can come into contact with truth or the way things are with the Dharma.
02:50
If you were to look at old school Buddhism, old school Buddhist teachings, the Dhammapada, a lot of these teachings seem to be aimed at monks, people living in a community where practice was at the forefront of their life day in, day out, when they would eat, there was a ceremony, a practice that they would do, when they would sweep the floor, when they would meditate, when they would sleep, all these things were regimented and they were not allowed to.
03:18
have any type of sexual relations with other people in the organization or outside the organization, strictly forbidden. And in some Buddhist teachings, it was taught that sexuality or sex lust were a defilement of the mind, that they led to endless suffering and rebirth and negative karma.
03:47
self-pleasure. Sure, some people within monasteries or even lay practitioners view sexuality or sex in the same way that it's a defilement and a distraction from the path of liberation. But then in modern times you also have the Thich Nhat Hanh flavor, which I read that at the beginning there that it's not saying that there's anything inherently wrong with sexuality. It's as natural as eating. However, just like with eating,
04:15
they recommend a mindful approach, being present, being aware in sexual activity, being present and aware with whom you have sexual relations with, what are the impacts, what is the karma related to these sexual relations.
04:32
Zen Buddhism has an emphasis on direct experience and awakening through the present moment. Through our meditative practices, whether that's zazen, walking meditation, which is known as kinnhin, or other different various awareness training techniques like oriochi, which is a ceremony, a formal way of eating that's there to cultivate awareness. The core aim is this direct experience.
05:01
of reality in Zen. And so it's never really been a contradiction in my mind when it comes to base sexuality, meaning not using porn to stimulate the mind or live in some type of fantasy and not projecting a bunch of lust on men or women or people around you if you are present in that sexual act. It's a consenting person, of course.
05:27
and you can be present and mindful and not lose yourself in some type of daydreaming or projection, then it could become a mindfulness practice. There was a time where I thought, okay, my sexuality or masturbation, self-pleasure, sex, are not in alignment with the teachings of Zen Buddhism or these awareness trainings. But then I also adopted this other viewpoint where I said, okay, maybe I can treat it as a mindfulness training.
06:00
So that said, where am I at with it now? There was a time for the last couple years that I really didn't put much thought into my use of porn, when or how often I masturbated or had sex or lusted. There was not much emphasis or awareness around those things until I started thinking within the last couple weeks about that. About...
06:26
Where does my practice begin and where does it end when it comes to my own sexuality? And what is healthy? What is in alignment with the path to awakening as I see it? And it's been a challenge. It's been this last week. I've really put an emphasis on it as I've been preparing to talk about this on this episode. I've asked myself, can I not use porn? Can I not fictionalize or...
06:55
fantasize in my mind when I masturbate. Can I masturbate less? This is maybe TMI, but this is something that needs to be talked about. I think that a lot of people are ashamed to talk about it. It's not normalized in a lot of spiritual communities. And I think that there is, in our current culture and society, I think that there's like this sex positive culture, which can have a lot of benefits.
07:21
There's a lot of room for interpretation when we talk about like, all sex is good. Embrace your sexuality. That can leave a lot of room for like, what is healthy? What is good for my mind? What will lead me on a path to awareness towards awakening if that's the path that I'm endeavoring to walk down? This last week, I've kind of put some question marks around those questions.
07:47
When I got that sexual urge, when I have that feeling, it's kind of like being hungry. You can sense it, you can feel it, and there's a desire and a need there. I've experimented with this idea of being present while I did my masturbatory practices and tried to bring my awareness to the sensations that were present. To be quite frank with you, it was pretty unenjoyable. There wasn't a whole lot
08:17
pleasant about it other than the physical sensations that I created without any type of imagination or fantasy in my mind. Not holding those images in mind or fantasies and just really being present with the act of jerking off. There wasn't a whole lot that was really exciting about it. This experiment left me with a lot of insight. Wow, how much of...
08:44
this pleasure that I'm getting, how much of it is what they call in Buddhism attachment, fantasy, and illusion? How much of this pleasure I'm deriving is it from some type of imaginary fulfillment of a fantasy I have in my mind? Since doing that, I've had less desire to masturbate.
09:08
Through our normal meditative practices, like sitting or walking meditation, we cultivate our ability to hold things without judgment. And in this case, I was holding the thing. Wow. We developed that compassion to hold things without judgment. And while I was holding my thing, I was also holding the desires of my mind with compassion and holding it with an element of letting go. Our
09:37
Culture promotes the idea of these strong sexual attachments and normalizing, in a sense, really strong lust. It's used in ads to sell things. We're using sexuality and sexual desire to sell things, as the saying goes, sex sells.
09:58
It's good that we are developing a sex positive culture. We're not shaming people for their sexuality, whether that's gay, trans, straight, non-binary, or not interested in sex at all.
10:14
Catholic Church or other organized religions where sex is prohibited, where sexuality is closeted, and we've seen the horrific things that can happen when someone is in complete denial of their own sexuality, of their own sexual needs and desires. It does seem like in environments where sexuality is swept under the rug, not talked about, act like it doesn't exist, or where it's said that it's just evil, some really terrible sad things happen.
11:00
Some of the negative effects of mindless masturbation. Don't you like that? That just rolls off the tongue. Mindless masturbation. I've noticed when I use porn, there's a sense of shame and it's interesting, like I won't be very aware while I'm using it and fantasizing and doing the act, but afterwards I noticed there's like kind of this feeling of being grossed out and be like, ugh, what did I just do?
11:30
shame can come from a lot of places. Porn use and mindless masturbation can have some negative effects. There is the movement of nofap which is about no masturbation essentially and that it has all these benefits of boosting productivity, creativity, self-confidence. Some books mention the negative effects of masturbation on creativity. Think and Grow Rich where he talks about a controlled sexual
11:59
a huge asset to success that some of the greatest and richest people, greatest creators, channeled and harnessed their sexuality for things other than sexual acts and channeled those into creative works and business. So some people would say that an effect of porn would be a lack of ambition, a lack of genius creativity. And I don't know if that's fact, but that's what some people say.
12:29
using porn or sexual fantasizing in one's mind is that we can strengthen this pathway of sexualizing individuals. Looking at someone like a piece of meat, that it does strengthen that pathway. Say I've been in a period of really engaging with porn and sexual fantasy and masturbation for a period of time and I get into a conversation with a woman that I find attractive. There is a
12:57
tendency to zoom in on that sexual aspect and maybe the chasing of that. We're strengthening that way of looking at the world, of looking at certain people. And in doing so, we step away from the direct experience that Zen Buddhism champions. Because instead of being present with a person listening, maybe in that moment we are aware of some type of sexual desire,
13:27
What that person's saying. The content of what that person's saying. The ideas, the feelings, our own feelings. The sound of the car is going by outside the coffee house as we talk to this person.
13:47
So I want to come back to this idea of treating masturbation or sexuality as a mindfulness practice. Instead of pushing it away, acting like it doesn't exist, or fully indulging and completely losing our awareness, dissolving our awareness in fantasy, porn, these other ways that we delude ourselves, can we bring an element of mindfulness?
14:11
The other day when I was employing this idea of being present, I tried to come back to my Hara, which I know a lot of this stuff sounds very hippie, but essentially it's bringing your awareness to a space right below your navel. There is a point of energy there. My mind started to want to fantasize and I was doing this self-pleasure exercise. I came back to my Hara. It really pulled back the energy of this fantasizing and brought me back to the moment.
14:42
When it comes to shared sexual experiences, this can go a long way because when I am in my head fantasizing, I'm projecting this fantasy and my own sexuality onto this being in front of me. And when I'm doing that, I'm not directly experiencing that being in front of me. I am projecting my own fantasies and illusions. But I've made an effort to be mindful.
15:10
when I'm kissing my wife to be present in that moment. All these other sensations wake up in me and it's much more pleasurable when it's a shared experience. The juxtaposition is that self-pleasure when it's just you by yourself and you bring a lot of mindfulness. I didn't find it as exciting, but when I had that shared experience with my wife where I'm present, it was less exciting in the sense that my mind wasn't so excited and I wasn't fulfilling some type of fantasy in my mind.
15:40
but it was much more wholesome and enjoyable and fulfilling to be present with her in the act of sex. People say that everything in our society is driven by sex, by this one act. Like we earn a lot of money so that we can attract a mate, we stockpile resources so that when we find a mate and have sex, we can care for children.
16:04
we dress in a certain way or present ourselves in a certain way to make ourselves more attractive to a potential sexual partner. And so if all this is leading up to this, we might as well enjoy it. We might as well be present while it's happening to see what all the fuss is about. So we can become mindful of the touch of our partner as they run their fingers down our arm or our back or as we touch them, as we feel their skin on our fingers, as we kiss them. We can become...
16:32
aware of all these physical sensations on our skin and our nerve endings and focusing in on all the sensations that arise in that present moment, we might start to discover that underneath this buzz of sexual stimulation in our mind, I'm talking about this fantasy in our mind, that maybe there is a sense of connection, there's a sense of oneness and a closer connection of well-being happening.
17:06
I'm not a master though when it comes to mindfulness or having some type of deep spirituality in my sex life or self-pleasure. And I don't know what the answer is here. Maybe the old teachers and abbots at the temples in Japan are right. Maybe there is not a whole lot of room for sexuality or sexual desire on this spiritual path. I can't see that being the truth as sex is a huge part of who we are.
17:35
sexuality and sex are so a part of what makes us human. There is a path for incorporating our sexuality into our spiritual lives and that there is a middle path as they talk about in Buddhism, that we don't go too far in either direction and end up falling in the ditch. One ditch being self-denial and acting like
18:02
We don't have a sexuality. And then the other ditch being unhinged sense, pleasure, desire. I want to encourage you also to reflect on your own porn usage, your own sexuality, your own sex life, and see where does your mindfulness, your present moment awareness go during those acts. Try some of these practices and see if you can bring some awareness into your sex life.
18:37
Thank you so much for tuning in and being present with me through this sticky situation. Oh God, the dad jokes. It's not an easy subject to talk about, but I'm really glad we got to talk through it a little bit. If we wanna spread this community further and get the word out there, hitting the like button would really help me reach more people. And if you could share your thoughts and experiences along the path by hitting
19:06
the feedback button leaving a hopefully you'll leave a five star review after this you may leave a one star review because it freaked you out but i would love for you to share your own personal journey and experiences along the path leave some feedback for the podcast in your favorite app and consider subscribing to the podcast i would love to stay in contact with you and i would love to stay in community with you so you can get fresh updates when i put out new episodes
19:37
I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week, wherever you are, and here is to you, mindful masturbation. Take care.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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00:07
Welcome to the Imperfect Buddhist, where we discuss present moment awareness and incorporating Buddhism into modern life. My name is Matthew Hawk Mahoney, and today's episode is titled, Buddhism and the Sacred Power of the Present Moment.
00:54
What is the present moment? It's this very instance, this little sliver of experience where everything's happening.
01:05
Living in our fast paced world, we're told we need to think about what we want to become when we get older. Most of us never really feel like we ever get older. We're always waiting for that big moment to come. The raise, the promotion, the perfect person to come into our life. That moment when we'll feel happy, completed, and everything will be just the way it should be. Our fast paced society doesn't leave a lot of room for the present moment. If someone's caught staring outside the window,
01:35
at wind rustling the leaves outside on a fall day? They might be asked, what are you looking at out there? Oh, you're daydreaming.
01:49
I was out to lunch with a friend. A couple weeks ago, Chris and I were sitting down to enjoy an Italian sub. We were talking about religion. Him and his partner are Christians and they've been practicing for a long time. I said, I really don't feel like what the heart of Zen Buddhism talks about is very religious. And I looked at him and I was like, where else do you think God is going to contact you?
02:17
Can God contact you in the future, worrying about the future, dreaming of the future? Is he going to contact you somewhere in the past in your mind? Or is God going to contact you now in this very moment, this present moment?
02:31
The heart of Zen Buddhism is cultivating and polishing our awareness and connection to what's happening around us and becoming more and more aware of the subtleties that exist on multiple levels beyond just the surface. The present moment holds huge transformational potential when we start to bring our attention to what is happening in our bodies, minds.
02:58
experiences, we start to see them as phenomenon. We start to see that thoughts come and go. We start to see that emotions come and go. We start to see the people come and go. We start to see that life conditions come and go. Rich, poor, sick, healthy, young, old. We come in contact with the transitory nature of life.
03:30
And so then we start to recognize that those things cannot be counted on for any type of security or self. Because if these things are all changing, then who are we?
03:43
Our sense of self begins to change and what we are is more and more revealed. We are the presence that is experiencing life, experiencing all these changes. We start to identify with the presence that witnesses all of phenomenon.
04:02
I read on a YouTube quote, one guy left a comment and he says, the longer I continue to do my spiritual practice, the more that I realize that true spirituality is not about becoming something you're not, but it's about letting go of what you're not until the true you is revealed. So that's why Zen Buddhism, it doesn't really force a whole lot down your throat. Yes, there's some precepts and there's some different teachings that you can read, but the real emphasis is on Zazen.
04:32
practice. The real emphasis is on sitting and being present. Because when you do that, all this stuff that's talked about by the Buddha, you start to experience it yourself. So there is no real need for someone to shove anything down your throat if you are experiencing it in your own practice. But where else can we connect with the sacred other than this present moment, this very instance? When we call it this instance, we lost it.
05:01
as James Brown would say, in the cut. I'm in the cut. You're in that very instant.
05:08
I remember early on in my practice, just noticing how my mind wanted to go off so much into the future, into the past, and daydream or complain. And I was really bringing my attention and my awareness into the sensations of the present, whether that was my breath or the sounds around me. I didn't have any significant experiences until one day I was in my sister's backyard in Lake Oswego, Oregon, walking around doing what I understand now was walking meditation.
05:38
And I remember my eyes catching this redwood tree and this sense of presence being there. I saw the tree as I normally would, but there was an extra depth, an extra layer to it that I connected with. When we try to put words to these experiences, sometimes we lose the significance of the experience. But the best way I can put it is that there was an extra dimension between me and the tree. And maybe it was just the opposite of that, that there was no me and the tree, that I was feeling a connection.
06:08
a oneness while looking at the tree. And there was not so much an observer and observed, but a connection with. In that moment, the tree seemed to breathe that there was a sense of liveness to this, what I would normally look at as like an inanimate object. That was my first lived experience of this new level of life that was around me and always happening that I hadn't been in contact with since childhood.
06:42
So when you think about whether you're Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, when have those real special spiritual impactful moments happened to you? Were they somewhere while you were dreaming about the future or caught up in your past? Those significant lived moments where you felt a deep connection with the divine, where did that happen? You experienced them in the present. The gift of...
07:08
Present moment awareness is that it allows us to tap into and align ourselves with living a more sacred life. We open the possibility to have those experiences more often. We have to play to win. The main practice is zazen, where very little instruction is given. Most teachers will tell you as beginner to focus on your breath, the sensation of the in-breath, the space between the in-breath and the out-breath, and then the out-breath, the space between the out-breath and the in-breath.
07:38
and trying to continuously bring your attention back to just the sensations of breathing, the sound, and watching that breath.
07:47
There's another form of Zen meditation called Shikantaza, which is just sitting. And this is fully taking your open, spacious mind and receiving what is present. You're not focusing on any particular object of concentration, but you notice. With a wide sphere of receptivity, you notice and you hold your attention in that space for as long as possible.
08:12
So these are just a couple of examples of how Zen Buddhism has this focus on helping people cultivate a present moment awareness, where they can connect with the sacred. And the only place that it exists is now. Or as Thich Nhat Hanh would say, life is available only in the present moment.
08:31
Maybe you're saying to yourself, why would I want to go sit in silence in this Zazen thing? Why would I do that for hours or potentially days on a retreat? I want to read something from Dainin Katagiri. Hopefully I'm pronouncing his name right. I've been reading his book, Returning to Silence. He says, when you sit down in Zazen, you don't know why. If you think about it, you can come up with many reasons. But the reasons don't hit the mark exactly. You cannot ignore the reasons you have thought of because they are part of the truth, but not the complete truth.
09:01
What you want is just to be present, right in the middle of true reality, where you and Zazen exactly merge, nothing else. To sit Zazen is to call upon something, and to sit Zazen is exactly the something you are calling upon. You sit exactly in the middle of something you are always looking for and calling upon. We don't know what it is, but it is always there. If you sit down, you feel something, you taste it, by virtue of deeply seeing the human world.
09:30
of hearing the sound of the world, immediately we manifest ourselves with wholeheartedness. Whoever we are, whatever reason we have to decide to sit down, immediately we sit with our whole mind, our whole heart. Even for a moment, that's pretty good. Very naturally, all we can do is constantly return to the source of Zazen, which means Zazen based on casting off body and mind.
10:11
The key to awakening and connecting with the divine is the present moment. But you might say, man, there's nothing in my present moment other than stressful situations, mean people, bad food, messy home. But we learn in our spiritual lives that it is all usable and all workable. And if you have some struggle, you might be better off than someone that has a really perfect life because they're less pushed and less likely to seek.
10:45
Sometimes the present moment hurts. Sometimes the present moment isn't very fun, isn't very comfortable. Lately my wife and I have been cutting back on our TV usage as we've become aware that we've used it as a form of escapism. So a lot lately I've been confronted with myself more than normal outside of my normal meditation practices. And there's a feeling of fear inside. I'm recognizing that
11:13
because of past traumas and experiences that I've had, that there's a fear that I could lose it all, that this house that we bought and this marriage and love that we've built, our savings, all that stuff, it's just gonna be taken from me. It's just gonna be gone one day. And while that could be true, that insecurity, that fear is not really that fun to be with. There's a part of me that wants to run from it, that wants to distract myself, put my mind in some type of...
11:41
simulated reality with TV or my phone or whatever. And this is a little bit different than my early practice where the present moment was like a refuge from all the stuff going on in my mind. And now it almost feels like the present moment is putting me in contact with something I would rather avoid. And Scott Peck talks about in his book, The Roadless Travel, that all mental illness comes from the inability to experience suffering. I want to work through my suffering so that it doesn't
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affect parts of my life and grow and fester into some nasty wound that harms myself or other people. I encourage you if you are listening to this and you're like, okay, I'm going to make an effort to be present and really bring my attention to the present moment and you do encounter uncomfortable energy experiences internally that you can bring this awareness that you've cultivated through meditation, zazen, this open spacious awareness which is called the
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In my case, I can witness the fear. I'm afraid. I'm worried I'm going to lose this. I see this fear and tightness in my stomach, in my chest. Okay. And then that experience has a little bit less hold on me. There's a lot that can be born out of just being present. Maybe the feeling or fear or idea goes away or just simply noticing that leads us to take action that will care for ourselves. I'll tell you one thing, ignoring it won't make it go away.
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Acting like it's not there or that it's a problem won't go away. It'll actually magnify whatever the problem is. It'll find a way to infiltrate other parts of your life.
13:24
You might be saying to yourself, I can't be present. My current life is so busy. I work at the grocery store and I have a million customers come through. I'm paid like $10 an hour. I'm stressed. And then I have to go pick up my kids. It's all workable. And that's the beauty of this practice is that there is nothing left out. First to start as a philosophy that it's all sacred. It's all workable. And then as an experience, as you do practice this and you start to make the...
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effort and go through the motions and bring your presence to the moment, you do start to see that yeah, maybe it's a little bit hard at first when you have that long line of customers or someone's being abusive, but then you start to see little chinks in the armor. You start to get these waves of peace, moments of illumination where you can make sense of something or find wisdom in something, find wise action where maybe before you were so caught in reactivity or in your mind that there was no room for peace or wisdom.
14:21
You're opening a space for that new action of love, wisdom, and peace to have influence. We don't have to be led around by our minds. We don't have to be pulled by our hair, by our fears, our worries, our hopes. They don't have to pull us down the road anymore. We can open our eyes. We can take a look around us and we can start putting one foot in front of the other on this path.
14:48
And we might start to feel the dirt between our toes, the grass on our feet. We might start smelling some beautiful flowers along the road. We might be like, wow, okay. Yeah, there are some dark clouds or it's where I'm getting rained on. The water ain't so bad.
15:04
I get it. This is a really tough time for most people. I feel a lot of people feel like we're on the verge of just some terrible catastrophe, whether that's climate change or war or financial collapse. And if we don't believe it, we're definitely fed a lot of that by the people around us on YouTube or news or our friends. There's just a lot of this catastrophe feeling going around. It can be hard to be present in this moment where
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There's this feeling of lack of hope for a lot of people. It feels pointless. People feel disillusioned. It's hard to be present and to be here in that.
15:42
But I'm telling you, if you're somebody that is making that effort and choosing to be present in the midst of all this, you're bringing a great gift to yourself and the people around you. You're going to be an island in the middle of a storm, an island of peace in people's lives. You will be a refuge. In Buddhism, you will be called a bodhisattva. You are a refuge, place of safety, and an island of peace. That's certainly my goal.
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in life and what leads me to do this podcast.
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What's there left to say about the present moment? It's the key. It is everything to spiritual life. It is the doorway into illumination, to all the profound experiences and not so profound experiences, to just everyday wisdom. We can bring our attention and our awareness back to ourselves and the life around us with a sense of curiosity and a witnessing presence. What we are not will drop away and who we are will become more and more revealed.
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we can be a blessing to ourselves and the people around us. Instead of talking about all this stuff, I would like to encourage you to set aside time, whatever that is, whether it's the morning, afternoon, the night, or all three, or all day. You wanna set aside a whole day and do a retreat, you go for it, buddy. But see if you can set aside some time for cultivating that present moment awareness. And I think it is fine to be mindful on your day, like I mentioned working at the grocery store with customers.
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Yes, you can be present and mindful in that experience, but there will be challenges and it will be harder to cultivate that awareness if that's all you're doing. And so if you can set aside time to sit for 10 minutes in the morning and focus on your breath, sensation of breathing, cultivating an awareness, a presence, then we can take that presence into our daily life. And it'll be a little bit easier to be in the cut, as James Brown would say, because we're worked out a little bit. It's like lifting weights.
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If you want to lift something really heavy, you lift maybe some smaller weights for a while. You wake up and do some stretches. And that's what meditation or zazen is. It's our conditioning. We're conditioning our mind to be present and to interface with the wisdom of the present moment.
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This podcast brought to you by The Present Moment. Thank you for stopping in and being with me on this journey. I really enjoyed making this episode and sharing it with you. I hope that you have a beautiful, spectacular, wonderful week ahead and I'll talk to you soon. All right, bye.
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00:06
Welcome to the Imperfect Buddhist, where we discuss mindfulness and incorporating Zen principles into modern life. My name is Matthew Hawk Mahoney and today's episode is titled, Buddhism and Intrusive Thoughts.
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It really doesn't surprise me that I was drawn to Zen Buddhism. And this is an important episode for me because as some of the most listened imperfect Buddhists out there might know, I've struggled with intrusive thoughts or impulsive thoughts for about the last 14 years. And it really was probably the reason I got into meditation at all. The message of Zen Buddhism that we aren't our thoughts.
