Summary:
- Background: Daniel Ingram is an emergency room physician and an accomplished Buddhist practitioner. He is known for his direct approach to teaching and discussing Dharma practice.
- Teaching Style: Ingram is recognized for his high standards in insight practices and considers himself a qualified teacher, authorized by a lineaged Abbot of the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition.
- Insight Practices: He believes in the effectiveness of basic techniques recommended by the Buddha and encourages mastering any of the world’s great mystical traditions.
- Discussion Topics: The interview covers various models of enlightenment, the importance of maps in spiritual practice, and the correlation between different aspects of personal development. Ingram also addresses common misconceptions and the value of collective wisdom in spiritual growth.
Full transcript:
Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, and my guest today is Daniel Ingram. Daniel is an emergency room physician outside Huntsville, Alabama, but that is not his primary claim to fame. Daniel is a very accomplished Buddhist practitioner and to some extent teacher. He’s written a very interesting book, which we’ll be talking about during this interview. I’d like to start by just reading a fairly long bio that he wrote of himself, towards the back of the book. Sort of humorous but has a lot of useful information in it. And it’ll give you a sense of his personality, which you’ll get a better sense of as we do the interview. Daniel is an extroverted Gen X intellectual. He is known for his pronounced enthusiasm, lip-flapping, grandiosity, eccentricity, and calling people on their stuff and shadow sides, regardless of whether or not this is helpful or even accurate. He is an Arhat and has a solid mastery of the basic concentration states, from the first jnana to Nirodha-Samapatti, we’ll be defining terms like this, including pure land jnana’s. He also has a solid knowledge of Buddhist theory and the text, and because of these three areas of expertise, considers himself a qualified teacher. He was also authorized and encouraged to teach by a lineaged Abbot of the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition. When it comes to insight practices, he has standards so high, exacting and uncompromising, that only those who are dedicated practitioners are likely to find them helpful. On the other hand, he is a firm believer that if people simply practice the basic techniques recommended by the Buddha, they can be very successful and awakened meditators. He is one of the rare teachers who will talk about insight directly, and answer nearly any question about dharma practice without using code, covering things up, or watering things down. Daniel is a die-hard Mahasi Sayadaw fan, though he is very happy whenever he sees people trying to master any of the world’s great mystical traditions, and thus, considers himself a pan-mystical evangelist. He is also a chronic map monger and technique freak because he has had them work very well for him. He does not claim to have any special knowledge of how to live skillfully in the conventional world, but has found that a positive attitude, non-pretentious kindness, and a sense of humor will take you a long way. If you imagine that you want to bust out of some hardcore practice, but are in fact just looking for a daddy, shrink, social worker or someone to help you prop up your self-esteem, Daniel is unlikely at this stage in his development to be the best person to help you meet your needs. He considers himself to be one badass dharma cowboy and prefers similar company, or at least those who aspire to be so. So that’s great, Daniel, thanks for that introduction. I’m sure it will queue it up nicely for people. And inasmuch as I never have enough time to read all the things I would like to read, as Jeremy said in “Yellow Submarine,” so little time, so much to know, I didn’t manage to read your whole book, but you had certain chapters starred with little lightning bolts, signifying that they are likely to be controversial and push some people’s buttons. So sure, I read those chapters, almost all of them, but there’s a lot you can fill us in on. And of course, we don’t have to just talk about your book. Your book just provides a template or a map for things we might want to discuss. But I feel like you have a lot of value to say, and I hope we can take a nice, solid two hours at least, and really thoroughly cover everything you would like to say. A lot of people watch these interviews, thousands, and many teachers whom I’ve interviewed, have told me that it has been actually the most impactful in terms of people getting in touch with them, or finding out for their such and such, and all. So, let’s do it.
Daniel: Alright, sounds good. What do you want to talk about? What would be fun?
Rick: Well, for one thing, you said you’re really into maps, and I am in a way too, just because, I think there’s a lot of vagueness and ambiguity in the spiritual world, Buddhist or non-Buddhist, whatever, Christian, anything, with regard to what this is all about. We talk about enlightenment, awakening, you hear these terms, and I feel like everybody has their own definition. If medicine were practiced this way, there would be a lot more people dying than there actually are. There’s a lot of imprecisions, and we’re talking about something, I guess, that’s very abstract and subtle, and it’s hard to put into words, you have to experience it yourself. Maps, of course, never really do justice to the territory. A map of Montana is nothing like visiting Montana. But I think maps are valuable because it’s very easy for people to have all kinds of misconceptions about what enlightenment is, how close they are to it, whether or not they’ve attained it, and so on. So, I think the more clear we can get on that as a culture, at least as a spiritual subculture, the more helpful it will be for people.
Daniel: Yeah, definitely, I think so too.
Rick: In your book, you have all sorts of models that you outline for stages of enlightenment, or aspects of enlightenment, non-duality model, the sudden school versus the gradual school, emotional models, and all sorts of different things. So, since we’ve gotten on to this part, let’s start talking about what awakening is, what enlightenment is, and whether these models are like blind men feeling part of the elephant, and if we put them all together, we might have the whole elephant, or what? What would you like to say?
Daniel: Well, at least in the book and the way I think about this, I try to break this down into lots of different axes of development. So, there are so many different things you can develop, both in terms of how you live your life and how you perceive your life. And so, I think that most of the models that I have come across, fall into some of the basic fallacies of like, that if you perceive this, you will automatically know that, or if you have understood this, then you will automatically only be able to do certain things, or if you have directly perceived some aspect of reality, then you could only have certain emotions, or that you could only think certain thoughts, or that you could only say certain things, or you could only do certain things. So, there’s lots of models that sort of fall into what I call the package fallacy, meaning that if you have this, you automatically get this other thing as part of a package.
Rick: Let’s get a specific example.
Daniel: So, the common ones are that, say, if you understand that the world is an interdependent, naturally occurring, intrinsically luminous place, that you could only say the sort of things that the person who’s imagining the model would like to hear said, for instance. That being a common one. Or only do the sort of things that the person imagining the model would like to see done, or only feel the sorts of things that the person imagining the model would like to imagine people would feel in their idealized world.
Rick: Yeah. So, for instance, if you have that sort of fundamental clarity that you just alluded to, you wouldn’t get angry, or you wouldn’t cheat on your wife, or you wouldn’t X, Y, Z. You’re saying that could we use, perhaps, behavioral quality or morality as a correlate of certain attainments, or could we not?
Daniel: Yeah, so that’s one of the great questions. And I think that the way I think about this, is that it’s very important to separate each of the various categories of life and the way we perceive life and our internal mental skills and our external skills, and realize that developing one doesn’t necessarily guarantee that that will automatically develop the others. I know people who have really relatively profound degrees of insight whose morality, I would say, in my idealized world, obviously, in my vision of morality, could use some revision. Or Chogyam Trungpa, being one of these interesting examples of someone who, when I read his commentary on the nature of mind and wisdom, I have no problems with it at all. And when I look at his life, it didn’t meet my particular ideals, not that they’re necessarily anything other than my own arbitrary ideals from a certain point of view, do you see what I mean?
Rick: Yeah, in other words, he probably wrote that stuff while he was sober, you’re saying.
Daniel: Well, not necessarily. He might have been wasted when he wrote it, I don’t know.
Rick: I don’t know.
Daniel: So, who knows? I think the common thing is that people assume that something about the essential nature of reality, seeing that, will alter the specifics in very specific ways that usually meet their specific ideals for how reality should be. And I think that it’s important for practice -to have models that are more embracing of reality than that. Because I think what can happen is people have models of awakening, and then they attempt to imitate those models. Which, not that lots of those imitations of the models don’t lead to lots of good things, to better behavior, to better speech, to better ways of living in the world. And they often do, actually, so that can be skillful to some degree. But the problem is that if people have models of awakening that say don’t involve neurotic thought, or don’t involve sadness, or don’t involve crying, or don’t involve irritation, then when those things arise, it can be tricky for the practitioner who’s working with that model not to try to repress, to ignore, to pretend they’re not happening, to create shadow sides out of those aspects of reality that they consider unfortunate, and may obviously in some way be unfortunate or unpleasant or not that nice. And I think that prevents a lot of people from really investigating those things, from coming to embrace those things, from seeing their true nature, and noticing important aspects of those things and bringing them into their awareness, rather than, say, repressing them or ignoring them or pretending they’re not happening or those kinds of things. So that’s why I think some of the models are important that sort of break into sort of separate boxes, sort of perceiving things as they are on the one hand, and the models about the relative, which have all sorts of ideals for how our mind should be, how our emotions should be, how our behavior should be, all of which are good. And I think so working in both is obviously important, but recognizing that from what I call an insight practice point of view, being as, I’m coming from a Theravadan map point of view, model point of view, from an insight point of view, being able to be with what’s going on in all its complexity, in all its human richness, in all its glory and tragedy, in ordinariness, is important for accepting this life and seeing it as it is.