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that we are the awareness around and experiencing our thoughts was very helpful to me in those early days and still is. To be able to see our minds as passing clouds, we practice what's known in Buddhism or even now some hippie culture, something called mindfulness. Mindfulness is the deliberate turning of our attention to the present moment and whatever we are doing in that moment.
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Mindfulness can be emboldened and strengthened through a practice known as Zazen, which is meditation in Zen Buddhism. We do these practices to help us be mindful in our daily lives. And intrusive thoughts or impulsive thoughts, they happen in our daily life while we're feeding the cat or driving the car. Before we delve deeper into the topic of intrusive thoughts and
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Buddhist philosophy. I want to take a moment to understand a little bit more about what these terms mean and how they impact people's lives. Intrusive thoughts can be described as reoccurring, unwanted, or usually distressing thoughts, images or urges that pop into your mind. They're usually intrusive, hence the name, in nature, and they appear and disrupt
02:50
well-being. Some people would say that impulsive thoughts are more characterized by sudden urges or impulses to act and usually without consideration for the outcome and these impulses can arise seemingly out of nowhere. They compel people to engage in certain behaviors and as the name suggests, they're hasty or impulsive. In my practice, I've dealt more with intrusive thoughts than impulsive thoughts.
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Intrusive thoughts and impulsive thoughts can create intense anxiety, turmoil, and they can create a feeling of being out of control. If we don't have a way to deal with them or work on them and they're left unchecked, of course it's going to affect our relationships, our work, and overall quality of life. Throughout this episode, we're going to explore practical approaches to working with one's intrusive thoughts. And I'm going to share some of my personal experiences of
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the start of these intrusive thoughts along with some of the success that I've had along the way.
04:15
Zen Buddhism is a storehouse of antidote for this type of affliction, namely intrusive thoughts and impulsive thoughts. Shunryo Suzuki said that to follow the path of Zen is to realize that your thoughts come and go of their own accord. You need not serve them tea. And in Buddhism there's this character known as Mara. Mara is the affliction of the world, suffering.
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and essential what he's saying is that Mara may come into your house. As long as you don't serve Mara tea, he won't stick or she won't stick around. Dogen Zenji said, in the landscape of silence, thoughts appear like passing clouds. They come and go, but the sky remains unchanged. How does one develop a state of being where the last little quotes I read
05:13
become something that one experiences. One can begin to experience their own thoughts and emotions through the practice of mindfulness, through the practice of developing present moment awareness. And so hence we have the importance of mindfulness in one's daily life. Zen Buddhism offers various practices for cultivating awareness so that when that image pops into one's mind.
05:39
eventually you can see it as phenomenon. You can see it as static electricity, if you will, the phenomenon of life.
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I personally deal with intrusive thoughts, intrusive images. The first time it had a significant impact on my emotional health and mental well-being was when I was staying with my sister and her husband and a couple roommates up in Portland, Oregon. My nephew was about a year old at that time. I remember we were sitting in the living room and there was imagery of
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me doing something to hurt him, I don't remember specifically what it was, or maybe like this underlying fear that somehow that could be something that I would do, and it set off this chain of events. At that point I was not acquainted with any type of meditative training or Buddhist practice. I had no grounding in mindfulness. I was fully identified with my mind and actually to strengthen the
06:43
The trouble here was I was very into the whole idea of manifestation of the secret, which if you're not familiar with it, it pretty much means thoughts are things and when we think about something or we hope for something, we really can imagine that it's real, it will manifest itself in our life. So on top of having these fears and compulsive images and worries, I'm now thinking, uh oh, I'm creating it. Like this is gonna, this is gonna happen. Oh, I can't think that. This whole.
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back and forth mental struggle. I had no grounding in it. Of course the wheels kept going and I was pushing it away and acting like it wasn't real and then arguing with myself. That was really a hard place to be. The anxiety got worse and worse. The depression sets in because I'm so anxious. People are like, why aren't you talking? I would have this internal dialogue that's going a million miles a minute. I'm ashamed, so I can't tell anybody what's going on. I can't tell my father or my mom or...
07:40
my best friend or my girlfriend. What would they think if they knew that these images were popping into my mind? Would they also think that I was going down this path of becoming a murderer?
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So what arose out of that experience was a deep need for refuge in a place of safety and healing, but I didn't know how or what or when that would happen.
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What does Buddhism have to say about intrusive thoughts? What can it offer when it comes to the affliction of intrusive thinking? In Buddhism, there's an emphasis on non-attachment. Non-attachment goes further than our own thoughts and emotions. It also plays a part in how we interact with the world and ourselves as a whole. But nonetheless, it still pertains to our thoughts. And becoming non-attached means that we don't
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Place any identity in our own thoughts. It means that we don't place any identity in the images that pop into our minds. This means that we don't have a sense of self there. So the image of dropping the heavy bag of cat food onto my cat, there's no sense of self there. We see it as a flash in the pan as a phenomenon. Just like we might see a shooting star across the night sky, we have this sense of non-attachment.
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We can see potentially the causes and conditions that led to the imagery or the thought, and we can let go of any dialogue that goes too far into identifying with these intrusive thoughts.
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Sometimes with intrusive thinking, it can really fuck with our internal dialogue because I'm a good person. I am not supposed to have images or thoughts like this that pop into my head. Non-attachment, non-self allows us to become fluid as beings on this planet, that we are allowed to experience the phenomenon of life, thoughts, emotions, experiences without placing ourself in them.
09:58
That's a little bit of the catch-22 with Zen practice. Not only do we let go of identification with the negative thoughts or so-and-so quote negative thoughts, what we label as such, but we also let go of our positive versions of ourselves. The good teacher, the kind mother, the famous musician, the infamous Karen, the poor grocery store worker, the rich real estate agent.
10:28
The creative younger brother. We let go of all these identities along with the impulsive thoughts, intrusive thoughts. We no longer identify with any of them as who we truly are.
10:44
The best technique for working with intrusive thoughts is having a regular meditation practice. It helps to enter your day with the intention of awareness. Without a regular meditation or zazen practice in the mornings, you can bring mindfulness and the intention of mindfulness. But in my own experience, in many practitioners' experiences, having a practice in the morning set aside specifically for cultivating awareness.
11:13
makes the effort of mindful awareness during your day much easier. Having that mindful awareness will serve you in helping to alleviate the karmic wheel of intrusive thinking in your mind. God, do I know how cheesy that sounds, but the wheel of thought in your mind, if you want to put it that way. A little bit of how we can apply this in practice, in applying Zen principles to this. If we start our day with awareness through a
11:43
meditation or zazen practice, whether that's five, ten, or 20 minutes in the mornings. We start out on the right foot. When we're working and all of a sudden an image or fear of an image coming up, because sometimes I know how it goes, you're afraid that you might have that image. See if you can step into that witnessing presence of what's arising and see if you can sense the emotion in your body. Tap into the emotion.
12:09
Sometimes grounding your awareness in the feeling in your body can really help ground that experience because then you're not feeding into the mind. And it's good because usually the emotion is strong. That feeling of fear, disgust, embarrassment, it's going to be pretty pertinent. It's going to be pretty there. So it's a good thing to tap into. Be cautious of witnessing that and letting it turn back into thinking in your mind. Bring that witnessing presence.
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The same thing that you develop in zazen, when you're witnessing that breath, there's no judgment of the sensation of breathing. It's just a witnessing of the inhale and the exhale, out-heel. And you can just bring that same awareness to the emotion. You're not judging it good, not judging it bad. It's simply an emotion. And the thought is simply a thought. The thought image is simply an image. And we can detach.
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from our judgment. Maybe on a particular rough day where these intrusive thoughts are really just coming in strong and you feel bombarded by them. Then along with our morning meditation, it may be good for you to do an evening or afternoon meditation. Maybe on your lunch break, you can go for a walk, see if you can start by becoming aware of the sounds around you.
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as your mind starts turning and the worries there, witness that worry, that fear, and then see if you can turn your attention to the sounds around you, the wind in the trees, the birds, see if you can tune into the sounds around you, and then see if you can tune into the sensations of the physical body of walking, your feet touching the ground.
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you
14:07
Another part of this, and I think another reason for my own affliction early on was a lack of self-care. Poor diet, no exercise, smoking cigarettes, stressed at my job, and no at that point real spiritual practice. And so there is an importance of taking care of our own bodies and minds, caring for ourselves. Something comes out of that caring for ourselves that maybe these impulsive or intrusive thoughts, if they're violent or harmful to others.
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When we care for ourselves, we subconsciously show ourselves, wow, like I'm worthy of being cared for. It does something to build up a little bit of that self-confidence and self-assuredness that our intentions are good. And not only that, but exercising and working out, which I have not been doing a very good job of lately. It releases all sorts of positive chemicals in the mind that can help us get out of that state of fear, panic, and pain.
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So caring for yourself and paying attention to your diet. The key takeaways here with almost any Zen Buddhist podcast, Dharma talk or Buddhist talk, it all comes back to cultivating present moment awareness, disidentifying with the thinking mind and finding our true home and identity in the presence that we are. If you're early on the path, keep going.
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If you're in the middle of the path, keep going. And if you're at the end, keep going. Once you really start this journey, there is no other option. If you are experiencing intrusive or impulsive thoughts, I know it's hard and I want you to know that you're not alone. Now there's a lot of people that experience this. People don't usually talk about it, but I can tell you for sure, I've dealt with it and deal with it. So know that you're not alone and don't be afraid to seek professional help if you feel like you need it.
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because we don't have all the answers and we can't always heal ourselves. I've sought counseling and treatment at different times, sometimes related to this and sometimes related to other things.
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you
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Thank you so much for hanging out with me and talking about some serious ass topics. Maybe one of the next episodes I'll do will be a little bit more lighthearted, but thank you for being here. And if you got anything out of this episode or any previous episode, please subscribe to the podcast. It does a lot to help me connect with other people. Spotify, for instance, when you subscribe, it just sends this little...
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to the Spotify gods and they're like, oh, Matt, at the Imperfect Buddhist, he's doing something right. I'll show more people this stuff. And you know, if you could even leave a review. I appreciate it and it really helps me reach more people. I'm not asking for money at this point, I just want stars. And I'll talk to you next week. All right, bye.
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00:00
To love is to recognize. To be loved is to be recognized by the other. Thich Nhat Hanh
00:20
Welcome my friends and fellow travelers to the imperfect Buddhist, where we get annoyed when our kitties walk all over our recording equipment when we're trying to record a very serious podcast. I'm your host Matthew Hockmahoney, and in today's episode, we're talking about relationships. This episode is titled Buddhism and Relationships.
01:08
I remember I told my coworker Christy that I was Buddhist, and shortly after she said something along the lines of, Buddhists don't believe in relationships. Sorry Christy if you're listening to this if I completely butchered what you said, but it was pretty much that sentiment. I guess some people outside of Buddhism, or maybe even in certain sects of Buddhism,
01:29
don't believe in relationships or perhaps in the past in the monastic days they didn't believe in relationships. I know they definitely didn't allow them in most monasteries. There appears to be a wide spectrum of people's interpretation when you say Buddhism and relationships. You have people say that Buddhists don't believe in relationships and then you have like a self-help book on dating written from the perspective of the Buddha.
01:56
In a more general sense, we have the central idea in Zen of cultivating awakening through present moment awareness. And I think this is a great way to enter into the conversation of Buddhism and relationships. As we grow in our capability of being present with ourselves through meditation or meditative practices, we develop an open, embracing awareness.
02:25
We practice that on ourselves in silent meditation and our various other ways of practicing. We can extend that same loving, open awareness that we cultivate in meditation to people in our lives, including significant others.
02:45
When we cultivate that present moment awareness, we also get to experience more of the best things in life because the best things in life are happening in the present moment, including our relationships, our interactions with our partners, our interactions with everybody in our life. It happens right now.
03:06
you
03:16
A more generalist view of how things are going in the relationships department in society right now. Relationships seem a lot more complicated than they did back when our parents or grandparents dated. Why is that? I think it's pretty obvious. If you start to look at modern dating, you see some pretty obvious things that stick out as far as dating apps, social media, but then there's some other things that seem like they're maybe not as obvious.
03:45
A lot of people lack communication skills or the ability to connect to others through conversation, holding a conversation. I know personally, in my early 20s when I left the house, I found it hard to hold conversations with anyone, let alone a woman I found attractive. That kind of put a damper on my romantic life. Not really being able to hold a conversation with someone I felt was attractive because I didn't know how to navigate it. I didn't know how to
04:17
The way relationships start these days is pretty different. We talked about social media and dating apps, people connecting more on a surface level, obviously looking at somebody liking the way that they look, you can swipe right or left. Also connecting more surface level with what they decide to tell you about themselves in their description. So we have a veneer that we interact with in the dating world. A lot of people
04:45
We're very self-preoccupied and part of that comes with our culture and social media and the self-preoccupation that our culture pushes through advertising and through media. There's a hero in almost every movie or show that you watch and it's all about that character. And so in a way that starts to form the mind in a way that it's like you're the main character in your movie. So you start to look at your world in that way.
05:16
I'll read something from If the Buddha Dated, which I've not read the whole book, but this is a nice quote. It says, our refuge is being exactly where we are, not dramatizing problems by replaying them in our heads, telling stories to our friends, eliciting sympathy, and convincing ourselves that this is a very big deal. Our refuge is in the stillness of being the compassionate witness to our panic and fear, not judging it as good or bad.
05:44
just accepting the what is of the moment.
05:48
this open awareness that we cultivate in meditation. Usually with our own minds, thoughts and emotions, we carry that into our relationships with our partners. We can hold them in that same open loving awareness, recognizing our true self, it's a funny way of saying it, but our unitedness, our oneness in that relationship, and we can move towards unity. And it's a beautiful thing to be able to share that with a partner.
06:17
with somebody that you can spend your life with. But we can also experience that unity outside of romantic relationships. So if you're somebody that is not particularly interested in romantic relationships or haven't had very good luck with them, you're not excluded from that experience of unity.
06:45
the idea that you can just simply meditate and bring the awareness of meditation to your relationships. It's a bigger task than what it looks like on face value. I've been meditating off and on, mostly on for the last 10 years, and it's only more recently that I'm finding I'm able to bring this presence and love to people around me in a more consistent basis. If you are somebody that is
07:11
practicing and doing your daily meditation in the morning and the evening. Whether it's five, ten, twenty minutes each session, it may take a little bit of time. And I think it does start with yourself. Starts with self-love. Kind of love yourself before you can love other people. But cheesy? It is. It's very true. So, starts with loving yourself.
07:35
Recording this episode has helped me reflect a little bit on where I'm at in my relationship and how some of the stuff I've learned from the Zen temple and various self-help books has impacted my relationship. And it makes me thankful that I've had the influence of this in my life. Our relationship would be in a very different place, if at all, existing without some of this stuff. My practice moving forward, the way that I plan on approaching relationships,
08:05
will be mostly the same. I'm continuing though to develop the perspective of other as self, trying to move closer to unity, viewing my partner's needs the same as my own. It is a moment-to-moment practice. We are perfect the way we are, but there's always room for improvement in that this path of awareness and awakening is something that is continually walked and it's never really completed.
08:35
I'd really appreciate it if you could rate and review my show in your podcast. Service of choice, for instance, if you're in Spotify clicking the stars. Give me a lot of stars. And maybe leaving a couple thoughts on the podcast. I really appreciate your support. It encourages me to keep going. I look forward to talking to you next time. Alright, bye-bye.
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00:00
Who will master this world and the realms of Yama and the gods? Who will select a well-taught Dharma teaching as a skilled person selects a flower?
00:21
Welcome to The Imperfect Buddhist, where we discuss mindfulness and applying Zen principles to modern life. My name is Matthew Hawk Mahoney and today's episode is titled Buddhism and the Mexican Petunia.
00:46
Lately, my wife and I have been trying to cut back on our use of the TV as a distraction device. We've experimented with taking the plug out of the TV or taking the batteries out of the remote, and it's never really stuck. This time, we've made it about three days. I've been trying to take more inspiration from nature. I've been trying to take more walks outside along our 1950s neighborhood streets. I've got these brick houses. They all look pretty much the same.
01:15
This morning I went for a walk at about 6.30 a.m. as the sun was rising. I've been trying to pay attention to the natural world around me and notice things and try to look at the trees and the flowers and the plants without labels, looking to see what this being is in front of me. It's a lot easier for me to do that than it is with human beings. Human beings, we have all of our emotions and projections and wants and desires and all that stuff. So it can be easier for me to start with
01:45
tree beings and plant beings and bug beings.
01:50
The name of this episode's an interesting one, Buddhism and the Mexican Petunia. You might be wondering where I'm going with this. But today's episode, we're gonna talk about this Mexican Petunia that's growing outside of my window and the little lessons that I've learned from it over the two years that I've been living in this house. We're gonna learn from this unassuming flower, resilience, embracing impermanence, finding beauty and simplicity, growth and transformation.
02:19
and non-identification with labels. That's a lot for a little plant that most people consider to be a weed to teach us.
02:38
We bought our house about two years ago. When we moved in, there really wasn't a whole lot of landscape and we have the classic front and backyard grass. We have a magnolia tree that's beautiful in the spring that has beautiful white flowers. We have various other plants and shrubs. My wife pulled up some and I remember distinctly when we first moved in, there was this one plant that was growing near my office window down the ground, scrubby looking little thing. It looked different than a lot of the other plants around.
03:08
mowing the yard. I was wondering should I mow it down? And my wife said, oh no don't do that. That's a Mexican petunia. Some people think it's a weed, but it's actually a really pretty flower. So we can just leave it. And the plant wasn't anything special. It has these long spear-like leaves to it. It's got a really dark green, pretty skinny small stem. And so some time went by and I think one or two little purple flowers popped up on it and I just
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was so blown away that a lot of people would consider this flower to be a weed or a pest. I was really surprised when I saw how beautiful the purple flowers were. Over time, we left it, we let it grow, and a couple small offshoots turned into a whole bush. After being here for a year, springtime rolled around again, and all of a sudden we got all of these beautiful purple flowers, and they're blooming right below my office window, so...
04:05
I'm sitting at work and I look out the window and this purple flower will catch my eye. I noticed a heavy rainstorm would come and all the flowers would drop. And I was like, oh man, I really like to look at those. And the next morning there'd be brand new flowers. I remember telling my wife, holy crap, like this is an amazing plant. It drops its flowers and it has brand new flowers the next day.
04:31
The Mexican petunia is very resilient too, with all the really strong storms we get here with wind and heavy rain, or when it gets really hot and humid, or even when it gets really cold too during the winter. It seems like the Mexican petunia just stands there. It's never looked like it's been that surprised by any of the weather. It may not have flowers year round, but I've never really felt like it died back severely or anything when some plants, man, it gets cold for a while and they're just...
04:59
dead, you have to baby him and cover him and all this stuff. But the Mexican Petunia, it's just made it through.
05:17
drawing some inspiration from the Mexican petunia and its ability to withstand so many conditions. Not only is it dealing with extreme heat and cold and wind and rain, but also the glaring eye of gardeners who look at it as like a pest. I'm not a plant, but I don't think it's aware of those distasteful glares that it's getting every now and then from our neighbors.
05:45
reminds me of this section out of Returning to Silence by Katagiri. He says, human beings are apt to attach to the aspect of life called pleasure. This is why we often say enjoy life. Why then does Buddhism say look at suffering? Because suffering is the one aspect of human life that people don't want to see. We try to close our eyes to suffering but we cannot do it. It is because we can't close our eyes to suffering that the Buddha has to say.
06:13
Look at this other aspect of human life that you don't see. Suffering is a holy truth. So to say that life is characterized by suffering is not a pessimistic teaching. And reading that and looking at the petunia, I see that it can withstand all of these adverse situations. It doesn't even label them as adverse. It's completely with whatever the environment is doing. And it's just saving up its energy for spring to put out flowers and to drop them and create new flowers.
06:44
We can learn from this Mexican petunia selflessness. The Mexican petunia doesn't sit there and think, oh, poor me, it's so hot out right now, oh my God. And oh, Matt's neighbor across the street just keeps looking at me with his little trowel that he wants to dig me out. Oh, it's so cold. Oh, nobody even stops and notices my flowers. It keeps making its flowers and it drops them. It doesn't hold on to those old flowers or think how hard it worked on those flowers.
07:14
budding of the flowers, the letting go of those flowers so that new ones can be made with new pollen so it can spread its sweetness throughout the land.
07:26
Learning from this giving and dropping away and giving, I'm learning that we may have a great meditation. Things may be flowing really well and it's this flower blooming and it's gorgeous and you're experiencing it and you're one with it. The bell rings or somebody knocks at the door. We start to think how good we are at meditating, how great it's going, and we start to hold on to that. Letting that fall away and allowing the new bloom to come up, whatever that next experience is.
07:56
This is from the Dhammapada. It says, the mindful apply themselves. They don't amuse themselves in any abode. Like swans flying from a lake, they abandon home after home.
08:10
One other thing I want to mention is the simplicity and elegance of this flower. It's very unassuming in non-blooming times with spear-shaped leaves and a dark green. Now that I know that it creates such beautiful flowers, I appreciate its simplicity and elegance in non-blooming times. It's a very unassuming plant and we can draw that parallel to our own practices, especially in zazen.
08:39
And some people, especially if you're practicing at a Zen temple, would be like, what? This is not what I would expect when it comes to a spiritual practice. Everybody's in these black robes and bells ring and you go sit down and it's pretty plain and it's not over the top. There's something to learn about that in our own spiritual lives about not being extravagant or over the top, that we can be simple and natural and plain and produce these beautiful ways of being.
09:08
these beautiful experiences that we can share with people. We can be an example of simplicity, yet brilliance. Simple brilliance.
09:22
Bye!
09:33
This is a study in how much one plant could symbolize for one person, if they really took the time to look at it. Concepts of simplicity, renewal, letting go and endurance. All things that I found symbolized in a plant, most people would consider a weed in my front yard.
09:54
If we're looking for it in our own practices, our own lives, we can find inspiration. We can find symbolism for resilience, growth, simplicity, and embracing imperfection. I would encourage you, in your own life, taking a look at the world around you. Hopefully you have some type of nature. Maybe it's just a small bush out in front of your house, but take some time to look at it. Pay attention to it with the passing of the seasons. Try not to label it.
10:24
or come up with a bunch of stories in your mind about what it is to pay attention to as the months and the seasons go by. When we start to get to that place where everything is usable, we start to see teachers all around us. We have flower teachers, tree teachers, bug teachers, and bitchy Karen teachers. Those ones are harder to learn from, but they definitely have a lesson to teach. I'm still trying to learn the lesson there.
11:04
inspired to honor this beautiful simple plant in front of my house. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. I look forward to talking to you next time.
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00:01
When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself. Shunryu Suzuki
00:25
Welcome friends and travelers along the path. This is the imperfect Buddhist. I'm your host, Matthew Hock Mahoney, and today's episode is titled Buddhism and Leadership, leading by example and the ripple effect.
01:07
Leading by example can have profound impacts on our relationships, our spiritual development, and the world around us. In a time where so many people, including myself sometimes, want to inspire action in others around them through using force or coercion of some sort, or I guess telling other people how to think and act. I believe leading by example is the ultimate way to make change in the world.
01:36
This is something that I've been thinking about quite a bit lately, especially with all of the political unrest and people screaming at each other across the aisles on how we should think about gay rights or how we should deal with women's rights and their right to bodily autonomy with abortion. Bud Light in an attempt to appeal to a different demographic, adding certain controversial imagery.
02:06
and messaging to their cans and being ostracized by both sides of the argument.
02:15
with things like climate change and starting to think a little bit about how can I play a part in changing people's thoughts around me that don't agree with me. My uncle Tim, for instance, I visited with him on 4th of July and he has some very strong opinions about climate change, that it is a conspiracy, that all climate scientists or the ones that are reporting on this are actually funded by the government. And so how can I get him to see things the way that I see them? How can I get him to see?
02:44
The science that says, Uncle Tim, our oceans are hotter than they've ever been. Uncle Tim, we've never seen weather patterns like this ever. Uncle Tim, how are they keeping it quiet that certain scientists have been receiving this money? I wanna go into this argument and start to tell him how to think about the subject. So I started thinking more about what does leading by example mean in this situation? Segment one.
03:12
the desire to change others and leading by example.
03:22
It's pretty normal to wanna change others instead of leading by example. Maybe it takes less energy or we have the illusion that it takes less energy that if I could just lambast my Uncle Tim, bludgeon him to fucking death with scientific data. The numbers, Uncle Tim's go to the beach, let's go to the water. Dip your toes in, how hot does it feel? Tim, I want you to see things the way that I see them.
03:49
Maybe it's for some fucked up reason of control. Maybe it's for some other daddy issue. Or maybe it's because I truly care about the environment and I'm freaked out by what's happening and someone I love, my uncle Tim, doesn't see it. And it scares me that he doesn't see it. And I want someone I love to see it and to work with me to make a better situation. Maybe it's easier for me to
04:18
Point out to Uncle Tim all this stuff and talk about the science, talk about the data, because it's really hard for me to look at my own life and see how am I playing a part in making the situation worse? How am I a contributor to climate change? What are the things that I'm doing or that I could change that would make the situation better? Why do I want to control? Why do I want to bludgeon with my ideas, convince, influence? What are these desires?
04:48
where actions come from. Looking inside, they come from a strongly held belief, one that I am certain is correct. So there might be the desire to have someone I love or care about see something the way that I see it. Why is that important? Because if they don't believe what I believe, maybe that means they're lower intelligence and I just can't stand for that. Or maybe it's some type of ego gratification where
05:14
If they're disagreeing with me, then maybe that means I'm wrong somehow and I can't stand for that. And it's also an attachment to a certain outcome. I want the earth to sustain life, human life. I want that. I desire that. I will fight for that. And it's not such a bad attachment, but in Buddhism it is an attachment. And maybe some would say it is a wish for well-being of others, a form of metta, form of love. And that could also be true.
05:43
But only we can know by seeing ourselves truly. Trying to change others through force has its limitations. How about you? Someone says, hey, Sarah, hey, Mike, hey, John, hey, Christy. Hey, Matt, you're doing that wrong. This is the way to do it. I can't believe you ever tried it that way. Let me show you the right way to do it. And I never want to see you do it that way ever again. You're an idiot for thinking that. What does that bring up for you?
06:13
And of course that's an extreme version, but of course it brings up resentment, brings up a pushback, and a lot of times it strengthens the behavior we wish to see changed, strengthens the ideas or beliefs in other people's that we wish to see changed, and it grains those things deeper in other people. So a lot of the times it has a counteractive effect. This idea that we're going to change them, make them better, make them believe what we believe doesn't seem to work.
06:44
Segment 2, the 100 year old man's unintentional inspiration, aka I want to pet dogs.
06:56
June 23rd, 2023, 8 a.m. He wanted to pet dogs for his 100th birthday, hundreds lined up. Allison Moore was stunned when more than 200 canines congregated waiting patiently for their turn to be petted by her father. When Allison Moore began brainstorming ideas for her father's 100th birthday celebration, there was a non-negotiable for the festivities. Dogs needed to be there, as many pooches as possible.
07:26
Quote, he just love, love, loves dogs, Alison Moore 60 said of her dad, Robert Moore, who turned 100 on June 14th. Quote, every dog he sees, he wants to pet. He has been like this his whole life, end quote. In addition to a big family dinner on his birthday, Alison Moore and her two siblings wanted to do something extra to mark the milestone. Sadly, a lot of his best friends aren't with us anymore, she said. So she decided dogs would have to do.
07:55
Six days before the celebration, Allison Moore posted on the Neighborhood Network site next door, as well as on Facebook, explaining her idea and asking for dogs in San Jose to stop by for a pet parade on June 17th. People started sharing her posts and other local groups on social media. Quote, We live in a nice little community and I thought I could get some of my neighbors and friends to come.
08:17
End quote, said Allison Moore, adding that she planned for her father to sit outside her home with a banner and assemble a small line of dogs for him to admire and cuddle. Human treats and dog treats would be served. Since the posts got some attraction, Allison Moore said she expected 20, maybe 30 dogs to show up. She was stunned when, shortly after the parade started at 11 a.m., more than 200 canines congregated, waiting patiently for their turn to be petted by her father. Quote, I was shocked, end quote.
08:46
said Allison Moore, explaining that some people drove more than 10 miles to attend the celebration. Her father, who was the Dean of Applied Sciences and Arts of San Jose State University for 25 years, was deeply touched by the turnout. Quote, he was so overwhelmed, end quote. His daughter said, he was just so sweet in talking to the kids and petting all the dogs and saying their names. It was so much fun, end quote.
09:10
Even though the event was intended to bring joy to Robert Moore, it ended up also being a delightful day for the people who attended, including Roger O'Brien, 88, who has Alzheimer's disease. His daughter, Denise O'Brien, brought him in his geriatric recliner, along with his dog Lucky, to the parade. Quote, it was the most beautiful thing, end quote, said Denise O'Brien, who owns a dog care company, Silicon Valley Watch Dogs.
09:37
and stumbled upon Alison Moore's post on Nextdoor. It's been a long time since I saw my dad smile for 90 minutes straight," end quote. Her father has been suffering from Alzheimer's for the last 11 years. Denise O'Brien said, adding that he only remembers his wife's name and his dog's name. He proudly introduced Lucky to everyone at the parade. This made not just my dad's day, but his whole year. TheWashingtonPost.com by Sydney Page, June 23rd, 2023.
10:07
Thank you.
10:13
This guy loved dogs. He found a lot of joy in petting dogs, seeing dogs, talking to dogs. Was he out to change the world or get in the news or convince other people that, hey, the present moment is worth enjoying? Hey, dogs are part of that present moment. Nope, he just enjoyed dogs. He enjoyed petting dogs. He enjoyed the simple things in life. And in turn, he values those simple things by valuing something simple and real.
10:42
He enjoyed it and through this big story that got out, now he's inspiring other people to enjoy the simple things in life like petting dogs. It's an unintentional ripple effect that can't help but have a subconscious impact on anybody that reads it. Maybe most people that read that story wouldn't think, hey, I should be more present and enjoy what's in front of me. This guy could have done anything. I don't know anything, but he decided on his 100th birthday to pet dogs.
11:12
Maybe this 100 year old knows something, I don't know. But it inspired me. Started to make me think a little bit about the climate change stuff. I started thinking to myself, maybe I'm coming at it backwards.
11:23
Friday morning, my wife and I, we started doing this early morning beach walk before we go to work. And I was grumpy this morning. I didn't want to get up. I was up late the night before playing Magic the Gathering Arena. We got to the beach and we were walking and I was watching my breath and feeling a little bit of water at my ankles and sand in my toes. Listening to the rushing water that built up in these little pools that would drain back into the ocean.
11:53
all enveloping feeling and I was enjoying it so thoroughly as we're walking. The sun's starting to come out, be a little bit more overhead, and I'm just enjoying it so much. And this story, this man came to me, I started thinking about how he enjoyed petting dogs and he probably inspired a lot of people more so than someone just flat out telling you that you should be present and enjoy the small things. He led by example. So my wife and I were talking about Uncle Tim and his ideas of climate change.
12:22
My wife, I said, do I believe humanity is something worth saving? Yeah, I do. Are we attached to one expression of what this world does? Well, yeah, certainly, because we're attached to this expression of our planet because it led to human life and an abundance of life. Does that mean that's the only expression of this planet that's beautiful? No. But what about the idea of the universe becoming conscious of itself? Dolphins, humans, primates.
12:52
I don't know the awareness that a dragonfly has, but I'm sure it's there to a level. And this current expression of this planet leads to the universe becoming aware of itself and the ability to transcend, to ponder. The universe is pondering itself and I think that's a beautiful thing.
13:12
So I got into this idea of how much do I enjoy nature? Am I walking along and really appreciating the trees, the plants, the water that's around me? Is it something that I'm actually enthralled in? It occurred to me that people aren't gonna do what's necessary until they find value in nature, value in consciousness. And so if they don't have that or see value, then why would they do all this stuff that is pretty inconvenient? It's inconvenient to...
13:41
do some of this climate impact reduction. So what would it look like if I just really enjoyed petting dogs that have a better impact on Uncle Tim and other people that'd like to change their minds?
14:04
Segment 3, the transformative power of leading by example.
14:15
So far, we've talked about concepts of pure enjoyment, the dropping away of desire being present with, or as some would say, being the change we want to see. How does Zen play a part in all this? Or better yet, how does Buddhist principles play a part in this? With the idea or example of the man with the dogs being present, he had a natural connection with and love for dogs. That present moment awareness, being able to tap into this moment and
14:44
be with things, we naturally start to enjoy some things more. We don't experience things on such a surface level and it opens up the possibility for deeper experiences. We start to get in touch with what's going on inside of us. Maybe we have trauma from the past, fears of the future that prevent us from really enjoying anything or caring about anything on a deeper level. Buddhist principles and practices allow us to
15:13
move through some of that and work on our shit so that we can be the person that we want to see in the world. Or to actually just be the person that we are. I read the other day that someone said that spiritual development isn't becoming something new, it's the letting go of everything we're not until our true self is revealed. So I've done some self-reflection during this episode and I want to encourage you to do the same thing. Look at ways that maybe you are.
15:40
trying to be an influencer and get them numbers up on Instagram. I know the grind I've done it to but in what ways can you lead by example letting go of the desire to change. Letting go of the desire connecting more with a principle of love meta inside of yourself and with those around you. How could that have a greater impact?
16:04
If you want to be listened to, try listening to someone else. See what happens. If you want to be loved and accepted for who you are, try doing that with your worst enemy. If you want to see people give a shit about the environment and value it and value human life or the ability to sustain human life, then you should try doing that too. As for myself, I want to see a more awakened, loving world. I want to be a part of that world. I want people to experience peace in their life.
16:34
sense of wholeness because life is way too short to go from desire and sense pleasure from desire to sense pleasure and never have that feeling of wholeness that everything is as it is Complete and you are complete. I'd like a lot of people to experience that but hey How much do I experience that how often am I picking up my phone and looking for some type of? Online purchase that can fulfill me for 10 minutes. How often am I looking forward to some experience or
17:03
trying to disconnect through food because I'm not experiencing my wholeness and deeper connection.
17:11
The chances that we're gonna change someone's strongly held beliefs or opinion about something through argument or force for will is very low. The chances of having positive benefit in the world now through leading by action and leading by example goes up pretty significantly. But there's no guarantee that we will influence any major change in the world. But hey, at least we enjoyed life. At least we lived by the principles that...
17:41
we believed in that maybe we got to pet a couple dogs and really enjoy that.
17:57
Thank you so much for coming and hanging out with me. I have really enjoyed doing this episode and sharing it with you. I hope you have a wonderful week ahead when you're present, that moments of joy spring up, that you get to experience again what it was like to be a kid and love looking at a tree or climbing in a tree or picking fresh plums or riding your bike when through the hair. I hope you have a beautiful week ahead and I will talk to you next week. Bye.
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00:09
Welcome to the imperfect Buddhist, where we discuss mindfulness and incorporating Zen Buddhism into modern life. My name is Matthew Hawk Mahoney and today's episode is titled Buddhism and Love.
00:52
Thank you for stopping in and listening. Whether this is your first episode or I don't know what episode I'm on, maybe your 50th. I really appreciate you sticking with me and stopping in. It's been a while since I've shared with you. It's amazing how the days blend together. When I'm working from home, it seems like weeks can go by, months. And even the last couple years seems like they've gone by very fast. And I was looking at...
01:19
episodes and realized, wow, I haven't talked with you in a while, so I wanted to change that.
01:26
Love and Buddhism. I had a friend recently when we were talking about Buddhism bring up the idea that some Buddhists don't believe in relationships as far as sexual, physical relationships or marriage. I think I've heard that from other people before. When we're talking about love though, we're talking more about the concept of seeing yourself in someone else, seeing unity. I quote,
01:55
When you love someone, you have to offer the best you have. The best thing we can offer another person is our true presence. Thich Nhat Hanh. It's being present with somebody, seeking to understand, and eventually even seeing your true identity, which is the presence that witnesses, realizing that's in that other person. You recognize your oneness. Please know that I'm not there yet. This is the imperfect Buddhist. I didn't say I'm completely at this place yet.
02:24
But I have had visions or insight moments where I've felt that connectedness, oneness, and had moved from my head of thinking about this concept of oneness and actually experiencing it.
02:51
Love and our culture. How does this topic or concept of love relate to our culture? Love is a word often used in titles for Netflix shows, like Love is Blind. It's used a lot in songs, song lyrics. People say, hey, I love ice cream or I love pizza. I think a lot of people don't have a very deep definition of what love means.
03:20
We have a culture around love, which is this commercialized version. We have sayings about love, love your neighbor, or I love that pizza, but what does this really mean?
03:32
I've been married for almost... Oh my God, don't tell my wife I'm forgetting our anniversary, but I wanna say we've been married for six or seven years. At the time when we were dating, I was reading this book called The Road Less Traveled. It had a pretty profound impact on my life and the way that I look at reality. When I met Amanda, we both read that book together, and it has a really great definition of love. And so I'm gonna read that for you. M. Scott Peck, the author, defines love as...
04:00
The will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth. Actually, that was my first real definition of love. It gave new meaning to the word love. Before that, love was something that was thrown around in songs or in pop culture or something you'd say in a sentence, but it didn't really have any real meaning.
04:30
My own journey with the concept of love has been evolving quite a bit lately. I recently started the book A Course in Miracles, which is definitely not in Zen or Buddhist tradition, but it has a lot of powerful things to say about love, about human experience and what it means to be connected with other people. The author claims that they...
04:58
channeled this work and it seems to be written from the viewpoint of Jesus. I know that is enough to make most people's eyes roll and typically would make my eyes roll, but I gave it a try because somebody that I really respect in the mindfulness teachings mentioned it and said this is a really powerful book and make up your own mind. So I did and I have gotten a lot out of it, especially around the concept of love and action in
05:26
love's role in life. Through reading it I am starting to recognize love as an experience and a phenomenon rather than just a thought or an action. That there is this energy of love that we can experience. We can also be the transmitter of love. This is all sounding new agey but all that means is that we choose loving action. We choose to see people as ourselves and treat them accordingly.
05:56
quote from A Course in Miracles, teach only love for that is what you are.
06:04
The idea in A Course in Miracles is that there is only love, everything else is an illusion and a fiction created in the minds of men and women and that awakening is coming home to that reality that there is only love. In Buddhist texts, the Dhammapada says, hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love. This is the eternal rule.
06:49
I want to talk a little bit about the reality of applying some of these concepts in my own life. A lot of my practice comes up in work. That makes sense, right? I spend a lot of my time other than sleeping or at home at work. There's a person that, personality-wise, I actually, I don't really have much of a problem with them, but it seems that they really are not a fan of me. From the beginning, I remember my second day at this job. It's a remote job, but I had flown in to the location and had...
07:18
Just met everybody and I think it was like day two and I remember walking into the shared office space with a team and this person gave me this very, kind of like they're looking right through me, glaring. As time went on it became very apparent that this person just didn't like me, eventually resulting in me talking with my boss and saying, hey, do you think this person has it out for me? And he said, yeah, they do. It's not me projecting anymore. It's very obvious that this person doesn't like me.
07:49
I've had different reactions to this. There's been times where I felt very defensive. My boss would bring up to me something that this person had come to them with telling on me or finding a reason to point out a mistake that I made. I've did the defensive thing where I got brought up and I started going into being defensive and trying to point out this person's flaws and all that. Coming at it like this didn't feel good. At the end of the day, after
08:14
Going through the dramas of complaining to other people, feeling offended, or maybe even in some ways trying to suck up or be nicer to this person that doesn't like me. Trying to like, maybe influence this opinion they have of me. It just didn't feel good. It didn't feel right. Reading A Course in Miracles, it was starting to influence me to start to look at other people in a new way, including this person, from the perspective of, okay, I've made the mistake also where I just decided somebody was bad or negative, never even speaking to them.
08:45
So after spinning my wheels with all of the traditional routes, complaining, trying to coerce the situation, I started applying this idea of... I guess put it the simple way, treating other people the way I want to be treated. I would hope in a situation where I was misguided in my assumptions about someone, or projecting a lot on somebody else, I would hope that they would be able and willing to forgive me and to recognize the pain that I was in.
09:14
It's changed the dynamic between us, not necessarily that it's changed this person's mind about me, but it's changed the dynamic within myself where it really doesn't bother me much anymore. I'm doing what I can, doing my best, trying to treat the people around me with love, including this person.
09:33
Going back to that concept of acting for my own or another person's own spiritual growth in that moment where this person is projecting onto me or treating me unfairly, what is the best thing for my own and this other person's spiritual growth?
09:49
Not really being that offended or hurt by the projections that this person is pushing out because that would only strengthen the illusion in themselves and myself. I get offended or I start to want to change a course, the situation, it's strengthening that illusion, which has no reality.
10:15
Another breakthrough that's come from this embracing of love as a guide for my actions and thoughts is jealousy, especially in romantic relationships.
10:30
It started all the way back to when I was like really a little kid. I remember being worried that my mom or my dad were going to cheat on each other. I'd ask them, are you cheating on dad or are you cheating on mom? And then as the years went by, my parents got a divorce and I remember being jealous of my mom's time when she got remarried. I suddenly just felt like I wasn't getting the same attention. Got into my first relationship, one of those little teenage fights where you break up for a weekend.
10:58
And during one of these weekend breakups, she went on a date with another guy, ended up making out with him, who knows what happened. I'm questioning her for months about what really happened. It got ingrained at a young age, these patterns of jealousy, suspicion, and fear. In my marriage now, there are moments where I start to go down that path of imagining my wife doing something behind my back or going out with somebody or saying that she's...
11:24
going to the Goodwill to go shopping for used clothes or whatever, but really she's out with this guy.
11:32
I had a realization recently where I was like, okay, what is loving in this moment? So say my wife was in a situation where she really decided to do that. What kind of pain would she have to be in or confusion or illusion or whatever you want to call it? She'd have to be in a very dark, hurt place to be taking such actions. This consideration shifted things for me where suddenly I wasn't afraid, but I was feeling compassion.
12:01
It was a shift from fear into love and trying to see things through other people's eyes, but also seeing other people as myself.
12:11
It was a game changing shift. I still have those moments where I get fearful or I start to go down the questioning path about things, but it definitely feels like it's shifting the dynamic. It also helps when you have a partner that is loving and seeking my own and her own spiritual growth. There is moments where she might get a little bit angry, but overall she's like, you're in pain. You're really fearful and anxious right now because you're going down that path. Let me help you. Let me.
12:39
help walk you through this and show you that I love you and that we'll get through this together.
12:54
Welcome to the quick tip portion of the episode. We're going to talk a little bit about meta practice. I'm going to tell you a brief overview of how to do a meta practice or meta meditation. But I also wanted to let you know that there is a guided meta meditation available at my website, theimperfectbuddhist.com. The general guidelines for meta meditation.
13:21
You want to find a comfortable place to sit where you're not going to be interrupted and that you can have some privacy and you can feel comfortable. Not worry about someone walking in on you or looking at you weird. It's all about you connecting with your own body and breath and your heart in this moment.
13:39
You're going to find that place, take a couple deep breaths and relax. Focus on the area of your heart, along with the sensation of your breathing. You're going to begin by directing loving kindness to yourself. So you can repeat phrases in your own mind or out loud. If you have the privacy, such as, may I be happy? May I be well? May I be safe? May I be peaceful and at ease? And you're going to let.
14:06
Those feelings of warmth and love grow as you're saying that. You're cultivating this love inside to yourself, which, you know, can be complicated for some people. After you've gotten the love flowing, you're going to bring to mind someone who has cared for you deeply. Maybe it's like a mom, friend, sibling, partner. You're going to use the same phrases. May I be happy. May I be well. May I be safe. May I be peaceful and at ease.
14:36
It will allow those feelings of warmth and love to grow.
14:41
sinking into that heartfelt meaning and connecting with those loving feelings that arise. You're going to continue the meditation by gradually extending loving kindness, meditation to other people in your life. Eventually, you're going to extend this loving kindness to somebody you have difficulty with. So in my situation, it would be this co-worker that has it out for me, quote, unquote. And as you practice, you're going to encounter different feelings. Some people experience anger, grief, sadness.
15:10
These are all signs of your heart opening up. These are things that you're holding on to. When these things, emotions like clouds in the sky, you're not boxing them in. You're just simply watching them as they pass by. As they start to fade away, you can return back to your loving kindness meditation. With all meditation practices, there's no need to judge yourself.
15:34
The benefits of loving kindness is it cultivates compassion, love, and connection both towards ourselves and other people in our lives. It's a transformative practice that can bring peace and well-being into our lives.
15:50
Thanks for stopping in, I look forward to talking to you next week. Alright, bye bye.
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1. Introduction (00:19):
- Title: "Understanding Mindfulness and Conscious Living through Buddhism"
- Introduction: Matthew Hawk Mahoney, host of "The Imperfect Buddhist," delves into the significance of patterns in mindful living.
2. Mindful Living and Recognizing Patterns (01:07 - 02:34):
- Understanding the role of mindfulness in recognizing and altering life patterns, fostering conscious decision-making and personal growth.
3. Understanding Life's Cycles and Patterns (03:17 - 04:18):
- Highlighting the concept of interconnectedness and life cycles, emphasizing the significance of patterns in mindful and Buddhist philosophies.
4. Cultivating Present Moment Awareness and Mindfulness Practice (04:18 - 06:32):
- Emphasizing the importance of mindfulness and present moment awareness as fundamental practices in conscious living and Buddhist teachings.
5. Mindful Relationships and Conscious Communication (06:32 - 09:45):
- Applying mindfulness to foster healthy relationships, emphasizing the importance of conscious communication and understanding patterns in interpersonal dynamics.
6. Transforming Patterns through Mindfulness and Gratitude (09:45 - 11:56):
- Exploring methods for transforming deep-rooted patterns through mindfulness and expressing gratitude, aligning with Buddhist principles and conscious living practices.
7. Conclusion: Embracing Mindful Living for Joy and Fulfillment (11:56):
- Encouraging readers to embrace mindful living and conscious awareness, fostering joy, love, and well-being in alignment with Buddhist teachings and principles.