Rick: I’m sure you’re aware of Ken Wilber’s lines of development idea, right?
Daniel: Some. I know a lot more about the early Wilber stuff, having been influenced by his first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness, and I’ve read some of his later stuff a little bit, but I’m not as familiar with it. So, what was on your mind?
Rick: Well, as I understand it, he speaks of the various facets and aspects of the personality, behavioral things and emotional things and so on, as being like various lines of development, and consciousness itself could be considered a line of development. And he posits, as I understand him, that these things are not as tightly correlated as we might sometimes assume, that you can get quite advanced along a particular line and be still quite stunted in other lines. And this kind of runs contrary to something I was taught in my training as a meditation teacher and stuff, which was that there is a pretty tight correlation between the development of consciousness, and all the other aspects of the personality. The analogy was used that if you water the root of a tree, all the other leaves and branches and fruits and flowers will all flourish. But that doesn’t seem to pan out that well in actual life. So, I kind of tend to go with Wilber’s idea more these days. Well, I think it’s not a black and white situation. There is a correlation, but it’s just more rubber band-y, it’s just looser. But you can’t get too out of whack without something, some kind of break, or without the stunted aspects eventually kind of getting shaken up and pulled along, don’t you think?
Daniel: Yeah, so there are definitely correlations, but most of the maps are very narrow and idealized and black and white about how they lay out those correlations, or they’re just so vague as to be sort of useless. Like Zen is a remarkable tradition, but its maps are kind of useless. They’re so vague and amorphous and nonspecific as to leave people just sort of filling in the gaps with their own projections, as opposed to, say, the Tibetans or Theravada, whose maps get so exacting that they’re actually kind of naive in terms of that they assume it will happen in some very specific ways sometimes, which are also sort of naive. So, you can run into problems both with maps that are too vague, in that they really don’t tell you anything useful about how these things may or may not correlate, or maps that are so specific that they always assume that if you have this, you automatically have that, and if you do this, you automatically have that and develop that. So anyway, both sides of the map world run into trouble.
Rick: So have any map makers that you’re aware of come up with a more balanced middle road kind of perspective, or is that something you’re actually trying to achieve?
Daniel: That’s one of the things I’m trying to achieve as one of the map revisionists who tries to look at as many of these maps as I can and try to figure out, based on personal experience, as well as the experience of my Dharma friends and colleagues, what makes sense and what’s helpful and what’s sort of part right, and then the things that you can really hang your hat on, what are the few things that you can really go, “Okay, that seems to hold up pretty well to reality testing, and actual people who are willing to talk about these things in a straightforward way.”
Rick: Yeah, one line I picked up from your book on page 119, you said, “It is what is common to the great mystical paths that makes them special. The differences are 100% guaranteed to be fundamentally irrelevant.” And I suppose that’s a good thing to keep in mind when we’re talking about maps. It should be possible, theoretically, I think, to come up with a map, with a universal map against which you could chart, or into which you could place any mystical tradition, just pick anything, and you say, “Okay, this is what they were saying here, and this is what they were saying there,” and so on. But of course, you have all kinds of complications in terms of language and culture, and something that happened 2,000 years ago and got handed on for 200 years before anything was written down. It all gets pretty murky.
Daniel: Yeah, that’s true. And then you’ve got people who can experience the exact same thing and then describe it from totally different points of view. The no-self versus true-self debates, being one of the great examples of that, where the field integrates and suddenly there’s an unbounded field, and some people say, “Well, now the whole thing is me,” or true-self or whatever, and some people would say, “Well, now none of it’s me,” but really what happened, was the artificial boundaries dissolved, and they tried to use language from the previous way of being, and take that and try to apply it to something that now it really doesn’t quite apply to either way. And so that can cause a lot of confusion.
Rick: Yeah, I agree with you on that. I call it the Certs paradox, Certs is a candy mint, Certs is a breath mint, and they’re both right. I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember those ads, but it used to be when I was a kid, these twins were arguing about whether Certs was a candy mint or a breath mint, and then the announcer came in and said, “Stop, you’re both right, Certs is two mints in one.” But anyway, that’s a good case in point, this emptiness/fullness thing, or there’s no self and this is myself. I think they’re both describing the same thing as far as I can tell, and it’s just a matter of where you want to put your emphasis, or how you want to flavor it.
Daniel: Yeah, I think so. And then I think the other thing that gets complicated is there are definitely relativistic effects to different techniques for getting there, and there are so many techniques for getting there, and each of them does wire the brain a little bit differently. You are doing something that’s different. If you’re, say, noticing every little sensation arise and vanish as fast as you can in your full field of sensate reality, like a technical high-end repositor practitioner, that’s going to feel very different from just opening up to the wondrous nature of the loving quality of the divine. Do you see what I mean? And so, there are relativistic effects that are side effects of the techniques that people use to dissolve artificial boundaries and come to see the true nature of phenomena. And so those can also skew the way people think about it, talk about it, and even feel it, and they can also cause a lot of relative effects that are very different. There is a different feel to people who have grown up in different traditions. And it’s because they trained their minds differently from a relative point of view. So, there are some relative differences in these things.
Rick: That’s an interesting thing. Let’s talk about that a little bit. Because as I understand it, enlightenment, from whatever tradition you come from, is supposed to be a state in which reality as it ultimately is, has been cognized or realized. You have gotten right down to the real nitty-gritty. You’re apprehending or residing as the fundamental reality of the universe. But as you say, there are so many different ways of getting at it. And so, all these different techniques and practices are going to wire the brain differently, are going to have different effects on you. So, if we take, let’s say, hypothetically, get a room full of people who have “attained enlightenment” through a variety of practices, are they actually experiencing the same thing, and just express it differently? Such as members of an orchestra who are all playing the same symphony, but one is playing the piccolo, and one is playing the tuba, and one is playing the kettledrums. Or have their different approaches actually wired their brains in such a way, that each has a totally different flavor, not only in terms of their expression, but in terms of their actual cognition, a different sense of the ultimate reality, which would imply that their cognition isn’t really ultimate, because it’s been flavored by some individual conditioning.
Daniel: Well, I tend actually to think that both of those aspects are true, to some degree. So, my working hypothesis is that if you’ve got a bunch of very advanced, realized practitioners from a bunch of very different traditions together, they’re going to have certain common shared aspects that if they can break out of their little sort of terminological, dogmatic fortresses, and really just honestly talk about what they’re experiencing, at a very simple phenomenological level, they’re going to find common ground. And they will also find some specific differences. There clearly are some different ways that you can be wired from what I’ll think of as a relative point of view. But I do have this odd notion that there is something intrinsic, and that intrinsic thing will be common. And so, when I read across what I think of as the better mystics and meditators and people, and I get to the good stuff, the part where they’re really talking about the true nature of the thing, it all seems to be talking about the same thing from my point of view. And maybe that’s a filter that I have, a cognitive filter, and I’m just reading it that way, or extrapolating to my experience and assuming that I know what they’re talking about. So, I tend to fall both in the intrinsic camp and the constructionist camp, meaning that both are true, if that makes sense.
Rick: Yeah, it sort of does. And I can think of some examples in the Hindu tradition, in the Vedic tradition, it’s considered that although … Well, maybe this gets into relative things though. Although you take a variety of rishis, they’re all established in Brahma, and they’re all established in ultimate reality experientially, but according to how they’re wired, they’ll have different cognitive abilities. One will be able to cognize this aspect of the Veda, and another cognize this aspect of the Veda. A friend of mine named Igor Kufayev wrote an interesting article in which he talked about how awakening could take on totally different qualities according to whether you had a predominantly sattvic, rajasic or tamasic makeup, and then there could be other considerations of what makes up the nervous system in terms of Ayurveda or astrology or any number of other things.