Transcript
00:19
Welcome to the Imperfect Buddhist. My name is Matthew Hawk Mahoney, and today's episode is titled Buddhism and Patterns.
01:07
Patterns have been a key theme in my life lately. Particularly patterns that I would like to cease or change or augment. Maybe I'm halfway there. Maybe half the battle is knowing that I have patterns. Patterns have been playing an important part in my life right now, in my marriage and my personal life. Decisions I make with my health, how I spend my time, how I show up in my relationship.
01:35
Do I show up with a approach of love and growth and wanting to learn about myself and my partner? Or do I show up with feelings of jealousy, of control, of needing things to be a certain way? How does my partner show up? Is my partner showing up with patterns she created in her past? Certain family dynamics that shaped her at a young age? Is she showing up to me with those patterns?
02:04
or she's showing up with a mindset of love, growth, honesty. And let's not forget fun. My dad, of all people, because he has some serious habits and patterns in his life, he told my sister, I don't know if he told me, I think he told my sister, but it's a thing that we bring up every now and then in the family where he said, you know, Amanda, everything's a pattern, everything's a circle. When it comes to our habits, seems to be the case, seems to be true.
02:34
When we're unconscious, as can happen with anybody, even the most serious meditators in the world, we find ourselves at the end or the beginning or the middle of a habit. We ask, how the hell did I get here again? Some of us might believe we have no control, that this is just how it is, this is just my life, and it's your fault. It's her fault, it's his fault, it's their fault that I'm acting this way.
03:17
Patterns are a part of life. And to try to say that we should be devoid of patterns, goes against human nature, goes against nature itself. Look at the sun, look at the moon. They rise and they fall, usually around the same spot in the sky depending on the time of year. It rains, it's sunny, trees grow leaves and the leaves fall down to the ground and nourish the soil and the soil nourishes the tree. The tree makes new leaves.
03:47
The leaves fall down and nourish the soil. Our bodies, we inhale. Our lungs fill with air and pulls oxygen into our bloodstream. And we exhale that carbon dioxide. We inhale again. Our digestion, we get hungry. We eat food. Food goes in, it's digested, and it comes out as poop. It's all cycles. Everything is patterns. Experts will tell you it's good to have a healthy routine, a healthy pattern.
04:18
So how does Buddhism or mindfulness, present moment awareness, play a part in any of this? A friend and I were talking, and this is one of my best friends in the whole world, and my friend had been at the bar, just taking a little bit of me time, doing some journaling, reading some self-help books, trying to just figure out how they were feeling, what was going on with them. And I met up with them after they'd done this soul-searching session.
04:47
They were talking about how they wanted to start doing like these self check ins with themselves. They asked themselves like, how am I feeling? What am I doing right now? And we started talking about it and they asked me, how do you start with these patterns, either making new patterns or changing old patterns? The truest answer I could say was present moment awareness. And does it matter if you're Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Catholic, Satanist? The present moment is a real thing. It's right here in front of us. And
05:15
Being in the moment, being present is not a religious belief, it's just an act. It's a habit to focus. If we want to work on our patterns in life, we have to start where we're at. We have to start where the patterns start and start paying attention. Present moment awareness is the key to having some authorship to get our hand on the wheel of our life a little bit and to steer a little bit consciously. Like we're in a Tesla
05:45
car and it's autopiloting towards the ultimate destination of our life and we're like watching YouTube on the screen or playing one of those Tesla video games that comes with the car and then we like look up and we start looking around and we're like wait a minute do I want to go here? Do I want to go to Chuck E Cheese for the 50th time this month? I'm kind of sick of Chuck E Cheese. I haven't liked Chuck E Cheese since I was five years old. I am a 55 year old man.
06:14
Why do I keep going to Chuck E. Cheese? Do I like Chuck E. Cheese? I think I'm gonna turn off autopilot and maybe go to Olive Garden. What's more mature than Olive Garden?
06:32
So the core teaching in most meditative traditions is mindfulness and present moment awareness. And there's a reason for that. It is the key to deeper states of awareness, to augmenting habits, changing habits, engaging in new habits that hopefully benefit our well-being, feeling a freedom in life, joy, relationships.
06:57
Relationships and patterns seems to be one of the areas where patterns become most prevalent, most hurtful, most painful. Whether that's our own patterns and the way we are in relationships or the way other people are with us based on their patterns. And I'm guilty of it. I can admit that I have my patterns that are not so helpful. In this particular situation with this person I was with, she got home after work. I had made a nice meal.
07:27
I noticed a tightness in their face, like a little crease in between the eyebrows, usually a sign that something's going on. My partner had signed up for a book reading group and I said, oh, that's cool. I'd like to go. And they said, no, I don't really want you to go. I want to do this on my own. Sometimes you have a habit of talking over me or I feel like I can't express myself fully when you're around. And that was hard to hear, but I understood where they were coming from.
07:57
was much more quiet and there had been talks about how sometimes I could overpower them or talk over them. So yes, I totally got where they were coming from. I said, okay, I understand. As we sat on the couch, I said, hey, let's talk. Let's just connect and do a little check in. And it started pretty positive. But as we talked, that tightness on my partner's face came back and they had this crease between their eyebrows and I could sense.
08:23
It was getting heavy again. We eventually got to the bottom of it, and my partner expressed to me that she felt embarrassed by jokes I would make. And that was really hard to hear. And I felt sad that we had to dig so much to get to the bottom of what was going on. My partner expressed to me that, oh my God, this was a pattern. That she, in some ways, was projecting some of my responsibility on how she should feel or not feel when it comes to being.
08:53
embarrassed or not. The bigger pattern here was maintaining the status quo. So instead of telling me and really sitting down and expressing to me how serious this feeling of embarrassment and my part in bringing that up in them was, she decided to avoid that, maintain the status quo, and then begin to exclude me from certain social events. For her it was a moment of revelation of this is
09:23
points of contention out of fear of upsetting the person in my life. It was something that they learned early on with their family, their parents, and it was a pattern that was brought into our relationship.
09:45
I used to do these quick tip things and who knows, I may bring it back, but really there's only one tip and that is to be present. To do the practices that bring your attention and focus your mind on what's happening right now in your body, in your mind, in the environment around you. And that's really the only tip I can really give is that we can cultivate our present moment awareness through practices like mindfulness, meditation, and we can use the...
10:14
present moment energy that we cultivate through this to work with the patterns in our life. Sometimes noticing a pattern is all it will take to change it. Noticing a pattern though, sometimes it stays the same. It may even increase for a time. But usually through the simple noticing of a pattern, when we see it in the totality that is available to us as much as we can, we see what does it create? What is it creating in our lives and our relationships? Is it...
10:41
Is it bringing us closer to people? Is it pushing people away? Is it bringing us closer to a feeling of wholeness, of health, of love? Is it pushing those things away? We see the result and sometimes that's enough to completely change the pattern. With other things that are deeply ingrained, like my partner's habit of maintaining a status quo, or my patterns of jealousy or worry, it takes more time, it takes more work.
11:10
We've learned these habits to survive and we can honor them. We can get real self-help you with it. Say to these unhelpful habit patterns during meditation, thank you. Thank you, worry. You've helped me survive probably some situations, whatever reason, you're probably going to stay around or stick with me, but let's try to switch things up a little bit because it's not as helpful anymore. You can think the patterns and let them go and maybe they'll come back expressed in a new healthier way.
11:56
Wonderful week ahead and whatever patterns you experience. I hope that they bring you more joy, love, health, and just an awesome fricking life. I look forward to talking with you next time. Thanks, bye.
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Uniting Mind and Body in the Present Moment
It's easy to feel disconnected from the present moment and overwhelmed by the chaos of our thoughts. However, the wisdom of ancient traditions like Buddhism offers a simple and effective way to regain control of our minds and connect with the here and now – the breath.
The Witnessing Presence
In our quest for personal growth and self-awareness, Mahoney emphasizes the importance of returning to the breath as a constant anchor. When our thoughts scatter, when we worry about our future, or when we become consumed by concerns, the breath becomes our refuge. By becoming aware of each inhalation and exhalation, we access a quiet stillness that exists at the beginning and end of every breath.
Witnessing Thoughts and Emotions
The practice of witnessing our breath serves as an effective tool for those who find it challenging to observe their thoughts and emotions objectively. Rather than getting caught up in the emotional turmoil of our internal narratives, we can take a step back and label our thoughts and feelings. By observing without judgment, we cultivate a state of non-attachment to these thoughts, an essential component of meditative traditions.
Breath as an Anchoring Point
Our breath becomes an ever-present anchor, a constant that allows us to be present in any situation. In the same way that some individuals use prayer beads as a meditation tool to center their attention, breath awareness offers a tangible and always accessible source of mindfulness. It helps to slow down our racing thoughts, enabling us to be fully present.
Cultivating Witnessing Presence
As we practice witnessing our breath, we also cultivate a witnessing presence. This state of awareness doesn't label experiences as good or bad, positive or negative – it embodies the essence of "don't know mind" or "beginner's mind" found in Buddhism. We can extend this awareness to our thoughts, allowing us to approach them with greater clarity and detachment.
Breath Awareness in Daily Life
If you find it challenging to incorporate breath awareness into your daily life, consider integrating it into your meditation practice. Set aside dedicated time for silent meditation, with the primary aim of witnessing your breath. When your mind wanders, it's not a failure – it's part of the process. Even a single minute of breath awareness during a 20-minute meditation is valuable.
The Direct Experience of Truth
By observing your breath, you tap into something real and tangible, allowing you to experience the truth directly. It's a truth that's always present, always solid – your life, the life energy that animates you and the world around you. You can let go of the restless energy of your mind, the constant search for solidity through thought, and simply be present with your breath.
Using Your Thinking Mind
The key is not to abandon your thinking mind but to use it wisely. Don't let your thinking mind control you. Rather, harness its power to enhance your awareness and understanding.
As Thich Nhat Hanh suggests in his book "Peace in Every Breath,"
mindful breathing is like a seatbelt for everyday life. It keeps you safe in the present moment, helping you weather the turbulence of modern existence.Transcript:
The breath is a powerful bridge connecting life to consciousness, and through it, we can unite our body with our thoughts. By consistently returning to our breath, we can achieve a profound witnessing presence, enhancing our awareness and embracing the richness of the present moment. So, take a deep breath, be present, and discover the transformative power of the breath in your own life.
00:00
Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.
00:18
Welcome to the Imperfect Buddhist, where we discuss present moment awareness and incorporating Zen principles into modern life. My name is Matthew Hawk Mahoney. And today's episode is titled Buddhism and the Breath. We're not talking about stinky breath. We're not talking about proper breathing while we're running. We're talking about tuning into our breath as a way to
00:47
using the breath to train our awareness in what's known in some circles as the witnessing presence.
01:04
Working on the Imperfect Buddhist lately, really putting in a lot of energy. I've been looking for ways to deepen my own practice so that I'm walking the walk instead of just talking because podcasts are mostly talk. One of the ways I've been doing this is trying to come back to my breath as often as possible. When I notice I'm getting off in the future about how am I going to support myself as a podcaster? How am I going to pay my bills?
01:34
come back to my breath. And I start thinking about how am I gonna monetize this podcast? Are people really gonna wanna subscribe to some content? How am I gonna pay my bills? I come back to my breath. When I start worrying about where's my wife? I haven't heard from her in a couple hours. Is she cheating on me? I come back to my breath. And coming back to my breath, aware of my inhalation, my exhalation, and the spaces in between those two movements.
02:04
A quietness, a stillness that exists at the bottom and the top of every breath.
02:10
Let's talk about using the breath as an anchor to the present moment, as something that's always available to us, no matter where we are. Sometimes in Buddhist or mindfulness circles, people talk about becoming aware of our thoughts. Like, just take a step back and witness your thoughts as if you're a third person. Don't judge, don't add any extra thinking. Just witness those thoughts, those energy patterns, maybe even name them. And the example of me...
02:40
having these fearful thoughts, I would take a step back and say jealousy or fear or abandonment issues. You can do those with a very non-judgmental labeling, but that can be hard for a lot of people. Telling people, hey, witness your thoughts and your emotions from a witnessing presence and don't get too attached to them. That's easy to say, but for a lot of people, they don't really understand what that means and there's so much emotional energy involved in their thoughts.
03:07
that it's a huge thing to overcome, especially when you're first starting in meditative traditions. The breath is such a beautiful refuge for people that are on this path of awareness.
03:26
So we witness our breath and as thoughts come in and they start to try to pull us out of the moment, pull us into the future, into the past with fears or dreams of the future or hopes for the future or resentments from our past or worry about what this person is thinking about us or how we're doing in our job. We just come back to the sensation of breathing and we experience the miracle of letting go. In the Bible, there's a quote,
03:56
I'm talking about the miracle of letting go. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them.
04:20
The breath becomes our anchoring point. We can use the breath as something that we can come back to. Breath is a brilliant tool for this as it's not good or bad, negative or positive. It's a really easy thing to be with and use as a source of awareness that will bring our attention to the present moment. Maybe you've seen some people in religious communities carry around these mala beads and they hold a bead and some of them will say a prayer. Some of them will actually just feel the bead.
04:49
sensation of the bead in their hand and then they pull the beads through their fingers. This is used as a meditation that ties the awareness back to the present moment. If it's used for prayer then it's used to center that attention on the prayer through some type of physical means. And in a lot of ways, breath awareness is the same thing. It's a sensation that's always happening that is inside of us that allows us to cultivate present moment awareness, to slow down our
05:18
obsessive thinking minds and be present.
05:24
Another blessing of our breath, another benefit in practice through breath awareness, and we actually cultivate our witnessing presence as well, which is the power to be with experiences, thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, physical environment with a state of awareness that neither judges good or bad, positive or negative, does not label. In Buddhism it's called don't know mind.
05:53
or beginner's mind, a state of mind that doesn't come to situation, emotions, thoughts, physical sensations with any type of preconceived beliefs or notions about the experience. So breath awareness, simply witnessing our breath and watching what happens, seeing how long we can actually be present with the breath develops this witnessing presence. So we can take this same awareness to our minds when the thought comes up.
06:22
of my wife. Where is she? What is she doing? Maybe she's cheating on me. I have a little bit of a witnessing presence there. I can see what's happening, notice what's happening in my body, and it gives me a little bit of room to see a little bit of the bigger picture. It gives me a little bit of space around it so that it's not an all-encompassing nightmare of fear and absurd behavior.
06:53
If you find it too hard to tune into your breath and daily life while you're driving or having a conversation with somebody, you may want to incorporate breath awareness into your meditations. Have the aim of your attention while sitting in zazen or doing a silent meditation to be present with your breath and to witness it. When you set aside time and go to a quiet room, set up a chair or a cushion and sit down, start a timer for 10 or 20 minutes.
07:22
With the aim of trying to witness your breath and be with the sensation of breathing. And as your mind wanders away, you bring it back. That the mind wanders, that's part of the practice and it's not a failure. It's never a failure. Even one minute of breath awareness while sitting in meditation for 20 minutes is beneficial.
07:46
If we get lost in judging ourselves for how well we do the practice, then we've lost the point of this. The point is to slow down the narrating mind. The point is to slow down the labeling mind, the planning mind, and to contact something real, something tangible. So many people are looking for truth in life and a lot of people aren't finding it or they...
08:14
think they find it and they have to convince themselves with all sorts of convincing and thinking in their minds. But the direct experience won't need any convincing once you've experienced truth firsthand. You realize you can let go of the fluttering energy in your mind. Let go of the goal of trying to find something solid through thinking. And you can experience something that is always present, always solid, which is your life.
08:44
which is the life energy that animates your body and the bodies of everybody around you, and the trees and the flowers and the birds and the bees, the wind, the dirt, it's all alive and it's all proclaiming a truth that is waiting for you to see it, tap into it and be present with it. And all this can be yours if you just pay attention to your breath.
09:10
not that I'm suggesting that we don't ever use our thinking minds. Actually, I'm suggesting that we do use our thinking minds. But what the suggestion is here is that we don't let our thinking minds use us.
09:26
One more quote from Thich Nhat Hanh. He wrote a whole book on breathing. Can you believe it? It's called Peace and Every Breath. He says, it's like when you're flying in an airplane. Whenever severe turbulence comes along, the seatbelt keeps you from getting thrown around the cabin. Mindful breathing is your seatbelt in everyday life. It keeps you safe here in the present moment. If you know how to breathe, how to sit calmly and quietly, how to do walking meditation, then you have your seatbelt.
09:56
and you're always safe.
10:05
Thank you so much for taking this time to hang out with me a little bit. If you enjoyed this episode or any of the other episodes that I've done, please consider hitting the like button or subscribing to my podcast. And I'd love to hear from you in the comments section. I hope you have a wonderful week and I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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About this episode:
In our fast-paced modern world, the pursuit of mindfulness and spiritual growth can often feel elusive. However, at the heart of Zen philosophy lies a profound truth: everything in life is usable for awakening.
Embracing this concept means seeing imperfection, challenges, and difficulties as tools for personal growth and enlightenment. It's a pivotal moment in our spiritual journey when we realize that suffering and imperfection can crack open the shell of ego, leading to humility and compassion.
Eckhart Tolle, in "The Power of Now," beautifully captures this idea: "If you had not suffered as you have, there would be no depth to you as a human being. No humility, no compassion. Suffering is necessary until you realize it is unnecessary."
The key is to confront discomfort without judgment and listen to our inner wisdom." Thich Nhat Hanh, in "The Miracle of Mindfulness," reminds us that even mundane activities can be opportunities for awakening.
Mundane experiences become gateways to mindfulness and a deeper understanding of the present moment. Positive experiences, too, can be savored without worrying about their end, teaching us to appreciate the now.
Challenges, whether they come in the form of new experiences or difficult emotions, have the power to transform us, shedding illusions of weakness and conditioning, revealing our true selves illuminated with awareness.
In conclusion, the concept that "everything is usable" reminds us that every moment, every experience, and every emotion in life can be a stepping stone on our journey toward awakening. Embracing imperfection and challenges with open hearts and minds unlocks our potential for personal growth, mindfulness, and a deeper connection to the world around us. Ultimately, it is through these experiences that we become more fully alive and aware of the beauty of our existence.
Transcript:00:16
Welcome to The Imperfect Buddhist, where we discuss present moment awareness and incorporating Zen principles into modern life. My name is Matthew Hawk Mahoney and today's episode is titled, Everything is Usable. Today's episode is all about using what is at hand, what is in our life for awakening, whether that's pain, joy, or just boredom.
00:42
We'll talk about the concept of everything is usable. The concept that we can use all of life's experiences for our own awakening.
01:09
At some point in our spiritual life, we decide to embrace imperfection. We start to embrace challenges in our life. This will be a shift for us. Some people, maybe if their parents were on some different level, maybe they helped their children accept and embrace challenges and difficulties. But for the most part, most people will have to learn how to do this in their own way. At some point on the spiritual path, we begin to embrace
01:37
difficulty and imperfection in our life. We start to see imperfection and difficulty as teachers. We start to see imperfection and difficulty as fodder for awakening, something that can fuel our personal awakening and the endeavor of meditation.
01:58
Eckhart Tolle in his book, The Power of Now says, If you had not suffered as you have, there would be no depth to you as a human being. No humility, no compassion. Suffering cracks open the shell of ego. And then comes a point when it has served its purpose. Suffering is necessary until you realize it is unnecessary.
02:21
This idea that suffering or imperfection can be used in our own awakening is something that I'm becoming reacquainted with in my own practice. My wife and I this year have been endeavoring to reduce our technology use and to start picking up old hobbies or being comfortable with it just being quiet in the house staring out the window. And so I've been noticing that through eliminating our TV use or trying to limit our technology use that I'm...
02:48
Becoming more acquainted with this underlying feeling of dissatisfaction, like this kind of anxiousness that's been living underneath the surface and festering as I've been indulging in a lot of screen time. I have had a couple moments where I'm feeling uncomfortable and I'm like, I don't want to feel this. I want to distract myself again. I want to get away from this feeling. I don't like it. And sometimes it wins. Sometimes I start watching stuff on my phone as I stuff my face and eat my lunch.
03:16
And sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I'm able to stick with it and feel it and go through it. And then I'm able to ask myself, is there anything I can do differently that may make an impact on how I'm feeling? I started picking up rock climbing again, and soon I'll be doing some yoga at the rock climbing gym. And I noticed a big change in my body. Rock climbing for me is a really mindful sport, present as I'm doing the moves necessary.
03:44
So this little slight change to my routine is starting to help me.
03:54
What I'm talking about is a recognition in your own presence. When you embrace whatever suffering you're feeling, you embrace it, you feel it. You're not mad at it. You're not trying to push it away, but there's a still voice or a voice that comes up where you could say, oh, maybe there's something I can change that would help me. This is a little bit different than pushing it away or being upset about how you feel, adding an extra layer to the pain that you already have. It's a quieter, still, wise voice that just says.
04:23
Maybe there's a different way. Coming back to this feeling of dissatisfaction. Maybe some of that is pretty normal. Maybe there isn't a whole lot I can do to change it. Maybe that dissatisfaction is inherent with the current way a lot of people's lives are set up.
04:41
Thich Nhat Hanh said, if while washing the dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not, quote, washing the dishes to wash the dishes, end quote. What's more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes. In fact, we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink. If we can't wash the dishes, the chances are we won't be
05:09
able to drink the tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus, we are sucked away into the future and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life. Thich Nhat Hanh, the miracle of mindfulness.
05:27
Mundane activities can be a doorway to awakening for us. They are opportunities for mindfulness and presence. And there is no mundane activity. Everything becomes sacred by our awareness. When we tap in and we live the philosophy that everything is workable, everything is usable, then everything becomes sacred. Everything becomes our teacher and we are awakened and enlivened by our life, just as it is.
05:59
We can take the awareness we cultivate through our formal practice of meditation, zazen or mindfulness practice, and we can take that into anything we do. We can take it into doing the dishes. We can smell the soap. We can feel the gross outness because, man, maybe we didn't do dishes for a week, which seems to be the case for me sometimes. We can feel the heat of the water on our hands and listen to the scrub brush as it breaks away the dried-on food from a whole week, you pig.
06:29
But we can tap into what's happening in that moment. Where's our attention? Is it on the present? Is it in this moment? And if it isn't, maybe we can ask ourselves why. And we don't wanna get into a bunch more thinking. But if it's a simple answer, it's usually true. Sometimes when I ask myself, why am I not present? Well, doing the dishes or rock climbing or driving to pick up my wife. It's because either A, I'm just not aware and I'm letting my mind drift, which is natural.
06:59
Or B, there's something that in my life right now I'm not wanting to feel, I'm not wanting to deal with. I would rather it not exist. And so I purposely or unconsciously put my attention somewhere else. I daydream or I uninhabit my life.
07:21
Everything is workable, even positive experiences. They may not have the pull that suffering does, because suffering really can pull you right into the moment, right into your body, because it's so intense. Positive experiences can teach us a lot. Yeah, it feels, number one, it feels great to have a positive experience, something that goes our way, or to spend time with someone we really love and enjoy, where moments flow together, and there's a sense of ease and happiness and joy.