Daniel: Yeah, definitely, or just personality traits and the tradition you came up in and how you practiced. Some of my more helpful teachers, actually one of my teachers Sharda, came up in Vedanta with Poonjaji of Lucknow. And when I would try to talk technical stuff, she didn’t have any idea what I was talking about, but she gave great meditation advice because she was looking at something really important. So, I’m sort of a technical guy, I think about frequencies and beat patterns and phases of attention, and all these sorts of, lots of stages and states and substates. And she was just this big-hearted person just looking at it, going, “Okay, yeah, but …” But I found that very helpful. And so actually I found it, one of the interesting things, I found it very useful to train with people who looked at reality very differently from the way I did and whose strengths were actually totally different from my own. Because it helped me expand out and see other points of view and round out some things that I think if I’d just stuck with my way of seeing things wouldn’t have worked out as well.
Rick: Yeah, that’s nice. I get that benefit from this interview show, although I don’t actually train with people, but just having these different conversations is a nice way of cross-pollinating.
Daniel: That must be amazing.
Rick: It’s a lot of fun, yeah.
Daniel: I’m sure it is.
Rick: You should try it.
Daniel: Well, sort of. So, there’s the Dharma overground.
Rick: Yeah, you do have that.
Daniel: And some of its sister sites. So, while the amount of diversity there sort of varies, most of the people there have grown up in a number of traditions. There are very few people who are just strictly one tradition or only have one background. And it’s been fascinating to have this online experiment of people comparing their experiences, and trying to sort this out and help each other practice well and debate things and discuss things, and share their journey and try to figure out what it all means. So, I do get some of that.
Rick: Yeah, in fact I think it would be worth taking a minute to read some of the main points from the Dharma overground, which is your website. Here’s some of the main principles and attitudes that you favor. Pragmatism over dogmatism, what works is key, with works generally meaning the stages of insight, the stages of enlightenment, freedom from suffering and what ways are possible, etc. Diligent practice over blind faith, this place is about doing it and understanding for yourself, rather than believing someone else and not testing those beliefs out. Openness regarding what the techniques may lead to ,and how these contrast or align with the traditional models. Personal responsibility, you take responsibility for the choices you make and what you say and claim. A lack of taboos surrounding talking about attainments. The assumption that the various aspects of meditative development can be mastered in this life. The spirit of mutual supportive adventurers on the path rather than rigid student-teacher relationships. And finally, the notion that the collective wisdom of a group of strong practitioners at various stages and from various traditions and backgrounds is often better than following one guru type. So, I like all that, it’s a nice mature kind of package.
Daniel: We try. I’m not sure the end product is always totally mature, my posts are always totally mature, but we do our best.
Rick: Yeah, well online forums are always kind of wild.
Daniel: Yeah, that’s true, it’s amazing the things people say in them, that they would never say to a person if they were sitting there with them.
Rick: I know, it’s anonymous. But you mentioned this woman who was a Papaji disciple, and that brings up an interesting point regarding our whole discussion, which is that people from that lineage, as far as I know, Ramana Maharshi’s lineage, would tend to find a lot of the things we’ve been talking about so far and we’ll talk about today, as being unnecessarily complex and detailed, all these levels and stages and attainments and yada yada. There’s this kind of feeling like, “Hey, it’s just one simple reality, don’t over-complicate it, dude.” And so, I can see that, and I appreciate that. On the other hand, people do have a plethora of experiences, such a rich variety, and they go through all kinds of stages of development. And if you think that it’s just one thing or the other, on or off, black or white, it’s not going to pan out in people’s experience. So, people need to understand what they’re going through as they go through all these various stages. I’ve had people tell me that they had some kind of insight, and they feel that there’s no distinction whatsoever, experientially, between them and Ramana Maharshi. And I would suggest that there are probably lifetimes of distinctions between them.
Daniel: Both are true. So again, the maps can totally confuse people. It’s very, very easy, as I myself have done thousands of times to misdiagnose my own practice and later go, “Nope, I was totally full of it. I was just totally confused.” I’ve done that more times than I can count, so I recognize that problem with the maps full well. And nearly all of my colleagues have had the same things happen to them. So, the potential for misdiagnosis is definitely huge and common. And actually, I think that’s an important thing to recognize. So, if you’re going to be using a map, to recognize that you’re going to totally misdiagnose yourself on a semi-regular basis, if you care about these things, and to realize that that’s OK. And so, I think that the important thing is if anybody is using a map or a tradition or a specific set of goals or stages or levels, that you recognize that you’re going to get it wrong a lot of the time, and that’s part of the learning process. When I started learning mathematics and I started multiplying numbers, I didn’t always get the multiplication right. A lot of the time I did, but sometimes I didn’t, and that’s normal. And the same thing with maps or whatever. So, I think people need to recognize that and realize that you just take your own diagnosis, and everybody else’s diagnosis with a grain of salt and give it some time. Very important. But also, that if you have no maps, it is true that people without a context or the ability to normalize strange experiences, or unusual experiences can really be freaked out by them, totally go off in strange tangents, have really totally derailed their practice, become absolutely fascinated with things that are actually just stock standard, not that interesting thing, what we call the arising and passing away in Theravadan Buddhism, which can involve bright lights and traveling out of body and explosions of consciousness, and vortices and Kundalini phenomena and profound shakings and bolts of energy blasting up and down your spine, and chakra phenomena and all this stuff. That stage tends to blow people’s doors off and then is generally followed by something very dark, the sort of the dark night stages, which can be extraordinarily disorienting to have gone from this wild spiritual high, to all of a sudden, your life’s falling apart and your marriage and your career and your whatever and you’re irritable and you don’t know why. So, if people don’t have something to help go, “Okay, no, that’s normal. That’s fine. We all went through those multiple times. Everybody goes through that. That’s just standard human development.” If you don’t have that, people can really run into a lot of trouble. And it’s amazing that just simply saying, “Actually, no, that’s normal. Here, read. This is just standard stuff,” how that helps people. An analogy I was using with my friend Willoughby Britton and I, I can’t remember. I think we sort of co-came up with it, was that imagine if you had a young teenage female who all of a sudden started bleeding, and had no idea that there was such a thing called menstrual period. It’s stressful enough as it is without thinking that you’re suddenly dying or going to bleed to death or something terrible. And so, contextualizing what I would consider stock stages of development that are just normal human processes that people go through as their consciousness begins to wake up is really important to help people navigate in territory. Just like it’s important to figure out how to navigate in adolescence when all of a sudden you start having experiences that are not stock and standard that you grew up with in your earlier childhood. Same kind of thing, very helpful to have it normalized.
Rick: And you’re a doctor and you’ve just used the word misdiagnosed. And obviously, if you yourself, Daniel, had some kind of severe pain somewhere, you probably wouldn’t diagnose yourself. You’d probably go in and have a colleague check it out for you, because you can’t be sure if you’re just diagnosing yourself. And maybe you don’t have the right instrumentation or whatever. And so, I think that’s an apt metaphor for the spiritual path where a lot of times you need a teacher, wouldn’t you say? Someone who is more advanced than you are to help give you a sense of what you’re actually going through, because they’ve gone through it.
Daniel: Right, or a good set of friends who have gone through it.
Rick: Yeah.
Daniel: Yeah, it helps tremendously to know the territory ahead and have people who have been there and made the standard mistakes like we all made and are continuing to make. And that helps a lot. And the collective wisdom. So not just the teacher, but also a tradition that has the sort of summary collective wisdom of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of practitioners over whatever period of time, distilling down the essence of what they came across. So modern medicine, it’s by taking care of zillions and zillions and zillions of patients, and seeing the range of diseases and processes and the rare side effects and the common things. And that breadth and depth of experience helps make it better. And I would add for diagnosis is the point of not diagnosing yourself, which can be tricky, but also friends and family members, close friends. It’s very common to try to want to diagnose friends and family members. It’s a notoriously dangerous business, particularly your closest Dharma colleagues, rivals, friendly competitors. Al these things happen, particularly in the map-based traditions. Just be careful of trying to diagnose them, just like you wouldn’t want to do psychotherapy on a family member if you were a psychotherapist. Same kind of thing for Dharma diagnosis. It’s just notoriously dangerous. Tricky thing to do. Yeah, I prefer that my wife go to doctors other than me, because they should get somebody with a more objective point of view on whatever is going on.
Rick: Yeah. Sometimes I say on this show that the East has been at this for so many thousands of years that they’ve really worked it out in a lot of detail, which the West hasn’t, similar to the Inuit people who have so many names for snow, for instance, because they’re so familiar with it. But you’ve spent a lot of time in the East. You’ve gone and done Buddhist retreats over there. And I sort of get the feeling that things are a mishmash over there too.
Daniel: Oh yeah.
Rick: I know it is within the Hindu traditions of India. There’s such a variety of kinds of things. And I guess perhaps one notion is that the pure essential teachings that were established by the Buddha or Lord Krishna or whoever were the original founders of Shankara or whoever, have kind of, through the passage of time, gotten translated and muddled and reinterpreted and so on, sort of like that party game telephone, where you whisper something, and it goes around the room and by the time it comes back to you it’s a completely different thing. So, it would almost seem that the Eastern traditions need as much of a house cleaning as the newly forming Western spirituality from the East needs an education.
Daniel: Yes, that’s totally true. And that brings up an interesting question of the value of authentic traditions and techniques, where people are always debating about what were the original teachings of the Buddha, which obviously is a very hard thing to get at with great certainty, as well as the question of what actually works and is useful. So, I as a pragmatist, first and foremost, rather than say a Buddhist or a traditionalist or a reformer or whatever, try to figure out, at least as best I can from my experience and the experience of other meditator friends, is what seems to make a difference, because there are so many variants of Buddhism. It’s huge. I mean, it’s absolutely gigantic and debates about the techniques and the meanings of words and all that stuff. And so many variants of the techniques. When you go into the Mahayana, the Tibetans, and then you look at the Zen people, and then if you go into, Shingon Buddhism and Pure Land and all these variants, or even within the Theravada, the differences between the various Burmese or Sri Lankan, Australians, is just an amazing plethora of a variety of teachings, styles, emphases. And so, I think it’s neat to see all of that, and try to figure out what do each of those things lead to. If you practice them well, what are their good side effects? What are their shadow sides that they necessarily create? Because I think basically anytime you have a technique and a focus, you’re going to be doing some things well, and other things you’re going to, almost intrinsically be not doing well. You know what I mean? It’s very tricky to have it all in one thing, if that makes sense. And so, to try to figure out what those things are and just be honest about them. And so that people in various stages of their development can say, “Okay, actually, that now seems to make sense. I need to do more of that to balance me out,” or “Actually, now I need to stop doing this and do this other thing,” or “Actually, now I need to now go back to something that I was doing earlier and really maybe need to look at that again,” or you see what I mean? And so, I think that just like with medications, each of these medications I give, I recognize the useful things it does and also the possible side effects that I can be causing by giving that. I think all the aspects of the traditions are sort of like that too. And you give it dependent on context and dependent on the disease process, knowing the risks and benefits, and you go, “Okay.” So, like if you — anyway, so I’ll stop there.
Rick: No, that’s good. There’s a certain faction who’s listening to this right now who are kind of cringing, if they haven’t tuned out already, because of all this talk of practice. And I was just reading this morning in your book, the “You’re already there” chapter. There’s a certain faction who feel like practices are bunk, they’re only going to reinforce the notion of a practicer. Just realize that you’re already that, you’re already essentially enlightened, really realize that and you’re basically done. And you and I both agree that that’s kind of crazy.
Daniel: I think it’s totally crazy. Go ahead.
Rick: Well, I was just going to say, I think that I have two theories as to why people say that. I think I have two. One is that we can all intuitively grasp that there is this deeper reality. And I think a lot of people mistake that intuitive aroma of that deeper reality for the full realization of it. They think that that’s all these guys have been talking about, is what they’re now experiencing through their… And I used to do this when I was 18, on drugs. I could stand up and pontificate for hours about the nature of reality, because I had this intuitive insight into it. And I think another thing is that people don’t want to sit on their butts in practice for 20 or 30 years. It’s so much easier to just realize that you’re there and not have to go through all this arduous practice. So those are my two theories.
Daniel: Yeah, well, so I think definitely that while it is true that the notion of practice does in some ways reinforce the notion of practitioner, there’s no question about that. So, I’ll give them that point, that there is validity in that. But still, like the candle flame that consumes itself, that consumes the candle or whatever, if the practice is a scopeful practice, or a helpful practice, it does help dissolve the boundaries anyway. So, it does help dissolve the misperceptions. It does help to clarify. And when you have better resolving power, and better clarity and better openness to experience, and a better acceptance of the realm of sensei phenomena, then that really does have the capacity to change things in a way that the less clear, less accepting, less precise, less open ways simply don’t.
Rick: Takes a thorn to remove a thorn.
Daniel: Yeah, so we’re on the same page there. But it is definitely true that the shadow side of goal-oriented practice or technique-oriented practice is definitely the sense of division. So that’s true that reality must be somewhere else, that there is somewhere in the future that I’m trying to get to that’s somewhere where I am now. And that’s a perennial problem for goal-based practitioners. And so, they make a valid point. So, I’ll give them that. But it’s true, isn’t it?
Rick: Yeah, there is somewhere you’re going to get to in the future. And you’re not going to, in the snap of a finger, realize the full-blown enlightenment as clearly and fully as is possible. There’s no way that’s going to happen. It would necessitate a radical change of the physiology, for one thing, a transformation of the way the brain functions. But in actual practical experience, it’s very rare, if not entirely unknown, for people to go from A to Z in the blink of an eye.
Daniel: Incredibly rare. So, there do seem to be a few possible cases. There may have been a few, maybe. If you look at the history and the people things report, okay, maybe 1 in 100 million? I don’t know. But it’s an incredibly small number. So, your chances are much better being struck by lightning a few times than having this happening to you. So, if I were going to bet, were I betting man, I would bet on the people that practice well and really try to develop their capacity for clear thought and heartful awareness and those things, clear comprehension of what’s going on. So given a choice. But I think this reflects a lot of our culture. I think part of the reason that these are so popular is that each country has a shadow side, and each country has some aspect of itself that it’s trying to use spirituality to get away from. Just as Burma, from a certain point of view, is such a mind-bogglingly dysfunctional, impoverished, political catastrophe, with a barely functioning, barely industrialized, mostly almost medieval economy. In the same way, I find its techniques and its rigor and its precision of thought and mapping and everything to be some of the best in the entire world. And so, their spirituality is an escape from the grinding poverty, political unsophistication, lack of education, and all those things that you find in Burma. Not that there aren’t some remarkable things about that country, obviously. But that said, in the West, we have one of the most advanced, technical, goal-oriented, hyper-achievement-driven, incredibly guilt-heavy, competitive cultures in the entire world. And so, I think that attracts people to spirituality to get away from all that. They want something that gets them out of having to buy another SUV or another McMansion or get another degree or have another investment portfolio or whatever. And so, I think that part of the shadow side of our culture is a longing for something where we just don’t have to do all that stuff. And so, I think it does attract people for that reason, which is unfortunate, because doing all that stuff actually helps a lot.
Rick: Yeah, in a way you’re kind of saying that with both cultures, people realize, “Well, this isn’t really working, and I want to find something deeper and more meaningful.”
Daniel: Yeah.
Rick: And I know that in your book, in various places, you talk about integration. And I’m one who believes that the material, relative problems that confront the world, such as overpopulation or global warming or all these things, are actually very related to spirituality. Spirituality, in fact, can provide a very fundamental level of solution to things which have seemed insoluble or intractable through other means.
Daniel: Explain, help me understand that, because I’m more of a cynic, unfortunately, on that point of view, so help bring me over to your point of view.