07:51
It's pretty easy to be mindful in those moments, although a lot of people aren't. They're worried about losing that moment. When's it gonna be over?
08:01
I know that I'm guilty of that with my marriage. My marriage I'm very happy in. I love my wife and my partner, but I can't help but think of what happens when it's gone. How am I gonna feel? I don't wanna lose this. I can tap in right now and experience this moment, cherish it, and realize that it is fleeting, and that all the warring in the world will not change this moment from not being at some point, whether that's 10 minutes.
08:29
An hour, a day, a year, 50 years, there was going to be a moment where this experience will be no more. When we tap into the present moment, we experience the joy of life. And we can also see that it's transitory and learn the lesson that all things are transitory. We see this in our pain, we see this in our joy, and it makes us much more appreciative of what is happening. If it is joyful, we can really savor it and be appreciative for what it is.
08:58
Wow, I have a wife, a partner that time flows easily for us. We get along, we laugh, we have adventures. We experience really beautiful things. She brings the best out of me, helps me see the world in a more bright and beautiful way. And I can cherish that and savor that now, knowing that it isn't forever. If someone told me, hey, Matt, your dad's gonna die when you're 19 and it's gonna be one of the most transformational experiences of your life and in...
09:26
10 years, when you're 29, you might even say, hey, I'm thankful that I went through that experience the way that I did. I would be like, you're full of shit. I'm not thankful that my father passed, but I'm thankful for the lessons that I learned in that challenge. And we can start to approach the challenging circumstances of our life as lessons. We can start to be present with challenges, whether that's a new job, new partner, maybe something somebody said that was hard for us to accept.
09:56
Maybe it's a book or a new workout routine. Maybe the challenge is just simply getting out of bed and talking to somebody.
10:06
Challenges transform us and they allow us to realize who we truly are at our deepest core level. When we submit ourselves to challenge, working through it, growing and doing our best, a lot of the illusory weakness that we've adopted through conditioning drops away and we can find our core as a creative human being illuminated with awareness.
10:34
When we embrace difficulty, it often leads to personal breakthroughs and our spiritual development. In Zen, you find teachers that will walk around the zendo, typically in Japan, more formal settings, and they have a stick and they'll smack somebody to wake them up or get them back into line. They're challenging that practitioner to keep their focus, to stay aware, to stay upright in their posture and their mind. Going to multi-day
11:02
Retreats has been a challenge and people would ask me like, are you crazy? What are you doing? I've only ever done, I think maybe a five day or three day retreat, which is nothing compared to some people. But I know that for me, it was a challenge at the time. I was a little bit nervous going into it. And during it, I found strength that I didn't know was there. I found a wherewithal that I didn't know was there. And I found that experience was workable. That each moment I had little choices I could make and it was workable.
11:32
Now what about the mundane? Riding the train to work, walking the block to the convenience store, waiting in line for your Starbucks coffee. The mundane, even the mundane holds the same wisdom and awakening that the other more extreme moments hold, such as joy and suffering. We can tap into the present moment no matter where we are, standing in line. Starbucks, we can see the faces around us.
12:02
smell the coffee in the air, feel our breath coming in and out of our bodies, and we can actually start to see the miracle of life all around us. We can tap into that as a reality. The mundane experiences are usable.
12:17
There is no reality other than this present moment. When we daydream of the future, we're doing it from the present moment. When we regret the past, we're doing it in the present moment. We're a step removed from reality. And we're a step removed from ourselves if we're totally caught in that thinking mind and identified with all the thoughts that it's churning out. Even that is usable.
12:41
When we embrace the philosophy that everything is usable, you start to realize that within your pain, within your joy, in your fear, within the subtle sensations that you might experience, within the light and colors all around you, there is a depth of experience deeper than our mental projections of the things around us. Instead of looking at this tall, slender being in front of us and saying, tree, bark, those are pine needles,
13:11
It's green and brown. We have a deeper experience of the thing that we look at.
13:17
Katagiri in his book, Returning to Silence says, the pure sense of emptiness means vastness. Your existence is not just in the small scale of the world. It is vast. This is the pure sense of moment. But if you see the moment from just your individual viewpoint, it becomes limited. The pure sense of moment is vast. Immediately, your individual existence expands to all sentient beings. This is total manifestation. It is not just an aspect of human life.
13:46
It is the real portrait of existence itself.
13:55
Thanks so much for stopping in and listening today. I appreciate you being a part of the Imperfect Buddhist community. Keep an eye out for new episodes and please consider liking, subscribing, and commenting, leaving your thoughts about the show in your favorite podcast provider, whether that's Apple, Spotify, or Amazon. Your reviews and comments help other people discover what we're doing here.
14:21
I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week and I look forward to talking to you next time. Bye.
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"Some people live as though they are already dead. There are people moving around us who are consumed by their past, terrified of their future, and stuck in their anger and jealousy. They are not alive; they are just walking corpses." - Thict Naht Hahn
Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Imperfect Buddhist. A podcast where we discuss present-moment awareness and incorporating zen principles into everyday life. I am your host Matthew Hawk Mahoney and today's episode is titled Returning.
There is the willful return or the forced return. Some of us choose whether we willfully bring our attention back to the present moment's razor's edge. Some don't know they have a choice or forget and are forced to return through some tragedy in life or persistent emotional pain.
Some know the return process but are frightened by all that the shining blade of truth may cut off.
We return by bringing our attention to the present moment. To our emotions, mind, body, relationships, and life as they are with a witnessing presence.
"The moment you realize you are not present, you are present. Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are no longer trapped in it. Another factor has come in, something that is not of the mind: the witnessing presence." - Eckhart Tolle
Why do we turn away from this moment? We dissipate our energy in worries about the future and past regrets.
We do this from an illusion of control. Somewhere inside, we believe this behavior will somehow change the past or control the outcome of future events.
Perhaps we have trauma from our past that bubbles up as strong emotions, turning horrific images from our history over in our minds if we allow it. Our day turns upside down by dwelling on these pictures and feelings for too long.
At our customer service jobs at the grocery store, call center, or restaurant, we dream of when we will own that farm, thinking how much better things will be when we are released from this type of work.
We are all just temporarily embarrassed millionaires here in the United States.
We may think that we will return when circumstances are better, or our life is more stable in the future.
Whatever your life is, your life circumstances, situations, and pain, you can return. Your life is workable now, and any fantasy that salvation lives somewhere in the future is a myth and functionally impossible, as the future doesn't exist.
We cannot experience the peace that surpasses all understanding by listening to the Imperfect Buddhist, reading every Thict Naht Hahn book, or talking about mindfulness with our friends.
We must do the work ourselves and shine the light of awareness on our lives.
No book, teacher, or podcast can push you into a real connection with the truth alone. Your effortless effort must be there, and a willingness to see what is true no matter how bad it hurts.
We reclaim our true identity as the being who witnesses by seeing the hurt and not losing ourselves in identification with the pain.
We let go of egocentric identification with our pain, past, and worries about the future.
Yes, these waves may continue to flow, but their grip on us loosens, and we start to identify with our true identity, the one who witnesses.
There are many spiritual paths but one destination.
To return to the same place but to see it for the first time. In this very instant, we are to be in connection with life, truth, god, and the dharma. Wisdom is no longer something we seek outside of ourselves but comes from our core and intertwines as the fabric of life.
I define love thus: The will to extend one's self to nurture one's own or another's spiritual growth" - M. Scott Peck.
Equilibrium is possible for you, and love is who you are at your core.
The appeal of psychedelics lately shows people's desire to experience the truth and let go of their limiting ideas of self. Citizens are suffocated by limiting beliefs about themselves and how the world works.
Psychedelics represent the lazy American approach. The Microwave meal. Money for nothin' and your chicks for free.
Psychedelics may be a starting point for some people whose egos are so thick that they need a swift kick in the ego-identified ass, but they don't offer a long-lasting solution or prolonged connection with reality.
"The way is originally perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent on practice and realization? The true vehicle is self-sufficient. What need is there for special effort? Indeed, the whole body is free from dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from this very place; what is the use of traveling around to practice? And yet, if there is a hairsbreadth deviation, it is like the gap between heaven and earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion. Suppose you are confident in your understanding and rich in enlightenment, gaining the wisdom that knows at a glance, attaining the Way and clarifying the mind, arousing an aspiration to reach for the heavens. You are playing in the entranceway, but you are still short of the vital path of emancipation.
Consider the Buddha: although he was wise at birth, the traces of his six years of upright sitting can yet be seen. As for Bodhidharma, although he had received the mind-seal, his nine years of facing a wall is celebrated still. If even the ancient sages were like this, how can we today dispense with wholehearted practice?" - Dogen
Adopting a practice that we repeat daily can help root us in our return. For some, it is Zazen; for some, it is silent prayer or mindful walking in the woods.
It doesn't matter what practice or tradition the method is tied to, only that it encourages a return to our core and silence. Some practice traditions are better than others at guiding students on the path of mind disidentification.
Dogen continues:
...put aside the intellectual practice of investigating words and chasing phrases, and learn to take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will manifest. If you want to realize such, get to work on such right now.
Well, you heard the man! Lets set aside our thinking for a while now and be present in our bodys, minds and lives. Can you do it for ten 5 minutes??
Alright, let's see. I am going to start the timer and I will let you know when five minutes is up. Alright, ready, go.
Thanks for stopping in today, and I hope you have a wonderful week filled with beautiful moments.
Bye
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Welcome to the Imperfect Buddhist, where we discuss present moment awareness and applying Zen principles to modern. My name is Matthew Hawk Mahoney, and today's episode is titled Buddhism and Creativity.
This episode will be a little bit of a freestyle. The last couple episodes I've had a bit of a agenda that I follow .
I want to come into this conversation with you from a place of stillness, from a place of. No agenda and I wanna see what happens. So thanks for joining this creative experiment with me.
My talks are edited, usually in between what I'm saying there is long pauses quiet, where I sit with what I'm about to say or allow what I'm about to say to come up. You may not actually hear it in the edited recordings, but there's a lot of space in between.
What I say,
Through stillness. We're able to connect with the source of creativity through life. Creative ideas don't really come from thinking and overthinking something, having a big agenda. What color should I use? What notes should I use? What note goes here? What note goes there?
My proudest creative moments have come from a place of stillness. I listened to a podcast. Joe Rogan interviewed Rick Rub. Rick Rubin is a major producer and he's been on many major records. Everything from, top hiphop albums to, heavy metal to pop. He's done a lot of projects and this is a really inspiring podcast episode . He talked about how a lot of the times the best stuff that he's done has come from a place of letting go and tuning into the creative.
There's a process in recording where you turn on a microphone and you have the song playing through , maybe it's a 4 0 4 thing. Dun it dun, it dun. And over the top. They will start to record and they might just say words of gibberish like, Yeah, you, I been new, often falling.
You record over the top of the song as many times as you want. These are all recorded in their own separate takes where you could go back and listen to each individual one. From this process, you go in and you start to notice real words that you started.
In that thing that I just did, I said a lot of gibberish, but then maybe I said, taken down you, and so they start to pick out these actual words or they start to say, Well, what did that sound like? It could have said. From that they write these lyrics sometimes these lyrics turn out to be powerful, profound, and inspired , many people think, , to write something like that or to create something of meaning, I have to use my brain, I have to really think about it.
I have to overthink it and I have to apply all this mind energy to creating something. What I'm finding and a lot of other creatives are finding is that when they tap into the stream of creativity in their art amazing inspired moments happen.
From stillness, we may create something or we may not, in this age of. So much being created, so much being made, so much noise. Someone being quiet and holding that space for a time is a greater gift.
The most creative, ingenious people that we hold on high pedestals talk about their greatest ideas coming to them in moments of rest the space in between thinking. It was Einstein that would talk about some of the greatest ideas he ever had coming to him. Between that moment of sleep and waking
He would have this big flash of insight of creativity that would hit him in that moment when the thinking mind quieted down enough to. The subconscious or life's creativity, whatever you wanna call it, come through with a breakthrough
We talked about hustle culture a few episodes back, this has a lot to do with where our creativity is now as a society, I notice a lot of stuff is very algorithmic, people say, Oh, well I like all the music except country. But if you listen to country today, how different is it than pop?
How different is it than mainstream rock? When you really get down into the nitty gritty of the mechanics of what's going on in the music, you have the same instruments, guitar, bass, drums, maybe a synthesizer or a sample, and a. Well, that's all the same. Then you have mostly the same parts. You have intro verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, chorus.
There may be some differences between songs. Some songs don't have a pre chorus, but, okay. Pretty much the same instruments, the same song structures, everybody's singing in English, at least in American Top 50 Music. A lot of songs are about love or the loss of love. Okay, that's pretty much the same.
Well then what really differentiates pop from country these days or country from rock, the lines are becoming more and more blurred, a lot of this comes down to record companies tuning into the songs that people get hooked on, the songs that people will play over and over, or the songs that get stuck in people's head.
There's chemistry that's in this music, the pop song structure,
Many times I've likened it to you fast food. A regular burger, you make on the barbecue, you flip over a couple times, you put some garlic, salt and pepper on it, and you toast the bun, throw some cheese on and some ketchup. It's delicious.
And you go to McDonald's, you order a burger, and you eat it. And is it good? Is it good? Is it, is it addicting? Is it what's going on inside? Is it satisfying, like a burger? From the barbecue or is there something else going on in there? Is it this chemical level attraction?
You can only answer that for yourself, many times when I eat fast food, I get that sense. I'm like, this like firing certain triggers in my. That, make me want more of it. It has high sodium, high fat , carbs and it has a certain flavor profile that, , it's not really any depth to it, but it definitely is quote unquote good.
So I've compared this to music a lot of the times. , the producers record labels and just everyday musicians have started to lock. These addictive qualities. Like in fast food you have high sodium, fat and carbs. And so in music, a lot of the people tuning into that are like, Oh, okay, well, people like love songs.
Okay, we're gonna do a love song. Oh, people really like, This pop song structure, which we've talked about. Verse chorus. Verse chorus, bridge chorus. People like songs in this Beats per minute. People like four. Four, while all these popular songs are in four. Four, Okay, great. Okay. People like a male singer kind of in the mid range.
A lot of the songs will follow this algorithm and you could lay two songs next to each other and look at the commonalities between them, whether it's in two very different genres like top chart rock or Top chart country. It's pretty much the same shit.
Saying all this, I'm talking about creativity and connecting with stillness and a deeper part of ourselves, a deeper part of life, where that creativity comes from . The creativity will be hindered the more that we enslave ourselves to the algorithm that already exists.
Whatever type of art we're doing, whether that's visual, art, music architecture, we aren't creating something original that is connected with the mind of God or if that term scares you the creativity of life that is always changing. You look out there and it's like how many different types of birds are out there that have existed in time that exist now?
Well man, you can create that many variations of a winged animal. Some of them fly, some of them don't, some have colors that we can't see, but apparently other birds can see. Life is this grand display of creativity all these different variations, we'd be much better off as a culture, as a society if our musicians, artists, photographers, architecture people practiced this present moment, awareness, connecting with stillness, connecting with the source of life before they create.
Have you heard of Dolly Two or Mid Journey? These are visual AI assistants where they take prompts from the person, you or me that's sitting at the computer and you could type in Buddha sitting in Misty clouds above futuristic city, red, black, detailed, HD painted sky.
I've played with this for a couple months now, and it's unbelievable what the AI is able to create, especially mid journey, it's can be scary. I'm glad I didn't go to school to be a visual artist because this is just insane. The amount of art that you can come up with, with this thing is beyond what any human could come up with in the same amount.
For musicians, there's AI and music.
Capital Records signed virtual AI rapper FN Mecca. So AI is starting to enter the creative realm, and it starts to push people to ask, , what's creativity then if AI is able to be quote unquote creative what does that mean about my own creativity? Eventually the AI's gonna get so good at doing what I already do.
In music, you're doing the intro verse, pre chorus, chorus, algorithm. Now the AI's doing that and it's doing it better than I could do. It's writing better love songs than I can write. It's playing better traditional chord structures than I can write.
So what happens to me as a musician? What's the point?
The most valuable thing in art going forward as the AI does become more prevalent, is the human aspect of connecting with the flow of creativity in life. God, mind or stillness connecting with that and then creating something that hasn't.
Made as much, I'm not gonna say never been heard before because a lot has been done already, but creating a variation of something that hasn't really been heard as much, hasn't been around as much. A sound that hasn't had the opportunity to be in life as much. This will become the most valuable thing for artists, whether they're visual, audio, or.
I don't know, food. I, I don't know if AI will ever get involved with food,
Have you ever heard someone talk about, Oh man, I had this idea five years ago, or three years ago, or three months ago and I didn't do it and now this guy's done it.
That's because these ideas exist outside of us. This is the universe communicating these ideas that it wants to exist in the world. Some people are more receptive to them some people have more means and abilities to. Execute these ideas.
Look at, John Colt tree and her Miles Davis they recorded these monumental albums like John Coltrane's Giant Steps, or Miles Davis kind blue.
These albums stand out as huge artistic achievements. Revered for being the most creative, brilliant sessions . They went into this with a set of guidelines, different musical changes but a lot of it was riffing off the top.
John Coltrain, saxophone solos, those came out of this huge burst to creativity of present moment, awareness and moving with the music flowing from that place of creativity.
John Coltrain, Miles Davis in the whole session group were some of the most accomplished musicians practicing their craft to the highest ability.
Talking about the other side. There's a concept called outsider music. Outsider music is music made by people that are not very skilled as musicians. Outsider music is this genre or concept of musicians that created things from , a naive standpoint, not knowing much about music or structure.
One great example being the Shags three sisters, their dad got this reading as a young man and the woman had told him, the one that was giving him the reading, said, Hey, you're gonna get married to a redheaded woman and something else is gonna happen and then you're gonna have three daughters.
These three daughters are gonna become world famous musicians. They're gonna write a really , important record. Apparently he ended up marrying a red-headed woman and then this other thing came to pass, and then he ended up having three daughters. He had 'em practice pretty strictly for. A short amount of time. And then he put 'em in the studio and the recording technician was like, Hey, hey dad. These kids are not ready to record an album. The dad insisted that this had to happen
recorded this album called Philosophy of the World. Some major artists, accomplished musicians, heard this thing and were like, this is it. This is next level. This is so inspiring, so profound.
There's something about that raw creativity that's there. That hearkens back to us as musicians, our early days playing an instrument and that fun playing with your friends. It's something deeper, them being naive in a sense, not knowing a whole lot. It allowed something more real to come through in the music.
I appreciate you stopping in and going along with me on this experiment
I hope you have a wonderful week, and I look forward to talking to you next time. Bye.
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One day I offered a number of children, a basket filled with tangerines. The basket was passed around and each child took one tangerine and put it in his or her palm.
We each looked at our tangerine, and the children were invited to meditate on its origins. They saw that not only their tangerine, but also its mother, the tangerine tree, with some guidance, they began to visualize the blossoms in the sunshine and in the rain. They saw petals falling down and the tiny fruit appear.
The sunshine and the rain continued, and the tiny tangerine. Now someone has picked it and the tangerine is here. After seeing this, each child was invited to peel the tangerine slowly noticing the mist and the fragrance of the tangerine, and then bring it up to his or her mouth and have a mindful bite in full awareness of the texture and taste of the fruit and the juice coming out.
We ate slowly like that. Tick not.
Welcome to the Imperfect Buddhist, where we discuss present moment awareness and incorporating Zen principles into modern life. My name is Matthew Hawk Mahoney, and today's episode is titled buddhism and food soothing.
My wife and I. Just got back yesterday evening from a trip up to Nashville, Tennessee and Asheville, North Carolina. We spent a couple days in Tennessee with her sister and we did the tourist stuff. Rode one of those buses around and saw the different music history site. So we went to the Pathon, which is a replica of the Pathon in Greece.
I got to see some really historic locations for country music. We went down Music Row, which is interesting because it's like these houses that pretty much like their original studio. There was a house that someone had bought and then used to start recording music, and then someone else came along and bought a house next door so on, so forth.
And you ended up with all. Residential houses starting to be used as studios, so it's interesting. You drive down through there, you're going through a neighborhood, but it's where nationally, worldwide release music is being written and recorded.
Asheville, North Carolina. Right now it's October 17th and the trees are at their peak. Most of the trees, desiduous trees, leaves are changing, so there's orange yellow and browns mountains of these trees. It's just so beautiful
Something else that comes along with vacation is I'm out of my normal.
Routines and it's like, Oh, do you want to go eat Taco Bell or, Where do you wanna eat today?
It's, it's very food centric because you're traveling around and there's all these exciting foods to eat and try.
And so we got home yesterday and I'm noticing my heart is feeling like my literal heart and not, some, not in the spiritual sense. My heart, no, my, my literal heart there's a tightness and then like a little bit of a pinching feeling and it's got me a little bit concerned.
Starting to think about my diet choices on the trip and also leading up to the trip.
Really got me thinking about diet and food and my relationship to food. My wife and I have been talking about doing Whole 30, so it's been on my mind a bit. I've been reflecting on my relationship to food from a young age , my dad would, sit downstairs on his leather chair with the 49ers game on and he'd have chips and salsa.
He'd be dipping a chip in the salsa and popping in his mouth and going, going, going maybe a bag of night. Of course we would sit with him and watch shows and eat chips and salsa. And then my mom, same thing, she would have the TV on and she'd be putting some type of food in her mouth or drinking something.
That's, where we were raised , we'd be watching a movie or something and mom, Oh, you want some ice cream? And so you have some ice cream and you're watching tv and being raised that way. And then all through my teenage years pop in the pizza rolls and the microwave and sit down in front of the TV and eat.
It was TV and food
reflecting on it, it's a
dreamlike experience. There's not a whole lot going on with the
managerial side of my brain. The food's going in, the TV's, images are going by and. I'm in it, but I'm not really aware of what's going on. And so that's how me and my sister were raised or raised around that. And then, hanging out with my grandpa in, my early twenties going over there.
He had the chips and dip thing going on and some type of food while he was watching tv. It was just normal. This seems to be passed on , generationally.
It's such an ingrained habit in my life that it does seem daunting to do something different.
And I don't think it's that
abnormal from what a lot of people in our culture experience or what their relationship is with food. I remember growing up with friends and it's , yeah, you get, you know, your snacks and you sit down and watch movies or TV seems kind of normal. Part of our American society could be part of other societies.
Goes back to conversation I had with Cocke a few weeks ago during one of our meetings. He had mentioned asking if, you know, if you can become aware before you dive into whatever that behavior is.
Whether it's, turning on the tv, you're looking at your phone, or grabbing bowl of chips and sitting down on the couch with the tv, seeing if you can check in with yourself and. examine what's going on inside , where is this behavior coming from? Is it coming from a place of avoidance, trying to avoid something, trying to dull something?
There's nothing wrong with chips and tv.
It's okay to unplug and relax, especially with. Chaotic and busy our world is, it makes sense why people would be drawn towards
Shutting down, the, the prefrontal cortex, the the thinking mind and dulling experience a little bit, putting our attention into some other fantasy world.
So there's a little bit of the. Compassionate side for myself and other people, when our health starts to become jeopardized, like me, where my heart is like, Oh, what are you doing man? And , I'm starting to get a little bit of a belly , a lot of emotional stuff, from sitting in front of the TV and, and using food to soo.