Rick: Sure. Well, the reason I feel that is that I feel that everything we see on the surface of life -economies and cultures and political systems and dysfunctional political systems, such as we have both in Burma and the US in our own different ways, are all reflections of deeper trends or tendencies in the collective consciousness. Just as perhaps the overall view of a forest is going to be influenced by the healthiness of each individual tree. And if most of the trees are gray and dying, you fly over in a helicopter and you see a gray forest, susceptible to forest fire. But if each tree is nourished from its roots by whatever miracle grow, plenty of water, then the trees individually will become green and the whole forest will appear green. So, what I’m suggesting is that all the crazy stuff people do, like take global warming for instance, you can look at a lot of the cause of it being short-sightedness and greed. And now the ice is melting in the Arctic and the oil companies are thinking, “Oh boy, new places to explore for oil.” So, it’s stupidity, it’s short-sightedness and greed. And if short-sightedness and greed, which I’m sure are both dealt with in Buddhist psychology, are dominating the collective psychology, the collective consciousness, how do you get rid of them? You can’t just paint the forest green, fly over with a plane and spray-paint it green. You have to make each individual tree healthy. And so, I would suggest that a spiritual renaissance will be the most fundamental possible solution to these macroscopic problems.
Daniel: Maybe. And so, I guess it depends on what you mean by a spiritual renaissance and how broadly and deeply you imagine that being able to go in the collective population, as well as in the population specifically of the people with the greatest power to alter those things. But I think that there is a spiritual renaissance of CEOs and politicians and the wealthy elite of the banking system, as well as the ordinary consumer. And while I dream similar things, and I would love for that to be true, unfortunately I must admit I’m a bit of a cynic in that I see so many people that that would have to happen to, to such a profound degree, and even then, I’m not sure it would accomplish the things you want it to accomplish.
Rick: Let me chip away your cynicism a little bit more if I can.
Daniel: Please.
Rick: I don’t know about your life, but in my life a reorientation to spiritual development made a huge difference in terms of not only my subjective fulfillment, but in terms of the outer manifestations of my life, my relative success and happiness and interaction with people and being a more responsible person, and all kinds of good stuff.
Daniel: Sure.
Rick: My educational enthusiasm, everything.
Daniel: Yes, it helped me too.
Rick: It made a big difference. And so, if we multiply ourselves by some millions of times, and if millions of people were to become as engaged in spiritual development as we have, perhaps that would have an impact on the entire society. And I believe that’s actually happening, maybe to varying degrees, but it seems to be waking up more and more and more and more. And I would say that the corporate CEOs and politicians who seem to really have the reins in hand of the way society is going are actually pawns, ultimately, of the collective consciousness. And we’ve seen radical shifts in the world take place quite unexpectedly, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, a variety of other things. And I can’t prove that those were symptomatic of a deep change in collective consciousness, but I suspect they may have been. And I think that this is getting into New Age prognostication, because there are a lot of people like Barbara Marx Hubbard and others who talk this way, whom I respect and actually will be interviewing in September. I think that there is a groundswell, there’s a deep fundamental awakening taking place in the collective consciousness through the… whether it’s because more and more people are engaged in spiritual practice, or whether more people are engaged in spiritual practice because there’s some kind of awakening in global consciousness, I don’t know which is the cart and which is the horse, that seems to be happening. And I don’t think it can possibly happen without there being profound ramifications on the more obvious levels of life.
Daniel: Maybe, except, okay, so here’s a generational thing. So, you’ve got to remember, I’m Gen X, so my cynicism is different, and I’ve got to try to tease out what is a generation. I’m 45.
Rick: Okay, so I’m about 20 years older.
Daniel: Right. And I feel that. And so, when I look at your generation and its optimism, I am at once jealous from a certain point of view, and also I think it’s naive. So, I actually believe that empires can collapse, that systems can fail, that calamity is possible, that we have not eliminated the threats that could cause massive regressions of society or technology or of morality or anything. And I actually wish I could share your optimism, but I don’t see it as anything resembling guaranteed or cut and dried or even straightforward, and I actually see a lot of trends that actually I find incredibly concerning. Population increase, the sort of increase in sort of low-level, nearly continuous wars of the United States, the rise of robber baron capitalism basically nearly taking over the political process. I could go on and on, but as well as just the continued unchecked nature of the population, the potential for diseases and pandemics, the continued instability of the global economy, and the potential for things that we’ve sort of imagined we’ve gotten past, like nuclear war. It was only a few months ago that the Russian foreign minister was mentioning turning us into nuclear ash or radioactive ash or something. And so, we forget that there are still massive potentials for terrible things to happen. So, call me a Gen X cynic or call me a realist or I’m not sure what. And not that I don’t see a lot of potential. I see a lot of growth and a lot of great things happening too. But it’s a chaotic system. It’s a strange system and there’s a lot of potential for instability in both directions. Suddenly amazing things could be happening all over the world that are just fantastic. Or suddenly the whole thing can come crashing down and I would not be surprised by either. But a general sort of, and I may be misrepresenting you, but I have a sense that your generation has the sense that yes, there are downturns and there are whatever, but it will sort of generally go up to positive, continuous progress, growth, expanding of human consciousness and the global peace and harmony that will descend upon the wonderful nature of all things and will become all ecological and all these things. But I’m not sure it’s true. So even as I look at myself, yes, it empowered me to be, my education, my ability to help people and my ability to help my family. Realization helps with a whole lot of things. It did. No question about it. And made me vastly happier and solved a lot of problems. But it certainly didn’t solve everything, nor did it make me less resource consumptive. So, the fact that I was more successful in education, more successful in my career, meant that I can spend more money, can afford more plane flights, can have a bigger house that uses more power that, and those things happened. And so, and those are all bad for the environment. And so, it made me a bigger consumer. So, success is a dangerous thing. Even though I buy more products, even though I drive Priuses and try to rationalize these things, still, actually, probably on average, I’m using more resources than I would have been had I been less successful. And what’s that doing to the planet? Probably messing it up. You see what I mean? Sorry, that was a long rant.
Rick: Yeah, that’s all right. And if you were a peasant in Burma, you’d be using fewer resources still, even a Burmese monk.
Daniel: Yes.
Rick: And I agree with everything you just said. I mean, all this scary stuff may pan out. We all may go to hell in a handbasket. I mean, for all we know, an asteroid might crash into the planet next week and kill us all. And there’s bad stuff happening, and it’s hard to see how it’s going to be reversed. There’s an ice shelf melting in Antarctica now that’s pretty much irreversible, and it’s melting, and it’s predicted to raise sea levels by four feet in the next hundred years, which will inundate hundreds of millions of populations in coastal cities. But all I’m saying is that the subtle is more powerful, and the spiritual realms that we’re talking about experiencing are more subtle. And that if larger numbers of people are experiencing these and enlivening them, it’s somehow going to percolate up. Again, maybe I’m sounding idealistic, but it’s somehow going to percolate up in terms of different expressions in society and technology and so on, than the sort of lower consciousness that has predominated have given rise to.
Daniel: I surely hope so.
Rick: Yeah, and there’s all kinds of cool ideas that could come about. For instance, I just read something recently where these guys are working on this project to actually pave our entire road system with solar panels.
Daniel: I just saw that too, isn’t that cool?
Rick: Yeah, unbelievable. And all the parking lots.
Daniel: Totally awesome.
Rick: It’s like 18,000 square miles just of roads, plus you have parking lots. And what that could result in, or what other technologies there might be that would overnight practically change -well, it’s going to take a while to implement the, but change our whole use of energy. Anyway, I’m just saying that I watched an interview with Steve Jobs the other night, which was taped about 19 years ago. It was taped during a time when he had been kicked out of Apple, and Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy. And then he ended up coming back and it became the biggest company in America and did all kinds of cool stuff. I’m just saying that there are all kinds of amazing technologies that are possible, and we never know what’s going to manifest. And I think that ultimately, it’s human creativity that will give rise to these technologies if they do come about. And spiritual development is a tremendous fuel for creativity, and hopefully, creativity channeled in the right direction. Because it took a lot of creativity to create an atomic bomb, but if all the morality and so on that Buddhism and other spiritual practices are supposed to cultivate were to be cultivated on a much more mass scale, perhaps we would have a technological proliferation that would really be in our ultimate best interest and not destructive.
Daniel: Well, so I’m a fan of an author named Jack Vance, who’s a sci-fi fantasy writer. And in a remarkable series by him called The Demon Princes, which I highly recommend if anybody likes science fiction, I think he’s just great. He talks about a group whose dedicated goal is to keep technology below a level at which a single madman or small group of crazy people could cause mass destruction. And then the problem is, the more advanced the technology, the greater the capabilities of any individual. And so, then you either have to figure out a way to make everybody sane, kind, thoughtful, reasonable, or maybe you shouldn’t have that level of technology. And so, the goal of this organization is to limit technology to a certain level below, so that a single madman can’t, say, destroy a planet. And the problem is, as we get better and better at technology, they just published the sequence for an influenza virus with a 60% kill rate and a higher rate of transmissibility.
Rick: Somebody can get a hold of it.
Daniel: Yeah. And those things are becoming easily within our capabilities, or to resurrect smallpox, or to engineer something even more sinister and destructive. And soon enough, this stuff will be available to relatively ordinary people on relatively ordinary benchtops. And some of it is actually already.
Rick: And there’s loose kooks out there.
Daniel: Right. So, I’m simultaneously so excited about some of the potentials for technology, and not to be a needless Luddite or pessimist, but some of it also really scares me in terms of its capability to cause real trouble.
Rick: Well, I think this supports the point I’ve been arguing, which is, I think the cat’s out of the bag in terms of technology, and it’s unstoppable, and it’s going to continue to multiply and become more and more sophisticated and powerful. So, I don’t think we’re going to rein it in, unlike what that science fiction writer was saying. So, we have to counterbalance it. We have to raise human intelligence and morality to a level at which technology is going to be more responsibly managed, wouldn’t you say?
Daniel: Yeah. But then the question is- I work in an emergency department, and a very large portion of what we do is related to mental health one way or the other. Or just the standard mental health disorders, bipolar and schizophrenia, and the cluster B personality disorders, the narcissists, the antisocial borderlines, those sorts of things. And so, the realm of mental health is very complicated because it constantly begs the question of individual freedom, versus the obligation of society to help people. And the question of: where do we draw the line in terms of some people will say, “No, you’re going to take this,” or, “No, you’re going to behave in certain ways,” or, “No, you’re going to live in a certain place or not be allowed to go certain places or not allowed to do certain things?” When we institutionalize people or when we commit people. And so those questions of human rights and human dignity and caring for people and making sure that people are safe and not hurting themselves or each other, those are some very gray areas of territory. And so, unless you can figure out a way to solve the problem of mental illness and its treatment and figure out how to get an extremely high degree of mental health across the population and monitor that population without being draconian about it, I don’t think it’s going to be easily possible to eliminate all the people with a remarkable capacity to cause serious destruction as suicide bombers and mass shooters continue to demonstrate on a nearly daily basis. Do you see what I mean?
Rick: I do. Well, if you want to change the course of a river, it’s too late if you try to do it at the mouth of the river. The river’s already run its course and it’s got a lot of force. If you go halfway upstream, you may be able to change half of its course and it’s a little easier than it would have been at the mouth. But if you get up to the source of the river, very hypothetically speaking, you could probably send the whole river off in a different direction, given an imaginary ability to change geography.
Daniel: So, what would you propose? Mandatory meditation in grade school?
Rick: Maybe. Why not? We have mandatory mathematics and mandatory learning to read. And I can’t see… it’s actually not mandatory, but it’s actually happening a lot in schools around the U.S. where meditation is being taught in schools. And, sometimes over the objections of fundamentalist Christians, but it happens nonetheless because the supervisors see such profound benefits that they manage to keep it going. And sometimes it gets shut down. But we can imagine a society that was a little bit less fundamentalistic, if that’s a word, and a little bit more evolved, in which some form of meditation or other, or perhaps a variety of forms, were more or less universal curricula. And imagine the impact that might have on the entire society.
Daniel: Oh, so definitely. And I imagine it both ways. So if you could sort of either, I guess the two options are either to totally secularize attention training and to simply say this is attentional fitness, as my friend Kenneth Folt calls it, or attention training, just like we train to learn to count or we train to learn to spell or to speak or to use a map or whatever things they teach us in school. Just so you’re training attention to be stable, to be clear, to be precise, to be workable, to be handleable and training your emotional world to be psychologically healthy and balanced and kind and skillful and all these things and generous, etc. So, you either have to totally secularize it, which the problem is most of the traditions like owning their technology and their concepts. And there are plenty of, obviously, people who are trying to totally secularize this stuff, which sort of often decontextualizes it and takes out a lot of its power, which is sort of ironic. But anyway, or you have to then integrate these things into the religious traditions, because it’s not like people’s religious views are going to suddenly go away. America is a profoundly religious country. There’s a church on nearly every corner here where I live in Alabama. Not that they all get along with each other, so the question is, could you integrate meditation technology back into each of the religious traditions? But I actually think that part of the problem is, is that there’s a developmental thing with people. So, people are on a developmental bell curve with regard to seeing the value of mind training, seeing the value of meditation, even being able to do it. I see people who are adults who can barely handle their minds. They can barely handle their emotions. They can barely handle circumstances. And I see kids who have unbelievable levels of maturity and self-insight and ability to handle themselves in the face of stress and their internal experience and to articulate it. I see nine-year-old’s who have a level of descriptive ability of their internal states and ability to be mature and poised that I see plenty of 40 year old’s not having even my, some of my fellow colleagues and physicians who may be incredibly smart, capable people, but never really learned to be emotionally balanced or polite or to handle their own internal emotions and experiences in a mature way. And so, then the problem is, how do you deal with that bell curve of what seems to be a mix of intrinsic talent and ability as well as conditioning and do that on a broad scale and get everybody up to a level that’s reasonable, so people won’t be intimidated by it or, you know, all these things. So, I think it’s, a wonderful dream. I love the vision. I love I have similar, obviously, wow, wouldn’t it be amazing if everybody just learned to meditate and we’d all be great and kind and wonderful, except that I just, I see so many practical barriers to it from an on-the-ground point of view.
Rick: Yeah.
Daniel: Do you see what I mean?
Rick: Yeah, but bell curves move. If you took the upper fringes of the bell curve of the Middle Ages, you’d probably find that that was about where the middle of the bell curve is now.
Daniel: Sure.
Rick: And it seems to me that the pace of change is accelerating, so it might not take us another 500 years to see really dramatic, profound change.
Daniel: Got to hope not.
Rick: Yeah, really, we don’t have 500 years. And I know, there have been tens of thousands of kids instructed in meditation in US schools and hundreds of thousands in other schools around the world, which perhaps have a little bit less opposition. But still, that’s the tip of the iceberg, but I think it could really proliferate. And obviously, there would have to perhaps be different sorts of training for different people, and all kinds of different things could be experimented with and tried. And as you say, in some cases it could be stripped of its religious connotations, or in other cases, perhaps there could be just a dose of that. I don’t know. But the details would have to be worked out. But I think it’s already happening, and it’s a matter of it just happening more. Have you ever read any Sam Harris’ books?
Daniel: A little bit, yeah, yeah.
Rick: Yeah, he’s an interesting guy.
Daniel: He’s funny.
Rick: Yeah, he’s a dedicated practitioner of Buddhist meditation, has been since his teenage years, and obviously a very staunch critic of religion. But one point which he makes, which I think is really good, is that we’ve gotten ourselves into a lot of trouble by believing things that we can’t possibly know experientially. And he advocates a scientific approach to anything. And there’s been these guys that blow themselves, fly planes into buildings because they think that they’re doing God’s work and are going to get 72 virgins in heaven. They’re taking a really radical action based upon something they can’t possibly really know. It just says it in some book. So, I think that this whole discussion about changing the culture through meditation has to have a scientific, given the nature of the age we live in, has to be approached scientifically if it’s really going to work. And things have to be testable and measured and so on. And I don’t think that would necessarily compromise or water down what we’re talking about.
Daniel: Yeah, so all valid points. I would add in a sort of augmenting semi-counterpoint that the other problem with the stages of meditation is they can sometimes be destabilizing, which is not talked about a lot. And so, then the question is, can we put in place a broad enough and sophisticated enough system of psychology or social support or MD training or even just get this into standard developmental curricula of junior high schools and health class, that there are these stages of meditation that they can look like this, that they sometimes can cause real instability. I’ve had some – it is not that infrequent that I get phone calls or Skype calls or emails from people who I think of as pretty strong practitioners, who all of a sudden are now totally suicidal. And these are hyper-functional people. I remember getting a call from a person with a doctoral degree, someone what I would think of as the middle stages of awakening, who’s always like, “Dan, I’m totally suicidal. I just had this big crazy opening experience and now all of a sudden I’m just thinking about killing myself.” And I’m like, “Yeah, don’t do that.” Luckily, two or three days later he called back and said, “No, I’m good. It’s just a temporary meditation side effect. I’m okay.” But it doesn’t always go that well. So, I don’t know if you’re – you should interview Willoughby Britton about these things if you’re interested in interviewing interesting people.