Our emotions a lot, a lot of negative can come from that. So when you start to experience that,
it's an opportunity to start asking some questions.
This is an area of my life that , has kind of gone unexamined. For all my life, because it was normal and in some ways it's normal in a lot of families, so it's not something that you can really quote unquote, have a problem with or most people have a problem with. It's gone onto the radar, but being more aware in general, I do notice that the attention and awareness and spirituality seem to just go, bam. They're just gone.
Some people really suffer with extreme food addiction and eating disorders. A lot of people, depending on how you look at our use of food in society now, maybe even have a mild food disorder.
My relationship to food is
Auto Transcribe/ Please Excuse Errorsa bit detached. Quite a really detached . In my early twenties I was a vegetarian I'd done that for multiple reasons. I was a vegetarian for I think, two or three years went through some experiences where, I was hungry and there was meat on the table I was like, Yeah, I should probably, I should probably eat.
That's how it was reintroduced. I did feel better. I actually noticed there was some cognitive and energy benefits to having some animal protein then all bets were off. I went back to eating whatever meat was around buying meat, ground beef. Not, not too much pork usually.
Chicken of course, fish, all that.
It's not really something I've thought much about over the last six or seven years. Amanda and I, on our trip, we were driving to a hiking location and we saw a couple cattle trailers . We were pulled next to one of the cattle trailers and we looked over and see all this poop coming up out of the cracks of this trailer.
We're sitting in our car, in traffic next to this cattle trailer, and there's a little opening I look over and I see this big eye with long eyelashes, brown looking out right at me. And it was a cow. And I just sensed, this connection with the animal, like you would with a dog or a cat, or pet, that there's this being in there.
There's a spirit. And I'm not getting too biblical or spiritual, but you know, that there's a, there's a presence in that animal that is experiencing life too to whatever degree. It just hit me, all this blind consumption that I'd been doing of, buying ground beef or buying steaks and this consumers mindset.
Like, Oh, let's go down. Outback and have a steak. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Real fun. Of course I love steak. Who doesn't love steak? But I just had that recognition that there was a disconnection with the food, where the food was coming from and potentially the suffering that is involved in that food. I do believe that humans are designed to eat animal protein.
But doesn't feel natural to be so disconnected from the food or the meat that we eat, that we just are, We don't recognize the suffering involved
I looked at Amanda and I was like, you know, what are we, should we be done with red meat? Opportunistic in a sense where we're, we're not gonna buy it unless it's from a source that takes care of the animal involved.
We don't think that there's anything inherently wrong with consuming meat, but the suffering that's involved, especially in these animals, like a cow consumerism, pushing for smaller containers, cheaper foods. More packed traveling conditions inhumane slaughter, things like that. It's a matter of do I want to be involved with that? That's another level of awareness. When it comes to food.
In a lot of ways, we're very disconnected. Where our food comes from, how and when we consume . It seems rare that Amanda and I choose to sit at the table over sitting at the couch, I'm sure that's the, the case for a lot of people after a busy day, 40 hour week, you know, eight hour workday and being so bombarded with people.
Customer service. I know a lot of you are caught in customer service, jobs, face to face interaction. It's almost feels like the last thing you wanna do is sit down at the table and talk to another person, even if that person is your husband or wife or roommate or partner. And so we're, as a society, pushed to.
Be detached in a way. Our systems are kind of so overloaded with stuff coming in, ads, people
that we do just want to shut down the thinking part of ourself, the part of ourselves that makes decisions and, Needs to navigate the complicated emotions of other people.
This is a new area of practice for me, an area where I'm looking to reclaim some of my humanity and some of my awareness. It's gonna be a little bit of a journey and maybe. This part of a Multier episode. Right now this is phase zero where I'm becoming aware of the lack of awareness on my part.
Becoming a aware of the patterns that have been set from such a young age. So this will be an experiment. It's gonna be interesting cuz I don't know if I've ever worked on something that I've taken part in since, as long as I can remember. As young as I was able to put food in my mouth and watch tv.
This has been a thing that I've been doing, so it will be interesting. It's going to be exploratory. I'm thinking I'm gonna end this one here soon, since I don't really have much headway on it when it comes to our spiritual lives and food soothing, since I'm still learning about it.
But, That's what the imperfect Buddhist is all about. It's about me saying, Hey, I suck at this thing. Sometimes . And maybe making you feel a little bit less alone if it's something that you experience as well. So we can kind of walk this path together, that we can learn about what it means to bring presence and zen principles.
Things that they would practice in a monastic environment into our daily lives. What, is the, kernel of the monastic practices that we can kind of translate into our modern American life. my plan, I'm gonna try a couple things. I am considering when I have a meal, just set a timer for like three minutes. At the beginning of each meal , and set aside that time to just be mindful of the food that I'm eating.
The bites, the flavor, the temperature, the smell maybe where the food came from. And reflecting on that as I eat for at least three minutes. And maybe that would get the ball rolling
ignite some embers of awareness and I might be naturally drawn towards enjoying the food in that way instead of forcing myself to the rest of the time. But that's just an idea. , we will see. Another thing that I have, I really enjoyed that. Something you might wanna try. At the beginning of this podcast, I had read something Fromt Han about how he did these tangerine meditations with young kids.
I've done the same, you know, I bought those cutie small little oranges from the produce section
Tangerines. Like you would with any other meditation you set some time aside, quiet place or wherever you are, and be mindfully aware. As you peel the tangerine, you smell it, you could see like the little spray or droplets that come out as you peel the skin away Feel it in your hand. And then you could, tear one off, put it in your mouth, feel the texture, bite into it, and allow the juice and flavor in your mouth to permeate, really experience it and just be, bring as much attention as you can to that flavor and that food
I have noticed feelings of ecstasy doing that. Like, whoa, this. Really powerful and significant, and was actually one of the more profound meditation experiences I've had. Now that I'm talking about it, There's something, it's, it's as maybe you've noticed in your practice when you sit down, a lot of people think like, Whoa, I'm sitting here with my eyes closed.
It's just dark. But as you actually sit, you start to notice these depth. Of worlds that exist within you, within anything that actually receives your attention. If you're an artist, you know this as well, where you start to really pay attention to music or songwriting. And as you, you put more attention into it, you realize, wow, there's this whole world that can exist in, a couple moments within a song.
And so our food is the same way that there's, there's actually a true depth to the food. There's there's so much there to experience and in my current habitual way of experiencing food, it's very surface level.
I'm gonna explore that a bit and I'll, I'll report back maybe in a couple episodes on how it's going. So let's round out this episode with three minutes of present moment awareness meditation. You don't have to be sitting to do this necessarily. You could be at your work at your computer maybe you're shelving books, working at a bookstore, putting away milk cartons on a grocery store shelf, or, waiting for your next client to show up at the.
Auto Transcribe/ Please Excuse ErrorsBut let's take three minutes and become present wherever we are. See if we can notice our breath. Notice the sounds around us, the people around us, whatever the present moment sensations brings to us. Let's see if we can witness those things without judgment and seeing them with a sense of beginner's mind.
So let's start.
All right. Well, thanks for joining me on today's episode and I look forward to talking with you next time. Take.
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what is this word? Efficiency. Sometimes it seems a close cousin to death. We are encouraged not to linger, not to enjoy life, to hurry up and get done. So we'll have time for something else. Something else. What efficiency is a destroyer? Millions upon millions of living dead done in by the electric can opener and the automobile progress is our most important product. Babies are our business. Time is money. Life is cheap. Modern technology, modern business, the modern state, gives us everything we need except breathable air, drinkable water, edible food, meaningful work, freedom from fear, freedom to love.
Freedom to be ourselves. Courage, pride, friendship, hope, the moral of the story is don't be in such a hurry. Beware, creeping efficiency. Slow down and live.
Paul Williams DOS Energy.
Welcome to the Imperfect Buddhist, where we discuss present moment awareness and incorporating Zen principles into modern. My name is Matthew Hawk Mahoney, and today's episode is titled Buddhism and Hustle Culture.
Maybe you're a musician, maybe you're a photographer, a painter, Maybe you're someone that repairs shoes, you know, a Cobb.
Maybe you run a daycare or maybe you work at an office building and you post pictures of your latest food adventures.
Maybe you've heard of this concept of having to post on Instagram or Facebook a certain amount of times in a week or a day to stay.
As a musician, maybe you've heard the concept of writing and releasing songs once a month. Singles albums seem to be dead.
. Maybe you've been asked, Hey, What's your side hustle as if it's just a normal thing, a prerequisite to you being a modern American .
Maybe you've watched Gary V on YouTube.
Where he talks about hustle culture and grinding ,
his energetic caffeinated personality and voice coming through the speakers urging you to hustle, hustle harder. You gotta really want it. If you wanna make it
are we allowed to enjoy the present moment?
Auto Transcription/Please Excuse ErrorsWithout worrying about how much time we're wasting, how much money we might be potentially losing, how many leads we may be missing out on. I mean, hey, we worked 40 hours already. Is it okay for us to enjoy the weekend? Is it okay for us to enjoy the hours after work? Is it okay if we only post a picture on social media when we feel so inclined to all those questions will be answered in this episode of the imperfect Buddhist
Hustle culture as a concept actually goes further than social media or side businesses it also bleeds a little bit into success overall in life where. People start to feel like we're being left behind by the pack. Oh no, this person hustled and got this college degree working after hours after they left their nine to five, this person got his real estate license outside of work .
This person selling handmade hats on Etsy, on their off hours. What am I doing wrong? What's wrong with me?
It can extend into things like having a nicer car. The concept of keeping up with the Joneses, .
I know at times I've felt
the push as a musician . That I need to be pushing out a song every so often that if I don't put out something once a month and post at least every other day on my social media, I'll become irrelevant.
I've felt that pressure watching any YouTube video about. What it takes to be successful in the music industry. Of course, they will tell you post often and share music often. Put out a song every month, have a monthly release schedule 12 songs a year.
The idea of content creation. Sickens me at this point. It's like, let's just create content. I want to create content, content, content. Do we need more content?
And maybe even a little bit with this imperfect Buddhist podcast. I know that all the statistics would say, Okay, post often, post, regularly hustle. Get that episode done on the weekend, hustle, post it on every Wednesday morning at 5:30 AM
Rigorous content creation when it comes to art, music, or any creative endeavor can choke the life out of the creativity. It pushes people into algorithmic pieces of art and music. To repeat what they've already said artistically.
Overall, it's not a good thing for the depth of creativity to be pushed to be on this schedule of pumping out noise.
On the other hand, some of the most famous artists, when you look at their body of work, they are profoundly prolific, A lot of art coming out, a lot of music coming out, and sometimes you only know 10 out of the 150 songs that they've worked on recorded.
My kid's coming in to say hi. Hey kitty baby. Come here. A little kitty baby.
Say hi, kitty. Say hi. The people in the mic. Come on, say hi. Say hi.
That was her mad at me meow.
I think hustle culture adds a new layer to. Some of the feelings of guilt that people experience in our culture when it comes to how much money they make, what kind of car they drive, how nice of a house they live in, or apartment they live in. Are they living at their parents? It adds to the layer of comparison.
When you start to come back to your true identity, which can be reclaimed through different practices, some people use prayer, meditation, present moment awareness. Mantras. When you start to encounter your true identity, which is the awareness that is experiencing this life, the more you let go of
identifying with the thoughts in your mind, which include hustle, culture, jealousy of what others have attained in their life. You come back to the fact that you are a playful awareness that is experiencing this life. Recognizing yourself and the world around you in life, and you recognize that this life is a big game , ultimately things only have meaning when we give them meaning.
Auto Transcription/Please Excuse ErrorsThat you reclaim joy in realizing that
these are all electrons dancing around and playing a game called American Society, or playing a game of South American society or whatever country you're from. These electrons, these atoms are moving around. And create human bodies and trees and cars and streets and houses, and the idea of hustle culture.
So we have this
fantastic array of life moving around us, we realize that we have the freedom to. Disidentify with the unhelpful thoughts, disidentify with the unhelpful perspective, and we come back to the reality that we're on a planet floating through space,
infinite blackness and light, and isn't that amazing?
So we come back to the reality of who we truly are and what life really is. We reclaim a playfulness. In our life.
When we reclaim our power, And we realize that life is not as constrained or simplistic and black and white as our culture or people in our culture would have us believe. We have the ability to choose how we wanna be in our life.
Because sometimes it's better. To share the works of others that have said things much better than I can ever say them. Wanna share an article from a website called ALifeinprogress.canada.ca by a woman named Krista O'Reilly Davi Diu.
Titled, What If All I Want is a Mediocre Life? What if All I Want is a small, slow, simple life? What if I am most happy in a space of in between where calm lives, What if I'm mediocre and choose to be at peace with that? The world is such a noisy place.
Auto Transcription/Please Excuse ErrorsLoud haranging voices lecturing me to hustle, to improve, build, strive, yearn, acquire, compete, and grasp for more, for bigger and better sacrifice. Sleep for productivity. Strive for excellence. Go big or go home. Have a huge impact in the world. Make your life count. But what if I just don't have that in me?
What if all the striving for excellence leaves me sad, worn out, depleted, drained of joy? Am I simply not enough? What if I never really amount to anything when I grow up beyond mom and sister and wife? But these people in my primary circle of impact know they are loved and that I would choose them again, given the choice, can this be enough?
Auto Transcription/Please Excuse ErrorsWhat might happen if I decide that I am enough and that this imperfect and beautiful mediocre life of mine is good enough? What if I never build an orphanage in Africa, but send bags of groceries to people here and there and support a couple of kids through sponsor? What if I just offer the small gifts I have to the world and let that be enough?
What if I don't wanna write a cookbook or build a six figure business or speak before thousands, but I write because I have something to say and I invest in a small community of women and care about and encourage them to love and care for themselves as well. Because bigger isn't always better and the individual matters.
She is enough. What if I just accept this mediocre body of mine that is neither big or. Just in between and I embrace that I have no desire to work for rock hard abs or 18% body fat, and I make peace with all of it and decide that when I lie on my deathbed, I will never , regret having just been me, take me or leave me.
What if I am a mediocre home manager who rarely dusts and mostly maintains order and makes real food, but sometimes buys pizza, and who is horrified at moments by the utter mess in some areas of my home who loves to menu, plan and budget, but then breaks her own rules and pushes back against rigidity?
Who doesn't care about decorating and fancy things, whose home is humble but safe? What if I'm not cut out for the frantic pace of this society? It could not even begin to keep up and see so many others with what appears to be boundless energy and stamina, but know that I need tons of solitude and calm, an abundance of rest and swaths of unscheduled time in order to be healthy body, mind, spiritual health.
Am I enough? What if I'm too religious for some and not spiritual enough for others? Not evangelistic, not bold enough, yet willing to share in quiet ways and genuine relationship. My deeply rooted faith, and in my doubts and insecurities, this will have to be enough.
And if I have been married for 21 years and love my husband more today than yesterday, but never had a fairytale romance and break the expert's marriage rules about doing a ton of activities together and having a bunch in common, and we don't, and we like time apart and time together, is our marriage good enough?
What if I am a mom who delights in her kids but needs time for herself and sometimes just wants to be first and doesn't like to play, but who hugs and affirms and supports her kids and their passions. A mediocre mom who can never live up to her own expectations of good enough, let alone yours.
What if I embrace my limitations and stop railing against? Make peace with who I am and what I need and honor your right to do the same. Except that all I really want is a small, slow, simple life, a mediocre life, a beautiful, quiet, gentle life.
I think it is enough.
Auto Transcription/Please Excuse ErrorsLet's take three minutes and practice present moment awareness. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing. See if you can bring your attention to this moment and notice what's going on around you. Sounds emotions inside, sensations on your skin.
Notice what's to be noticed and see if you can root your attention and awareness in the present moment. Let's start.
All right. Thank you for stopping in and I look forward to talking with you next time. I hope you have the most excellent of weeks till next time. Bye bye.
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Our view of reality is like a map with which to negotiate the terrain of life. If the map is true and accurate, we will generally know where we are and if we have decided where we want to go, we will generally know how to get. If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will be lost.
While this is obvious, it is something that most people, to a greater or lesser degree choose to ignore. They ignore it because our route to reality is not easy. First of all, we are not born with maps. We have to make them, and the making requires effort. The more effort we make to appreciate and perceive reality, the larger and more accurate our maps will be, but many do not want to make this effort.
Some stop making it by the end of adolescence. Their maps are small and sketchy. Their views of the world narrow and misleading.
By the end of middle age, most people have given up the effort. They feel certain their maps are complete and they are no longer interested in new information. It is if they are tired, only a relative and fortunate few continue until the moment of death exploring the mystery of reality ever enlarging and refining and redefining their understanding of the world and what is true.
M Scott Pick.
Welcome to the imperfect Buddhist. Where we discuss present moment awareness and incorporating Zen principles into modern life. My name is Matthew Hawk Mahoney, and today's episode is titled Buddhism and Maps of Meaning.
I've had a couple of experiences recently that have pushed me to talk a little bit about maps of meaning and how we navigate our. The way that we label our world as we move through it how that can differ from how other people have overlaid the different experiences of life with different meanings.
Maps and how we associate with the world and what it means
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can really create a lot of struggle between mother and son, father and daughter, best friends, enemies, lovers, all because of how we interpret. The
chaos of life. The different meanings we can assign to a certain look someone gives us when we tell them a joke. We're really excited for them to hear.
When we give someone a gift, how they say Thank you. This could all mean very different things for different people.
I moved to Florida and started working at this grocery store. After working there for a year, we hired a kid at the time he was a kid named Daniel. And we started hanging out and talking. He was into some of the same philosophies as me, a little bit more yoga, it was cool. So we connected on that.
We connected on music . We had both stopped working there. We continued to hang out and he mentioned to me, he was like, Hey, I'm going down to this Michael Singer talk. And I was like, What? What do you mean Michael Singer talk? He's like, Yeah, dude. He has a teaching center here in Florida. It's called the Temple of the Universe.
I was pretty surprised. I didn't know that. It kind of peaked my interest. It'd be cool to hear this guy talk. Flash forward about a. We plan out to go down on a Sunday we leave Jacksonville around 7:30 AM and make our way down to outside of Gainesville. And it's beautiful.
The temple's out in the countryside and you drive a winding road probably 10, 15 minutes off the highway and then you take another right turn down, another more narrow. Road and then a left onto a dirt road, and the dirt road turns onto this paved road that you follow, that winds its way up to this temple that I think it was built.
Don't quote me on this, but it looks like it's a little bit older. Maybe it was built in the eighties or the late seventies, early nineties. And so we get there and it's this wilderness retreat center. it's almost like you're hiking. Through a forest and you come upon this retreat center, we park the car and we make our way up to this building all these shoes are out front.
We take off our shoes and we come inside. It's very quiet maybe 25 or 30 people sitting. Most of them cross-legged in the meditation hall . This is about 30 minutes before the talk is supposed to start. Very, very similar to most retreats or meditation centers, if you've ever been to one.
There's a collective quiet maybe it's a little bit expected or appreciated. So you dive into that we sat quietly for a while there's a period of singing. That I wasn't as familiar with, wasn't necessarily used to or comfortable with at first. It's sending praise to the different awakened teachers as some would say. Some people believe that there are different awakened beings that have lived such as Jesus Krishna Aah, Buddha.
So in some traditions they look to all of these figures as beacons of enlightenment, truth and awakening. there Was this long mantra, like singing Budda, Budda. And then, then there were some other lyrics that went along with that. Like, I will sing your name. Get all drunk on your name.
Budda, Budda, Budha. And do that maybe two or three times through. And then it would be like, Get it all drunk on your name. Jesus. Jesus, Jesus say. So it felt a little bit different, Little bit different than what, I'm used to, My wife was there along with my friend Daniel. And Michael Singer is playing a Casio electronic keyboard, pounding out some chords.
It felt a little bit foreign at first. I just started getting into it, letting go into the singing, and I, it was enjoyable. I felt good. I do orient myself towards the.
Awakened life of these people that were sung about, that they could be a beacon and be a point of, hope for people. And so I can align myself with that and it felt good to fall into it. My wife who deals with pmdd, which is Premenstrual Dysphoria Disorder
she has a very harsh dip of certain chemicals in her brain during this time, and so she tends to get much more irritated than she normally would, and she has a hard time with repetition already. So this singing of. The different holy names and songs started to drive her a little crazy. So she got up and left the talk.
He finished with the singing and Michael started his talk. His talk was about the different waves of life that life has, these different experiences, different things that come.
That if you could imagine life being like a lake, Sometimes that lake has waves on the top of it. Sometimes it's clear and still, but those waves are the experiences of life. They could be emotions, thoughts, people, actions of those people. And those are all a part of the same lake, but they're a wave. The wave is still a part of the lake.
And so his talk was about fighting these waves fighting. The manifestations of life. internally what that looks like is holding onto an experience of life, one of the waves and holding onto it. Whether it's, I don't want this to happen, so I'm gonna push this wave back and fight it from rising and falling back into the ocean. And all that does is keeps that wave alive longer. Or there's, I'm gonna hold onto this wave, I'm gonna hold onto it.
I wanna keep it alive. This is who I am, this is what I believe. That was the gist of his talk.
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Finishes talk, and Daniel and I decided to get up and look for Amanda. Head out. We got up and there was a decent amount of people up and stirring around and we put our shoes on. And as we started to walk out, I was like, Man, I have to pee. There's a lot of people in there.
So we started walking and we found Amanda, she was laying on a bench out in this large clearing that they had made in the forest. There was a big clearing . I approached her, I was like, Oh, hey babe. And you know, checked in with her, everything was fine. I was like, I gotta pee. I went to the edge of this clearing, big wooded area and peed.
Took a pee, relieved myself, took a piss. And there was a little bit of like, Oh man, I hope, nobody sees me or hope this doesn't disturb anybody. But there really wasn't much thought to it. I felt like I was out in the woods and there was a big clearing and there was an edge of the clearing, and so I had to go pee. And so I turned around and I started walking back towards Amanda and Daniel and the car.
I saw that during the talk someone had set up a table of books on the table there was a book by Parra Hanza Yoga Nanda, which was serendipitous cuz I had talked with Daniel a bit about Yoga Nanda on the way down to the talk. I picked it up. I was like, Daniel, this is the guy I was talking about.
As soon as I pick it up I hear, Go wash your fucking hands. I didn't even realize who, who he was talking to. And then I realized it was me. Cause I had just gone pee . And I was like, Oh. And I set the book down and I looked up and there was an attendant, the person that was watching over the table
Browse fled. Pretty serious looking at me I was shocked. Taken aback, and I was genuinely said . That's interesting. I had seen this gentleman in the talk where we were talking about the waves of life coming in, passing through us and. We fight these different waves, how we try to push back against what is coming our way.
Or we pick out a wave and say, That wave, I don't like that wave. Fuck that wave . And I just thought it was just really an interesting juxtaposition between the talk and what had just happened. Then the realization hit.
I was like, Whoa. I started to look around and I was like, Oh, here's what the other guy saw from his map. Guy comes out, comes onto what's considered holy land or a place of practice where people come and try to relax and do recreation, and he went over to the edge of this area and took a. And then he walked over and picked up the book, and maybe it wasn't the fact that he didn't wash his hands, but hey, this is not right.
This is a sacred place for us. This guy's coming out here and he's peeing.
And oh, Michael Singer is still in there doing a silent meditation, and this guy left before. So, you know what? Fuck this wave, Fuck this guy. Not gonna happen. And so that hit me in that moment that, wow, I am just totally not seeing or mis perceiving how other people may perceive this map. My map was like, Hey, we are out in the woods
I have to. So I went Pee
I was like, Wow. And it was an opportunity for me to let go and to not be reactive. Luckily I felt. Some letting go in that moment, and I didn't see it as an attack.
We all have these maps that we use to navigate our world. We have these maps of how we act at work. We have maps of how we are in relationships. We have maps of what is okay to bring up in a conversation or not okay to bring up in a conversation. We have maps about where it's okay to go pee and where it's not okay to go pee.
We are all navigating our world with maps, and maps are fine. We need maps for. Because maps allow us to create a set of rules or a set of guidelines, a set of principles that we can all follow to make life more cohesive.
How are the maps formed? The maps are formed by our experiences, by watching other people, by what we read, what we watch on tv, and what we reinforce in our own mind. For instance, our map of marriage might be developed by our parents' marriage. And so my map, if I never make any revisions to it, could be very different than the map of a person who had parents that were lovingly married, Christian, and together and are still together.
My parents. We're lovingly together to a degree from the time I was born until eight or nine, and we moved to Oregon and they bought , motels in southern Oregon and a lot of stress and money, financial issues ensued and there were sides came out, I started to see different levels of abuse and my dad started to retreat into.
Pretty much letting my mom do almost everything sitting back smoking weed sitting in a man cave . And so that was like, okay, that's kind of like my map of marriage. That was my map of relationships. And then the other case would be my friend Ryan who. Again, this is completely from the outside.
I don't know what his, what he saw, what their problems were, you know what the reality is. But from the outside, , raised in the same house, parents still together, lovingly together, very stable home. A lot of focus on him and his sister and their development, it seemed like the parents kept their corals.
Kind of behind closed doors if there were any. And they would talk about things and they were a united front they had a direction that they were going together. So his map of what marriage and relationships could look like if he just left it based on what he experienced, which probably wouldn't be that bad versus mine if I had never done any revisions, where would my marriage be?
So we develop these maps about life based on the experiences we have and the people in our life. When we're growing up. We start to develop
how to navigate the world,
in Budh. There is a concept of beginner's mind, and beginner's mind is a broad concept, but when it comes to maps and how we navigate the world, beginner's mind encourages us to approach situations, people, emotions, and life. With just that a beginner's mind, we let go of some of, or most of the maps in our mind.
We try to be with what's happening and experience it as if it's our first time experiencing it, being present there, witnessing what's happening. And so an antidote to perhaps controlling abusive, destructive angry maps is beginner's. When you see yourself starting to go down that path of , Well, fuck that.
That's not how this is supposed to go. That's not what he's supposed to say. He's supposed to say this, She's supposed to do this. I'm supposed to get this. Things are supposed to go this way. That might be an indicator that this is an opportunity to practice Beginner's mind. Beginner's mind is practiced with present moment awareness, coming back to the present and being with what's happen.
Watching what's happening in our minds bodies and watching all those expectations in our minds go by being present with what's actually happening, the reality of what's happening, the current wave that is coming up out of the clear lake, either we can push back against it or let it move through us.
Beginner's mind will allow us to. Revise our maps to start to see that, oh wait, not everybody is kind. Not everybody is considerate. Not everybody owes me kindness. Not everybody owes me consideration. Not everybody has my best interest in mind. Okay, well this is a revised map. So then now, It's up to you.
How do you want to revise your map? And you could say, Well, not everybody considers me, so you know what? Fuck them. I'm not gonna consider them. That's one revision. I'm not saying it's the best revision. Another revision could be, Not everybody considers me, not everybody is kind to me. Okay, Well then do I choose to be kind in return to who?
Who do I choose to be kind to? Do I show kindness to everyone with no expectation of kindness in return. Only you can answer those questions and it's not a shoe fits all situation. These maps are going to have to be unique to your life experience to what you feel like you can handle. Cuz not everybody can handle showing kindness to everybody to.
That pain and hurt put on them by people they've shown kindness to without, some level of anger or resentment. So we have the opportunity to revise our maps and present moment awareness allows us to disentangle the seriousness with which we place on our old maps and the maps of meaning we've develop.
All right, we are going to practice three minutes of present moment awareness. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, try to bring an awareness to this moment. Hear are the sounds around you,
and just witness whatever needs to be noticed. If you are working on a computer, see if you can step away from the computer and look outside the window and just see what you can see. So let's. Practice for three minutes starting.
All right. Thank you for stopping in. I enjoyed sharing with you some of my mishaps over the last week. I look forward to talking with you next time. All right. Take care.
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VOICE-TO-TEXT TRANSLATION. PLEASE EXCUSE ERRORS.
To see our own mind clearly without being caught up in its movement to watch thought, without trying to do anything with or about it, simply seeing it and letting it go. This is the way to freedom
Welcome to the imperfect Buddhist, where we discussed. Present moment awareness. Applying Zen principles to modern life. My name is Matthew Hawk Mahoney and today's episode is titled Buddhism and screen addiction.
Everybody has a smartphone in their pocket. And if they don't, we wonder what's wrong with them.
The price of big. Screen TVs. They get bigger and bigger. Every year are getting cheaper and cheaper.
New iPhones come out every year with better cameras.
They make special blue blocking glasses now to help protect people's eyes from all the screen.
Increasingly, I see more and more kids at restaurants with little portable TVs that their parents bring along to help keep them distracted.
Five year olds are starting YouTube channels
and eight year olds are starting TikTok.
I'm starting to develop a hump on my neck. Bending over to look at screens too much. I used to make fun of my mom when I was 14 years old for the same thing, rubbing her neck saying, mom, how'd you get this thing?
Teenagers also have these humps on the back of their necks.
A new name is sprouted up for this condition. It's called tech.
I have been working from home for a little over a year. This means I'm on the computer for work 40 plus hours a week. I've really found it challenging to maintain a level of mindfulness
when I'm looking at the computer.
I've really found it challenging , to maintain a level of mindful awareness. I have three monitors. I the laptop screen. On the left side, a computer monitor and on the right side, a computer monitor.
wake up in the mornings and sit at 8:00 AM for about 20 minutes every morning. I try to bring that mindful presence into my Workday. But I notice after looking at the screen for even
10 or 15 minutes, this haze kind of comes over my present moment awareness and I'm sucked into. What's going on on the screens. Maybe this is its own form of flow, but I don't really feel aware of what's going on around me as a more spacious awareness. It's a very pointed area of focus, almost like daydream.
I'll tell myself, I'll say, okay, Matt, like, there's not a lot. You can do about the screen time for work right now. But when you get off work, you can not use your phone. You could not play video games or watch TV with your wife. You have a choice there sometimes I'm successful. But a lot of the times I find myself getting off work or taking a moment away.
The computer work screens to look at my phone, I'll walk away and sit on the couch for a minute and look at my phone. I noticed this dizzy
Sick feeling, but I still continue to scroll through images on Instagram or look at my friends posts.
I'll get a day off on a Saturday, beautiful sunny day. And I'm like, oh man, I have, I don't have to do, I don't have to be on the computer. I don't have to do any of that. What do I wanna do? Oh, I'll play Pokemon. Go for the day and look at my, my phone screen for six hours today while I catch digital Pokemon.
It's kind of an addiction at this point.
I've been having some success lately with present moment awareness and catching myself. Before I get pulled back into the phone or the computer or the TV. I've had moments where I'll deny. Myself that and leave it off and just sit there and listen to the birds outside and the wind running through the autumn leaves or the dog barking down the street.
And I've found moments of peace through this,
but this is still a struggle for me. I'm still finding that. At the end of my 40 hour work week on the computer, I still get on the TV and play a video game, or unfortunately, work on music on my computer. I use software called Ableton to record my music. If I wanna do music, that's gonna be done on the computer as well.
It's a bit of a challenge for me right now.
I brought this up to Cocomo during one of our Sans ends, which is a private meeting with Buddhist teacher. He mentioned to me, he says, if you can catch it before. You pick up the phone turn on the TV or open up the laptop, if you can be with whatever precedes that, like what's the feeling or what's the urge.
Can you be with what you're running away from? So what am I running away from when I open up the phone or, , turn on the TV and what I've found lately? Sometimes it's boredom. There's this level of, I want to be distracted from, whatever's not going on in my environment, working from home, it's somewhat sedentary.
I wouldn't say I get lonely. I can be pretty lone Wolf and be okay in my own space, in my own head, but I do require a level of stimulation and I think. Working from home. I don't get stimulated. Like I would, if I was working in a more in person environment. And so there's that level of wanting to stimulate my brain and have conversations with different pieces of information out there.
Back to the Cocku suggestion, , he said, what are you. Running from, or what's the feeling inside? Are you avoiding a feeling by picking up the technology? Where is it coming from? I've found multiple things through that practice. I've seen that there's a habitual pattern it's almost built in to grab the phone and look at it, an automatic process.
But there are times where I'll actually see this conscious effort I'm making. Avoid something that's going on inside of me or something that I don't wanna think about that I'm avoiding with the.
So I am gaining some traction with the technology abuse.
Sitting for longer periods in the morning for 20 minutes has helped to kickstart my present moment awareness in the day during work hours, when I'm on the computer, I notice I need to break it up into sessions of. Focused face into the computer screen work and stepping away and taking a breath, looking out the window at the trees or playing with my cat.
I've been using a a tomato timer that counts 25 minutes. That 25 minutes is dedicated to focused work. And then five minutes of rest of you can do whatever you want. You could look at your phone, but. As I mentioned, I'm trying to use that five minutes away to just rest my mind.
Rest my eyes, look outside, reconnect with the present moment. After that five minutes, the bell rings and I go back to work for another 25 minutes. You do five cycles of that, and then you take a longer rest period. I tend to just go on lunch at that time. And then I come back.
If I'm not catching myself before I get sucked into the phone or the TV, I am becoming aware as I'm sucked into it. Maybe not even like, stopping what I'm doing, but just feeling what's happening in my body. Like how my eyes are tight and sore. Maybe I have like a headache and I'm witnessing my thumb, pushing up and up and up on Instagram.
seeing that has kind of disgusted me a little bit and turned me off from doing it. In a way that present moment awareness of watching myself do this, it's , oh, wow.
So as you can tell, I'm not an expert on screen addiction. I haven't mastered it yet, but I want to go over a couple of the things that have helped me that may be helpful to.
Sitting in the mornings before you've had a chance to get pulled into the dailies of life like children or your phone or work email. If you can set aside a time in the mornings to be present and come back to the present moment and cultivate that sense of awareness, that's the biggest help I've.
For new habits, you want to attach them to current habits. You have. If you wanna start running for instance, the best way to get this and attach it to your life is to attach it like a Cabo on a train to another habit. So if you want to start running.
You decide, okay, I'm gonna run after I brush my teeth every morning. Cuz brushing your teeth is already an established habit in your life. I hope . So you wake. Maybe you brush your teeth first thing in the morning. So you brush your teeth and you say, okay, now it's time to run and you put your shoes on and you go right out the door and you do that enough times.
You start to attach that habit to the current habit that you have. It doesn't have to be brushing your teeth. It could be any habit that you have. So for me, I attached my meditation to the end of taking a shower in the morning. I wake up, you know, do my three SS. And I dry off and I, put some clothes on and then I sit down and I meditate and I've been sitting for 20 minutes in the mornings.
Some people see really good results with 10 to 12 minutes in the mornings to start.
So one of your best friends will be having a consistent time, hopefully in the mornings that you can come sit down and become present. And use the practices that are available, maybe breath, awareness. It could be mindful awareness of your body, the sensations in your body, the environment around you, you could do a mantra practice, which works for a lot of people.
Having that time in the morning can be really beneficial. Setting aside a space in your home before that practice is also very helpful. That's a place that you return to. That's quiet that you could maybe make beautiful. You could put up pieces of art or flowers or plants. Or pictures of loved ones, and this can be a place that you can come back to every morning and cultivate awareness and cultivating your sense of aliveness.
This present moment , is life. And so you're actually coming back every morning and connecting with life, connecting with the source. When you start that way,
It starts you off in a very positive step forward for the rest of your day. I'll meditate for 20 minutes, eat my breakfast and start work. And then I start to get pulled into the screens of the computer and the phone That meditation time in the morning actually helps me to see , oh, okay. I was feeling pretty.
Okay. Pretty peaceful. All right. With this moment what's going on inside of me. And now I notice there's this tension, there is a dissolving of presence. I start to notice that
Sitting in the mornings and starting off your day with present moment awareness can really help get you on the right track. Now, once you're in your day, taking moments to pause. using that tomato timer where I. I'm just in my work for 25 minutes and then I take five minutes and that's a good time to breathe.
Take my eyes off the screens.
Be with the animals in my life, or be with the people in my life. Look around, look at actual real colors outside the orange leaves and the blue sky.
Hear environmental sounds that aren't produced by a computer speaker or TV. And see if I can come back to that present feeling that I cultivated in the morning
The last suggestion. Which I'm sure you've heard of, but it works for some, and it's worked for me in the past is completely cutting the cord on technology for a set amount of time. That might be all right. Tonight. I am taking the batteries out of my remote controller for my TV, and I have a little box that I've designated as the phone box.
And once I put it in there, I don't touch it for this amount of. You just designate little, no technology time zones, it's an experiment and it can be a challenge it may make you wonder what the heck am I gonna do with my time? Cuz I feel that way. I do sometimes my wife and I will play in these little, no technology evenings.
And I do feel a loss sometimes. I'm like, well, what am I gonna do? And I'm just sitting around twiddling my thumbs, looking out the window and then I'm like, This is actually kind of nice. And then I lay down and I take a little nap it's actually not so bad. It's not so bad to not have my mind going all the time.
And my fingers moving and my eyes staring at a screen.
So if screen addiction is something that you are experiencing, you're not alone. I can say that for sure, because I definitely have screen addiction right now.
You're not alone, but it's not normal. We did not evolve with these screens that present us with ever more pointed ads and pictures and YouTube videos and content. The content is ever being developed to be more interesting and to pull in our attention more and more.
Places like Facebook and YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, they all collect data on what is interesting to us or what pulls our attention for better or for worse.
So you're not really being helped by the technology companies. If you feel like you have a screen addiction, they're built that way. Instagram, Facebook, YouTube TikTok. They are quote unquote free. We don't have to pay with money, but we're paying with our life. We're paying with our attention. Our attention is their commodity.
So being aware of that, we're like, oh, our attention is pretty damn valuable to them cuz they. Doing pretty good in the world economy. They're making pretty good money. They have a lot of investors . They make their money from our attention and that's fine.
It can be very entertaining.
So that's something to be aware of when we are being pulled into technology is not only are we driven to it because we wanna avoid something in our life. Something how we feel, we wanna avoid boredom. We want to be stimulated, whatever it is. We also have that technology ever evolving to pull us in more.
We do have a challenge in front of us. This is gonna feel a little bit awkward during our podcast, but I want wherever you are, if you're working, if you're working in a customer service job of some sort or working from home or listening to this in your car, I want us for the next three minutes to. Be present and let's see if we cannot look at our phones or any type of technology.
So if you're at a computer at work or you're on your phone, flipping through it, while you're listening to this, I would like you to set your phone down or put it in your pocket. I'd like you to step away from the computer and maybe just look out the window. And let's bring our attention back to this moment.
I want you to notice, I just want you to notice whatever jumps out as needing attention in this moment. I want you to see it and witness it. I don't want you to get lost in your head with thinking, but see if you can just bring your attention to this moment. Maybe it's. The way the light breathes moves the green leaves outside of your work window or the way the light shines off your cat.
As she naps in the window, the way her body moves when she breathes, or maybe it's the sound of birds playing outside, or maybe it's the sound of a loud truck outside, or some construction going on down the. So let's do this. This is the imperfect Buddhist challenge, So let's start the timer now for three minutes.
Ready? Let's be present.
So I hope you got something out of.
Maybe that's a point. You don't really get anything out of it, but you come into contact with what you already.
Which reminds me of a analogy that Eckert toll shared in his book. The power of. Says a baker had been sitting by the side of a road for 30 years. One day a stranger walked by spare some change, mumbled the bagger , mechanically holding out his baseball cap.
I have nothing to give. You said the stranger then he asked what's that you're sitting on nothing. Replied the be. Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember ever looked inside, asked the stranger. No said the baker. What's the point. There's nothing in there. Have a look inside.
Insisted the stranger, the baker managed to pry open the lid with astonishment, disbelief, and elation. He saw that the box was filled with gold.
I hope you have a wonderful week and gain a little bit of awareness. With your phone and your laptop and your TV? I sure hope I can gain some traction this week too. And I look forward to talking to you soon. Bye bye.
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Voice-to-Text Translation. Please excuse errors.
Take time to pray. It is the sweet oil that eases the hinge into the garden so the doorway can swing open easily. You can always go there. Consider yourself blessed. These stones that break your bones will build an altar of your love. Your home is the garden. Carry its odor hidden in you into the city. Suddenly your enemies will buy seed packets and fall to their knees to plant flowers in the dirt by the road. They'll call you friend and honor your passing among them. And when asked who's that, they'll say, oh, that one has been beloved by us since before time began. Give everything away, except your garden, your worry, your fear, your small-mindedness. Your garden can never be taken from you.
Welcome back to the imperfect Buddhist. My name is Matthew Hawk Mahoney, and today's episode is titled Buddhism and anxiety. I've been working from home for the last year and two months. I've been trying to find any way to get out of the house. So the other night, my wife suggested that we get ice cream, and I never turn down ice cream, unfortunately.
And there's a little local spot here in Jacksonville, Florida called Dreamette. It's been there since the 1950s. It's a cool little old-school spot. A neighborhood called Edgewood, and we like going there. It's fun. A lot of families there and we walk around the neighborhoods , we showed up, and they were closed.
So we went to a part of town that we don't usually go to much busier. There's a main highway there. It's a brand new mall area, so there's a lot of traffic, a lot of people, and we got our ice cream. Of course, I got a pumpkin spice-flavored ice cream. I'm basic. I know. And we sat down in front of Coldstone.
I just took in what was going on around me. I saw all this traffic flying by, people coming and going and really loud cars out on the highway.
I had a little flashback to when I worked in customer service. I had a couple of customer service jobs. One of the busiest was Starbucks drive-through & cafe. And that has to be the busiest job I've ever worked. I still sometimes have nightmares about making pumpkin spice, lattes, or caramel frappuccinos with extra caramel.
I had this flashback to all the anxiety I used to experience, and even experiencing the anxiety of that present moment where there's so much going on. So many people going here and there and loud sounds and an ugliness that comes along with roads, pavement and new construction before the decorative plants, have had time to grow.
You end up with this very industrial feel. So I was struck a bit by how anxious things feel in society , not only in. our life when we're out in the marketplace, for instance, at a little strip mall that I was at, but also in media, YouTube, for instance, I see these financial podcasters that I've watched from time to time.
Every time I'm on there now it's like the great collapse is coming. China's economy is destroyed and how to prepare for the, the great impending doom. Apocalyp. And it's tempting to click on 'em sometimes, but then I'm just like, what the heck? And so there's just this flavor of anxiousness. There's a thick schmear of anxiety.
Lately in my life, I've been a bit cloistered. I've been. In my home office, which is also my music studio and podcasting studio. I have up these sound panels, these four inch thick base traps that absorb a lot of sound. And to me it feels pretty darn peaceful in here , but it wasn't always like that.
From the age of 19 to 24, I experienced deep sometimes paralyzing states of anxiety and panic attacks. I turned 18 years old. I dropped out of high school to join a band. And this was my dream, but this where the really deep experiences of anxiety started to happen.
My introduction of adult life, like what it meant to be in charge of myself and also open to all of the things that can happen. And the, the, all the responsibilities that come along with being an. Touring around smoking at least a pack a day of cigarettes eating really terrible food.
Like McDonald's whatever was available. Maybe sometimes we'd stay at someone's house and they'd make those Dino nuggets. Have you ever had those Dino nuggets? Just chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs touring around. I wasn't taking this medication that I had been on since I was 14 years old.
It was. Antidepressant antipsychotic anti-anxiety was called Paxil. I started to have these experiences of just like fear deep states of doom later, later discovered it's called a panic attack. And so experiencing that around a group of guys, I really didn't know that. Well, it was really hard to navigate.
I was on my own in this touring band, playing guitar every night. Experiencing deep levels of anxiety, fear, like, what am I gonna do? I don't really have a job. Flash forward about a year, I ended up leaving the band partially because of the anxiety I'm in. Grant's pass.
It's my mother and my stepfather's wedding. This was 2008. At that point, the anxiety is paralyzing. I'm so deep into my own head, having compulsive images, where I would see someone's face fall off or see myself stabbing a knife into someone's neck, the imagery in my mind.
This was really scary because I'm like, what the hell? What's going on deep states of not only anxiety, but I think maybe there were O C, D or something going on where compulsive images were popping into my mind. And I'm like, no, I don't wanna see this. My sister-in-law who was there for the wedding, Cheryl.
Gave me this book called the power of now, by Eckert toll. It's all about present moment awareness. And that was the beginning of my present moment awareness exploration. Flash forward another five, six months. I'm starting to practice some of this mindfulness stuff. I really don't understand the concepts that well, the whole concept of present moment awareness and trying to bring your attention to the sensations of this moment and the reality of this moment, it felt very foreign.
And if you're new to practicing mindfulness or Buddhism, I could understand that feeling or it's like, what are you talking about? it's not really something tangible. It's not something easily understood with the mind. It's something that you have to experience for yourself, but flash forward another six months, I'm working at Starbucks, a very busy, very crazy location.
Hundreds of customers per shift, hundreds of drinks, go, go, go, go, go do this, do that, do this, do that refill. This pump, this syrup, steam, this milk. Sweep the floor clean the bathroom. It's crazy. And in the midst of this, I'm trying to practice a mindful awareness, trying to be present with what's happening not only that, but then having the external pressures.
For management like Matt, you need to smile more or Matt, you need to interact more with people. I just, I obviously wasn't a very good vibe fit for Starbucks because I'm this depressed anxious kid who maybe even looks weird because he is trying so hard to be present in the midst of all this chaos.
So it was a really awkward time, an awkward time to be trying to practice this stuff. But. I believe it saved my life. I believe. I don't know if I would, maybe I wouldn't be dead, but I would be in a much different place. I imagine it would be a much darker place if I hadn't started coming back to some type of tangible truth, something that I could touch and experience on a daily basis.
And that's what mindfulness brought for. And some of my anxiety kind of manifested and attached itself to some type of O C D thinking or imagery that would pop into my mind. And it was torturous at times, having a weird double punch of, seeing some terrible image, including my nephew, maybe a knife or something being stabbed into him.