Rick: I would.
Daniel: And she also is actually getting NIH grants to study meditation and its various side effects and some of the dark sides of meditation, which is kind of amazing. So, it’s getting – we’re getting NIH money now to study these things is important. But I think we have to be careful if we’re going to implement sort of mass meditation programs to recognize that that’s going to do a lot of good, I think. People learning to calm down, to be clear, to be stable, to understand what’s going on in their hearts and minds and bodies is really valuable. And also, to recognize that sometimes this stuff can cause some wild temporary instability and sometimes even psychosis and real trouble. I’ve had a number of meditator friends who have really flipped out, who are good, sane people and just – but for a little while their operating system in that sort of – as it was rebooting to some other configuration, didn’t function so well, you know?
Rick: Yeah.
Daniel: You see what I mean? And most of them later on got through it and were better for it and for the experiences they had. But that short-term stabilization part, we have to recognize we are going to cause some trouble.
Rick: Yeah. No, I totally understand and agree with that and have experienced it myself, both in friends and in myself. I never got suicidal, but I’ve certainly gone through some nutty phases, you know, really goofy at times. Still a little goofy. So that would have to be part of the package, you know? Y
Daniel: es. I
Rick: t would have to be understood that, okay, you’ve got a lot of crap bottled up and now we’re going to start releasing it in stages. And as it releases, some of it may have to be dealt with. You may have to have massage. You may have to have more physical activity. You may have to do some yoga. You may even have to take some kind of drug.
Daniel: Yeah.
Rick: And so, a really mature, complete package would take that into account and have that as part of the plan.
Daniel: I like your thinking. Yeah. I totally agree. Yeah. It’s a great vision. I hope to be some teeny part of helping to make something like that happen.
Rick: I think you are, you know? And I don’t think it’s going to be one-size-fits-all. I think everybody should have a chance at it. I think the kind of things you practice, transcendental meditation, which is done a lot with schools, mindfulness, all sorts of things, it should all be tried, and it is being tried. There’s that “Doing Time,” doing Vipassana movie where they’re teaching meditation in a prison, and a lot of that has been done with Buddhists and other types of practices. So, I think all this stuff has the … it’s like we’ve got a genie, or maybe Pandora’s box would be a better analogy. We’ve got a lot of stuff bottled up in our individual and collective psyche, and it comes out explosively in mass shootings and that kind of thing occasionally, and every day on the news or something. And it also trickles out continuously like pus oozing from a wound, and creates all kinds of undesirable influences in society on an ongoing basis. We’ve got to purge all this stuff, and we’ll have a much better world when we have purged it, but the purging process has to be treated carefully.
Daniel: You also have to remember that the purging process is continuous, so, people are being born all the time, and each new generation has to figure out something that resonates with them and works for them, and the conditions they’re coming up in and where they find themselves, and it has to be done with each new person coming along. So, part of the thing we can subtly imagine is, “We’ll sort it out, and it’ll be sorted out,” except that it’s an ongoing thing with each new phase and each new generation, each new challenge, and each new set of political circumstances.
Rick: It is, but I would like to think that more enlightened parents will give birth to more enlightened kids. There’ll be a continual upgrade. Jesus said, “The sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons,” or some such thing. So, I think it doesn’t have to be, “We’re all kind of born Neanderthals each generation,” but there can be a kind of a progressive evolution, and I see that. I see some, again, in a very unscientific way of observing, but there seem to be some really enlightened kids being born these days, who are coming right out of the starting gate pretty remarkable.
Daniel: I remember Christopher Titmuss, one of my favorite teachers, who was talking about his daughter and how she’s like, “Yeah, you do your thing, Dad. I’m going to do mine,” at least at that time, didn’t seem to be particularly interested in these things. I remember him telling the story of when she went out for her 18th birthday, which I believe in England at the time the drinking age was 18 or something like that. I can’t remember if it got the age quite right. It’s been 15 years since I heard the story. But he was talking about how he did not like the look of her, when she came staggering back in some early hour of the morning. And so, I think just because parents may have some understanding, doesn’t necessarily mean their kids will be interested in that, or go in that direction or resonate with that. My stepchildren have no interest in anything I do in the stuff at all. Having a conversation with them, I might as well be talking about aliens and spaceships, or fractal geometry. They have no interest.
Rick: Yeah, but I’m talking about the big picture. There are exceptions to every generality, and obviously it’s not necessarily going to happen every time. But presumably, I mean, my parents were a mess. My father was heavy PTSD from World War II, epileptic, alcoholic, mixing alcohol and phenobarbital liberally. And my mother was in and out of mental hospitals and trying to commit suicide. That took a toll on me for a while, but then it was almost like you were saying about Burma, where it’s such a mess that people, when they get into spirituality, they go deep because there’s nothing on the surface to attract them. When I finally realized, began meditating and all, I took off like a shot, because it was so much better than what I had been experiencing. So, it can work both ways. But I think that the general trend of society as a whole, the big macroscopic picture, we can expect that there are macro trends. Yeah, go ahead.
Daniel: Yes, there’s no question that as a macro trend, meditation is getting all over the place. It’s all over the news, it’s on mainstream media. Dan Harris, my friend, his new book, 10% Happier, is making the rounds all about meditation. And you see it in mainstream magazines and on mainstream TV and popular culture. There’s no question.
Rick: Compare that to 50 years ago.
Daniel: Right, yeah. Compare it to say, well, now actually you have to go back because 50 years ago, remember, was the 60s. So, compare it to say 60 years ago.
Rick: Back in the 50s we had maybe Yogananda, and that was about it.
Daniel: Yeah, or 70 years ago, say, or 80 years ago. Right, compare it to say World War II or the 50s. Yes, no question.
Rick: So, the times they are a-changing.
Daniel: Yes, no question. And so, there’s definitely that trend and yet all of a sudden, we’re seeing instability in Eastern Europe again. We thought Eastern Europe was just going to keep getting better and the Middle East is way more of a disaster than it was in say the 50s. You know what I mean? Or even the 60s or 70s, in some ways.
Rick: Well, you know what you were saying about people going through a lot …
Daniel: Things going up, things going down.
Rick: I know, but you know what you were saying about people, like kids in schools if they learn to meditate … Pardon the dog barking in the background, I’ll just continue. That there would be a lot of destabilizations possibly as they went through various stages because there’s a lot of structures that are sort of keeping your shit in place, but when those structures start to loosen, then things start to kind of come out and you can get kind of nutty. I think we’re going to see that with the entire world. There’s a lot of stuff that ultimately doesn’t deserve to exist if we can imagine what an ideal world might look like. And that stuff is going to … there’s a lot of structures that are going to crumble as global awakening takes place.
Daniel: Right. Okay, and so then, counterpoint. So, a lot of the trouble happens because of the cluster B personality disorders, as well as just basic depression, as well as physical stress. So, people get very cranky when they get hungry. Katrina was a clear demonstration. Where are you living now?
Rick: Iowa.
Daniel: Okay, yes, so you didn’t see it in quite the same way, but Katrina is pretty close to my back door, and it was a very clear demonstration. I know a lot of people who were there in the city at the time and who scattered from the city after it happened, and the general area. But it clearly demonstrated that we’re just a few hours away from totally savage behavior, and roving gangs, and roaming the streets trying to find food or survive, and total craziness, anarchy, and chaos. And so, we forget that it just takes a quick change, and all of a sudden, if there weren’t food in the stores within two or three days, poof. It’s going to be a madhouse. And so that’s one of the things that we forget. So anyway, just wanted to make that point.
Rick: And what would you consider to be the best way of preparing for that scenario, aside from stocking up food?
Daniel: Well, actually having a basic supply of food and water is not a crazy plan.