Seeing that alone , nobody wants to have to imagine that or see that. Adding to that, , oh my gosh, the fear around, you know, is this something I'm gonna do? Is this something I want to do? , am I becoming some type of evil murderous person? the third painful part of it is like, I can't talk to anybody about this.
They're gonna think I'm crazy. They're gonna think I'm a murderer. So you have all these compounding mental issues. The freedom that mindfulness and practice gave me was able to see that and to realize that wasn't me. It was a time I was desperately needing to know that my mind and my thoughts and imagery in my mind, or worries or whatever were not me.
I desperately needed to know that. And so I clung to that philosophy. It was the perfect antidote to. What I was experiencing. I don't know if I would be as deep into this practice if it wasn't for those experiences, because , in a lot of ways, if things are going great, you think you're hot shit.
You really believe in yourself you have all these images of success for yourself. you really believe people think you're the coolest person in the room and you're handsome and you're wealthy or you're gonna be really, we. Nothing wrong, with some of these thoughts, but if you really believe all that, it's hard to hear a philosophy or a teaching that says you are not your thoughts, because that's like, that's really hard to let go of all that that's like so important.
So much a part of what you think is real and it creates this story in your mind. So it's hard to let. Of identity when you feel like your identity's pretty cool, but in my situation, I was afraid of my identity or I was afraid of the thoughts I was seeing. I was paralyzed by the possibilities. My mind could spin up.
So a teaching that came along and said, no, you're not your thoughts. You're not your worries. And along with that, though, it also said, well, you're also not your positive thoughts about yourself. You're not. You're not the concept, the positive concept you have in your mind. There was a little bit of clinging to that as I had to let go of everything, because it said it's just in general, you're not your thoughts.
So I had to let go of everything. So in a way, this imagery that would pop into my mind was a blessing because it really gave me a reason to believe in and practice that pH. So if you're experiencing a really deep state of anxiety in your life, or even subtler levels, which is more what I experience these days, but if you're, if you're having acute symptoms and you're like, I just need help.
I'm I don't know what to do. I've tried medications or tried talking to a therapist nothing's working. There's a lot of things that you could. And mindfulness practices aren't for everybody. If you are a warrior type of person that you want to step into that fire more, you wanna step into that more and be transformed by these quote unquote negative experiences or suffering that you're having.
Then I would encourage you to practice mindfulness, to practice, present moment awareness. A lot of the times in our society. Mindfulness and Buddhism is this cure all they're like, oh, just take this, this pill called Buddhism. And it's all gonna be okay. Like you're gonna solve every problem.
Everything's gonna work out fine. You're gonna realize Nirvana, just practice mindfulness. On the other side of that, being the person that was suffering from deep mental pain in English, it is a long, long road. It's not easy and it's not for everyone. So I think before undertaking this path of practice, really have to ask yourself as Kaku the Zen Buddhist teacher from Darma rain in Portland asked me recently, he's like, Matt, you know, you're at that stage in your practice where it's red pill or blue pill, there's nothing wrong with either one, I suppose.
I think it's a matter of who you are and what you want in life. when you are in those deep states of, mental anguish, suffering pain, you have a choice and that choice is always happening. It's not like you just take the pill once and now you're gonna be on this path of awakening.
When you're suffering, are you turning towards the suffering in your life, in your body, in your mind or the suffering around you? Or are you turning away from.
Is meditation and mindfulness gonna solve all my problems? No meditation and mindfulness will allow you to touch and experience your quote unquote problems and your life in a new allows you to unlock the truth of that suffering that allows you to unlock the value of the suffering and the reality.
Of that suffering. It allows you to come in contact with who you truly are at your core when practiced for long enough, long enough, maybe one minute for some or a hundred years for another. So if you decide that mindful practices or meditation is something that you want to try, what does turning towards our suffering?
Look. It's as simple as witnessing what is truly going on for you and developing a witnessing presence. Witnessing presence means you see what's going on inside of you, but you're witnessing it. You're not taking it personally. You're not creating a self out of it. You're not judging good or bad. You're simply watching and witnessing what's happening.
And the longer you can witness, for instance, Experience of fear in your body, or maybe even the images that are in the mind, the more distance you get, it allows you to develop the ability to see what's going on in your mind and your body as something that's actually not that personal. You start to come back to your true identity as the presence that is seeing and experiencing these things.
And maybe there's an argument inside of your. That's like, well, what do you mean? This isn't me. I'm not the one having these experiences. What does it help if I look at it this way or the other way, what proof is there to say that this isn't me. When we start to turn towards what is happening in our bodies and minds, We begin to see what is real.
And what's not because we'll notice that this emotion of fear and anxiety it comes and it goes eventually, maybe an hour, a minute or a second, but we're like, whoa, where did that go? So if I'm anxiety or I'm fear, where's that now? Who am I now? Well, wait, I'm now I'm seeing another thought or a different emotion.
Maybe I'm happy now. Maybe I'm excited because I'm about to go get some ice cream. Am I excited to go and get ice cream? Is that who I. Or am I experiencing this emotion of excitement? You witness long enough, you start to see that things change. That transient is real or as tick, not hahan would say that there's many clouds in the sky and clouds drift by, and those are our thoughts and emotions.
So as a little tip, if anxiety is something that you struggle with and you've tried other therapies. Counseling medication, positive self talk, things of that nature. And you're still feeling bit out of a loss if you've tried these other things or you're interested in moving towards the reality of your pain.
I highly recommend a book called the untethered soul by Michael singer. It's a non-denominational book. It's actually not Zen or Buddhism or anything like that. But it's all about this idea of coming into contact with reality and in touching our pain, fear, emotions, positive and negative. We realize they have no reality of themself.
Thanks for stopping in to the imperfect Buddhist. I look forward to talking to you soon. Take care.
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Welcome to the Imperfect Buddhist, where we discuss Mindfulness and Incorporating Zen Buddhism into everyday life. I'm your host Matthew Hawk Mahoney, and today's episode is titled Buddhism & Anger Pt. 2
So, I did it again! Outside of my body, I watched as my voice fell into a lower frequency, my volume raising as I said, "This is bullshit!." My boss's eyes widened. My poor coworker was caught in the middle looking down and away from the zoom camera call. "This is bullshit!" I said, "I refuse to accept this because it isn't fair. How about you thank me? Huh?" I finished, my face tight with the fire beneath my skin. My boss calmly said, "Alright, I will talk to you guys later." Hanging up.
Now three days later, in the pit of my stomach, there is a weight, a sadness underneath the surface. The rage hangover. I know this now. I have seen this before.
I look out of my window at the yellow Florida winter day. Tears well up in my eyes. Yes, I have seen this one before too. This experience is called Helplessness.
I have been sitting every day for the last couple of years and practicing off and on for 11 years. I have also added exercise and cleaned up my diet. Yet, here I am, regretting my latest tantrum. I have told myself before, "It's not worth it, Matt! This causes more problems than it solves." and yet here I am again, feeling hopeless.
So, what is the wise answer here? Desirelessness is Moksha Liberation, one of my favorite sayings, but how does it apply here? Until recently, I could only use this concept after the tantrum, letting go of the desire for what happened to be anything other than what it was.
Digging for answers, typing in "Sudden Anger" into doctor google, a Reddit came up, as they usually do. A person talked in the post about her struggles with irrational and disproportionate bursts of anger while driving, which I also experience sometimes. In the comments, someone responded with something that hit home for me. They said, "We get angry because there is something that we desire very strongly" they continued, "We want this so badly that we get angry to try and attain that thing or correct a certain behavior."
What did I desire at that moment? I wanted my boss and coworker to see me as competent; I didn't want to be blamed for something I didn't do. I desired so badly that I burst out in anger, throwing a total rage fit.
Where does Buddhism end and Mental Health counseling begin? This is a great question, one that I am still exploring. At times I get tastes of an answer; however, only small. Many masters say that we don't practice Zazen to change anything. Zazen allows us to come into contact with what is.
Well, what is, is that I barf up these rage fits, usually out of nowhere, surprising myself and others. Full of regret, I feel isolated and without recourse. I seriously resolved in the past to shrug my shoulders and write it off as the imperfection of life, as promised by the buddha.
This is the trickiest Karmic pattern I have encountered yet. The second is jealousy, and the third is Nicotine. This one is challenging because it arises suddenly, strongly with what appears to be no premeditation. There is no buffer room from "this upsets" me to "rage fit."
Zen brings us into contact with what is. Sometimes seeing what is in the brilliance of clear sight can change the thing we see clearly. Other times, for instance, my current dilemma, more profound work will need to be done. The wise counsel of a trained professional.
The wonderful thing about this latest outburst is that it puts me into contact with humility. Driving home after dropping my wife off at work, I put on the latest Imperfect Buddhist episode, Buddhism & Resistance. What a juxtaposition. Starting the episode, I say calmly into the mic, "Peace exists on the other side of your resistance." going on to share some insights about peace and letting go.
Not one day after the episode was released, I am having a big anger outburst at work. Resisting my projected fears about inadequacy and blame.
This practice has a way of humbling anyone who truly walks its path. Thank god I named this the Imperfect Buddhist Podcast! It makes it so much easier when I make a mistake. I can share my shortcomings with you.
This latest outburst has brought up a lot of questions about Buddhism and what expectations I place on my practice. It brings up questions about how seriously to take my own Karma and the harm it causes others. It points to the soft underbelly of my practice, stating calmly and confidently, "How 'awake' are you now, Matt?."
The illusion that if we are just mindful enough, sit enough, or are the perfect student that our own imperfections will vanish. That this practice will fix me and I will once and for all become perfect becomes apparent as an illusion, as a farce. This realization leaves me standing naked to my own shortcomings and the effort that will be necessary to form new habits. This concept reminds me of my wife, and I's favorite M. Scott Peck quote.
"Love is not effortless. To the contrary, love is effortful."
Desirelessness. Such a touchy subject in Buddhism, for if we don't desire anything, how will we ever change? The trick is witnessing the things that are less than ideal in ourselves, non judgementally. If we approach the hurt part of ourselves that is harming others with a voice of condemnation, we inflict further pain on ourselves and continue the cycle.
This approach may be scary for the highly moral out there. I, like many others, believe the self scolding voice is necessary to keep me on a virtuous path. How would I know I have done wrong without this internal self-scolding dialogue? How will I not perpetuate this behavior in the future? We don't need the voice in our head to tell us what we did was wrong. Our bodies will tell us. Inside we have a fine-tuned compass that will tell us if our behavior is off in the weeds. If what we have done isn't in alignment with what is right.
The trick is to let go of all this internal dialogue and rumination on our harmful behavior, make amends, and admit our shortcomings to those affected by our negative Karma. Then we pay attention to our internal compass, our "gut," and begin the process of forming new, hopefully, more wholesome karmic patterns.
Another blessing of these anger outbursts is compassion. Who understands people who are physically violent with their partners or friends? I indeed never truly was. The gift of my anger imperfection allows me to see more clearly how automatic our Karma can be. How it can take hold so fast and ferociously that afterward, we are left clutching our tattered dignity and moral compass.
Some karma is so volatile, chemical, and buried. These patterns operate deep in one's psyche and subtle emotions. Bursting forth uncontrollably.
Embracing a more lighthearted approach to our deepest troubles allows room for grace. Yes, my anger issues are serious, but ultimately, in perspective, life is doing a dance through me, this one called anger, but now that I am becoming more aware of it, I become more responsible. Response able. The more I become aware of it, the more accountable I become; change can happen.
The trick here is that we aren't creating an identity out of the heaviest, most opaque parts of ourselves. We see these parts of ourselves and recognize them more and more for what they are. The more I become acquainted with my anger, the more I can greet it even in its most subtle forms. Hello anger, I see you dressed up as criticism today. Then I can ask, "Why did you feel the need to dress up as criticism? Maybe anger would respond, "Well, so and so didn't do this and that the way I needed!" Then maybe I would ask, "How do you feel when you criticize?" and anger would say, "Well, now my chest is a lot tighter, my jaw is clenched, and I didn't even get my way!" I could follow up by asking, "So was it worth it, anger, to criticize in the first place?" This would really have to be one of my best days...
I feel more hope for myself and others encountering their own chemical karmic patterns.
I recognize that each moment will require something different from me and that I may actually be resisting the thing in front of me through inaction. See, I had this concept backward originally. I used to believe that simply recognizing the emotions within myself, seeing the desire for something to be other than what it was, would be enough. Sometimes that is all that is required. In this case, I never fully recognized what I was doing when a coworker disappointed me with their lack of communication skills residual frustration being stored away. These resentments building and stacking up until BAM! Rage Fit.
During a recent Imperfect Buddhist interview with Kakumyo, he mentioned that sometimes new Karma in the opposite direction of your old Karma can be helpful. Applying this, recently, an encounter came up at work, pushing the "unfairness button" within, only this time I saw the tension in my body and that familiar vortex within. I said, "Oh! Time to tune in, Matt" recognizing this as part of the resentment buildup phase of my rage-fit karmic pattern, I started some deep breathing practices. 5 1/2 seconds in 5 1/2 seconds out. Okay, body equalized now. Let's take inventory. Asking myself: What about this situation or interaction frustrated me? Oh! I feel my intelligence/integrity is being blamed for the disorganization of this job. Is this a valid frustration? Are others experiencing this? Okay, what would be proactive action to help solve this to make it better in the future? How can I ask for what I need? How can I contribute to the solution?
Thanks so much for enjoying this episode. This one was hard to write as it isn't easy to admit one's shortcomings, but I want to share the complete picture of my experience on this side.
I hope you have a wonderful next couple of weeks, until next time, Matt.
Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-imperfect-buddhist/donations -
Peace exists on the other side of your resistance.
The noise, talking, and eating of the holidays, A haze cast over the clearer vision I had developed with my practice.
Awareness of wholeness seems to slip away little by little until I am binge eating all those sweets I swore I didn't want and rubbing my Magic the Gathering headache.
How come the lived experience of peace is so easy to forget and the mechanical habits so enticing?
Getting ready to head back to work after this long holiday break, I decided to get back into my regular sitting practice. Sitting down into my Zazen posture, it took only minutes until my awareness touched the confusion and irritation in my body.
Becoming aware, I saw how the confusion in my body moved to churn thoughts in my head and this aversion to what was happening, resistance to what already was.
The thoughts sounded like this:
"Why did you eat so much sugar? You're lazy. Why didn't you offer to help wash the dishes? You really feel like shit now, don't you? What is wrong with you?"
Seeing the energy and thoughts clearly, I smiled. I saw my mind flicker as if to say, "Well, if you don't resist this, then what?"
As I let go of that thought, instant peace came over me. The "negative feelings" didn't change, but my awareness reclaimed its seat in freedom. I let go of the desire for this moment to be anything but what it was.
Many teachers talk about this concept of naming what is happening in our bodies and minds. Here is an excerpt from an article on the website growmindfulness.com
"In his book, Mindsight, Dan Siegel argues that we "Name It to Tame It" – in other words, by naming our feelings, we are better able to control them or, at least, lessen their impact...
To say "I feel angry" is a very different statement, both in content and impact, then the words "I am angry". The latter tends to define us as angry people, whereas the former helps us to recognize that we are not our feelings – we are a lot more than what we feel. Feelings come and go in nature and intensity – our essence remains. Naming our emotions in a gentle, non-judgmental way affirms our self-worth and opens up the opportunity to master our feelings."
- growmindfulness.com
I like what was said here. However, I don't like the statement, "master our feelings," as this continues the legacy of war between our thoughts and how we want things to be.
As we become truly aware of what is happening in our bodies and minds and hold that truth in open awareness, there will be no need to "Master our feelings." Once we encounter the truth in and around our complex emotions, that reality fundamentally changes the challenging emotion itself.
Yes, better controlling our emotions is an admirable skill and is undoubtedly a by-product of Zazen. However, we don't sit in Zazen to change anything.
Speaking of the distraction of the holidays, I like the idea of embracing distraction. I and many others have tapped purposefully on their phone screen, deleting Instagram and Facebook, writing a very heartfelt post to my friends explaining my decision to leave social media alone. All this to find myself redownloading the apps or sneaking a peek of Facebook through the browser.
Embracing distraction as a lay practitioner may be the only way to go. It is a path of nonresistance. Can we find the middle path with all of this technology?
If you've found the path and been able to walk it, please let me know. I have yet to be able to walk it.
The only skillful way to reclaim my attention and original Mind is through a regular sitting practice. After all of the holiday noise, food, and waves of experiences, it is easy to get pulled back into the flow and pushed around by things. If we have a regular sitting practice, we build our reconnection to original Mind into our schedules.
We remove the stumbling block of missed Zazen practice by ensuring our reconnection to the Dharma through regular, scheduled training.
Just like when we were kids, our parents repeatedly reminded us to brush our teeth until the habit was clearly formed, every morning and night. We must be our own good parents and develop the habit of Zazen. We brush our teeth to avoid cavities and decay. We sit Zazen to reconnect us with our Original Mind.
Why do we resist? We resist out of our illusion of control. We believe that by fighting something, we can avoid it or change it. However, the reality is that what we resist persists.
My wife brought up to me over the holidays her frustration with a comment someone close to her made; when she told them about her struggles with PMDD, they said, "Well, you just have to choose to not take it personally." This really frustrated her, as I assume it would have for most people.
I wonder if they have some different machinery than me? Maybe some people really can control their thoughts and emotions with precision like that. I, however, cannot.
The only thing that has led to any peace for me is fully becoming aware in those moments when I feel attacked, offended, or hurt. I cannot turn these emotions or thoughts off, but I have trained my awareness system to kick on faster and faster when these emotional bumps come along.
The more I become aware of and see these emotions and thoughts for what they are, they change, and my sense of self grows larger.
For instance, instead of being solely the experience of being offended by a side comment someone made, I am now simultaneously both offended by a comment someone made and aware of swinging around an unimaginably hot ball of gas whirling ever out into the blackness of space. It is the realized concept of "This Too."
Soaking our attention in the stillness of Zazen allows our "Orignal Mind" to be uncovered.
I have mentioned this term original mind a couple of times. Here is an excerpt from one of Shodo Harada Rōshis writings, titled, Original Mind.
He writes:
"In Buddhism, it's often said that humans' Original Mind, that Mind we have at birth, is like a clear mirror, pure and uncluttered, without shape, form, or color, with nothing in it whatsoever.
If something comes before it, the mirror reflects it precisely, but the mirror itself gives birth to nothing. If what has been reflected leaves, its image disappears, but the mirror itself loses nothing. Within the mirror, there is no birth, no death. No matter how dirty a thing that is reflected might be, the mirror doesn't get dirty, nor does it become beautiful because something beautiful is reflected in it.
Just because additional things are reflected, that doesn't mean anything increases in the mirror itself, nor does anything ever decrease when fewer objects are reflected. A mirror is without increase or decrease.
Humans' pure Original Nature is just this. Without shape, form, or color; without birth and death; not clean or dirty; not increasing or decreasing; not male or female; not young, not old; not intelligent, not stupid; not rich, not poor. There are no words, no explanation possible, no description that will apply here, only a pure mirror-like base. This is humans' true quality; this is an actual experience. From our Zazen (sitting meditation), cut all nen (mind-instants), dig down completely to the source of those nen—dig, dig, dig until we reach the place where the human character has been totally cleared. When the source point is reached, this state of Mind can be touched."
By Shodo Harada Rōshis
"No matter how dirty a thing that is reflected might be, the mirror doesn't get dirty, nor does it become beautiful because something beautiful is reflected in it."
We resist what appears in the mirror out of a desire to deny the thing being reflected. We aren't fully aware of our true identity as the mirror yet and mistake ourselves as the reflected object.
As mentioned by Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now, a lot of our identity is wrapped up in these negative parts of ourselves.
Even though a particular aspect of our thinking and belief system causes us much pain and trouble in our lives, we may still cling to it. Why is this?
It comes from the strength of the ego. The part of us that fears annihilation, desperately grasping for something solid. A deep well of fear can open up in someone as they start to look behind the curtain of their most well-orchestrated negative concepts of reality.
So then, resistance can manifest in multiple forms. One is our avoidance of facing and feeling something. Another is our inability to let a specific aspect of our beliefs dissolve, negative as they may be.
We fear stepping into beginners' Mind because of our fear of annihilation. We want so badly to control our version, our narrative of reality, that we will create multitudes of reasons why this practice is stupid, how it's not working, or downright unsafe!
We fear letting go because we haven't experienced the freedom of our original Mind yet, the peace of letting go.
One of the cliches worth mentioning here is Gandhi's quote, "There is no path to peace. Peace is the path." When I say, "Peace exists on the other side of your resistance." I don't mean that you will have peace once you do this or that other thing. I mean that peace is available to you now, but you must stop resisting, easier said than done, right? This is where Zazen comes in.
When we practice Zazen, we cultivate the ability to hold our experiences in equanimity or open awareness. Zazen practice trains our minds to hold experiences from the witnessing perspective. That's why many teachers have students start with watching their breath. There isn't much to judge about our breath, good or bad. It just is. Over time we develop this ability to witness, and we can take this attention to other aspects of our experience. Now we can see our sadness, loneliness, anger, or physical pain with equanimity, with the open awareness we have cultivated.
I first learned about the concept of Witnessing Presence while reading Eckhart Tolles The Power of Now. In it, he says:
"The good news is that you can free yourself from your Mind. This is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now. Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by "watching the thinker," which is another way of saying: listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence.
When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door. You'll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the Mind.
So when you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. As you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence — your deeper self — behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses its power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energizing the Mind through identification with it. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking." - Eckhart Tolle.
Repetitive thoughts followed by cycles of guilt haunted me as I read the power of now for the first time 12 years ago. I had never heard of "mindfulness" or practiced mediation before. Still, as I sat there on my parent's patio by the river, I remember this odd practice of continuously bringing my attention back to the sound of the river rushing by beneath me.
I felt wholly relieved to read that I was not my thoughts and that there was an ancient practice available for slowing the Mind and moving through suffering. My Mind was a whirlwind of pain and medications were no longer an option.
I remember Eckhart urging me from the pages to turn towards my pain, to watch the repetitive thoughts and painful cycles with the eyes of the witness (nonjudgmental presence.) To be honest, it didn't make a lot of sense, but I pursued the instructions with such vigor because of the pain I was in.
Little breakthroughs began to happen. I remember looking up at the blue sky with little whisps of clouds stretching out behind a giant pine tree and feeling connected to the presence and beauty of that moment. My worrying Mind was paused for that instant.
So far, after 12 years of off-and-on practice, I can say this. Something is happening to how I meet my life.
When worry, grief, anger, or confusion set in, a new dimension is available to me. A spaciousness in and around the troubling emotions. Paraphrasing a quote, I read, "It feels that I have moved from a cramped apartment into an airplane hanger. I still have all of the same stuff, but now there is a whole lot more room!"
I enjoyed making this one and sharing it with you. I am experimenting with writing out my episodes again.
Thinking on my biggest struggle with this podcast, it is consistency. I want to provide you with a consistent release schedule, but I worry it will stretch the content too thin. I will experiment on it! What did you think?
I hope you have a wonderful week! Until next time.
Matt
Source: https://growmindfulness.com/naming-your-feelings-to-tame-them/
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