Rick: Not a bad idea, but I think having a basic supply of sanity is even more fundamental, and that’s what you’re talking about here in this whole …
Daniel: And a basic supply of sanity helps tremendously, and a basic set of coping skills where you can handle stress, absolutely, and a basic sense of kindness and generosity and the ability to cooperate. But then there’s the other thing where I see where then what do you do about, say, the psychopaths, the people who lack intrinsic morality, the people whose worldview is that they feel totally comfortable killing you, and feeding their children or whatever it is. You see what I mean? And so, a lot of the governments, the crazy people who get into power, the people who really like power and money, well, they got into these positions of controlling everything, because they like power and money. Well, that’s a problem. You see what I mean, if that’s their fundamental goal. But the problem is then you see the people who were obsessed with power and money, ending up in the positions with power and money because that’s what they cared about. That’s what they dedicated their energies to. And so, then you run into this funny thing where the people who are willing to commit violence, the people who are willing to take over nations, the people who are willing to buy, own, and run and control corporations, those are the people with the power and the money and the guns and the influence. and the presidencies or the prime minister ships or whatever they are. And so, the question is: how do those who consider themselves to be the kind, enlightened, gentle, wonderful people then do something with that? Because part of the problem of the shadow side of spirituality is that it’s historically been unwilling to engage with those forces that can be truly dangerous and destructive in a way that truly actually mitigates those forces. So, witness, say, Burma, a place with miserable dictatorship. They’re not calling themselves the Slork anymore, but you know what I mean, whatever their name is, they’re getting a little bit better maybe sort of. And yet an entire monastic culture, very kind, thoughtful, skilled, awakened, not all of them are awakened, but a lot of very skilled awakened people who just say, “Yeah, okay, that’s the kings, that’s the rulers, that’s the people, and we’re the monastics, that’s not our job.”
Rick: Well look what happened in Tibet when the Chinese came in and all the monks were slaughtered, and people were raped and just all kinds of horrible stuff.
Daniel: Not that bad things didn’t happen in Tibet before that under the monks’ ruling. T
Rick: here you go.
Daniel: We have to remember the monastic rulers, it was a feudal system and there were aspects of that system that were pretty frightening and scary and really totally unfortunate. So, Mao’s critique, not that the Chinese takeover of Tibet wasn’t a totally mitigated travesty from a lot of points of view, but Mao’s critique was also not 100% inaccurate of how his analysis of the way that the ruling cultures in Tibet sometimes handled things. A lot of what he said was inaccurate, but some of his critique of some of the problems that happened there was not. Does that make sense?
Rick: It does.
Daniel: And that’s the thing that a lot of people don’t want to say, it’s not like I don’t feel for the Tibetan people, and I benefit tremendously from Tibetan Buddhism, but there were some real problems under that system.
Rick: Yeah, and we’re getting pretty far afield here, and I’m not a historian, I don’t know about you, but there are so many examples of indigenous cultures being overwhelmed by the Native Americans in the US and various cultures in Africa and so on, and whether there’s some kind of karmic implication in all that, We could go on and on, and I at least would be just speculating, but social change happens, and whether we should all stockpile food and arm ourselves to the teeth in order to prepare for it, or whether spirituality is the best preparation, or some combination of both, I’m just going for the spirituality aspect, don’t own a gun.
Daniel: But you see what I’m saying though, I mean…
Rick: It’s a sticky wicket, and it’s hard to give glib answers. Yeah, so… Let’s steer ourselves back to your book, because I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff in here that would be really interesting to talk about, and I think what we’ve been talking about is interesting, but I want to make sure that we feel we’ve done justice to the thing that is your primary interest. So, help me pick up a thread based upon what you know of your book, since you’ve obviously read the whole thing, and not only your book, but anything else that’s in your worldview that you feel like would be really interesting to talk about that you don’t want to miss the opportunity.
Daniel: Well, I actually think that all of these things have actually been playing right to the themes I care the most about.
Rick: Oh, good.
Daniel: So the notion that if we simply become good meditators that we’ll sort out all our problems, or that if we understand the true nature of reality, then suddenly the world will be perfect, or that we will be perfect, or that suddenly society will be so necessarily much better, or that everything will go to some wonderful place, or that our emotions will necessarily be perfected, or have worked out all our psychological issues. I actually don’t see any obvious examples of that being true, and I see hundreds of examples of that being totally false. And so, I think that on the one hand, you’ve got to figure out how do you advertise spirituality from a sort of an American cynical marketing point of view, such that people do these things, which I think in general, I think people should learn to be clear about what’s going on inside and relate to it skillfully. They should learn to more automatically perceive their thoughts and emotions as they arise, as part of a broader field of clear experience that helps not be so contracted into those things. I think they should generally engage in some sort of meditative training. I am a believer in these things. And yet, I also think that to do that, you’ve got to figure out how to sell them in a way that motivates people to do that. And most people respond to advertising triggers that turn out to be sort of semi-inaccurate. So, most of the great ways to advertise spirituality and that people engage in these practices, do verge into territory of hyperbole and exaggeration and whitewashing.
Rick: Ideal behavior, perfect health and all that stuff.
Daniel: Right, all these things. So, most of the advertising that really grabs people to do things I think, are incredibly valuable to actually create problems and mis-sell these things and create ideals that then also create divisions within people’s lives, where they have this idea of perfection and then that prevents them from investigating aspects of their lives that are imperfect, which is going to be basically all of it. You see what I mean? And so, I think that that’s a real important question, because we’ve talked about how do you advertise this stuff? Will it lead to a global evolution in consciousness? Will it lead to more moral behavior? Will it lead to more clarity and balance for our planet and balance for ourselves? I think in some ways some of those things are true, but then the reasonable qualifiers that don’t create shadow sides, are a question of how do you do that skillfully? I think it’s not always easy.
Rick: Yeah, personally I think that a more honest approach to the whole thing would … I taught Transcendental Meditation for 25 years and we had a very sugar-coated presentation on what you could expect, full mental potential, ideal health, ideal social behavior, world peace, all this stuff. And when you really get down in the trenches and start doing a lot of meditation, the kind of things you and I have been talking about begin to happen. There’re all kinds of stuff that begins to come up. There can be … really good stuff happens, but there can also be destabilization. We used to call it “unstressing.”
Daniel: What a nice term.
Rick: Yeah, the theory being that a lot of stress is bottled up and now it’s being released and you’ve got to sort of suffer through it and just grin and bear it and keep on keeping on, and eventually the sun will come through the clouds. And, people ran into some pretty serious things and there were casualties. So, I think perhaps a more honest presentation, not only in this particular thing, but in any spiritual tradition is good to get from the outset. The initial message should be, “Okay, here’s the deal. It’s not a walk in the park, but it’s going to be great. Get into it, but these precautions,” and so on. Anyway, I forgot the train of thought, but I think that might have addressed your point.
Daniel: Yeah, yeah. So, like the dark days of paternalistic medicine, where we didn’t have warnings on the bottles that explained what these things could do and stuff to watch for, and what to do if it happens.
Rick: Now it’s 90% of the commercial.
Daniel: Right.
Rick: Ask your doctor about Ambien, now here’s what it’s going to do to you.
Daniel: Right. Yeah, definitely true. And so, I think that more of that needs to come into the world of meditation, where, frank disclosure, recognizing that most people can understand those pieces of paper, even in the bottles. Most people are never going to read them. They can’t understand them even if they do read them, and they don’t know how to process that and put it in context. So, I have people saying, “Well, doctor, you wanted to give me Tylenol, and I just looked up the side effects of Tylenol, and it’s all these terrible things.”
Rick: Yeah, cardiac or liver or whatever.
Daniel: Right, I mean, except that we give Tylenol all the time, and most people do fine. So, you’ve got to figure out how to come up with a balanced presentation that’s honest about what’s going on, while simultaneously selling it well, while doing it in a way that everybody can understand, while doing it in a way that doesn’t create shadow sides and cause people to not be able to accept their own minds and hearts and world.
Rick: Yeah.
Daniel: Yeah, it’s a real tricky balance.
Rick: So, the main point here would be a mature sort of honesty in the spiritual community.
Daniel: I hope so.
Rick: From the outset, give people as clear and as realistic a picture as you can give them, while you don’t want to discourage them, you don’t want them to have unrealistic expectations, you just want them to sort of understand what they’re going to be dealing with and to approach it in a responsible way.
Daniel: Yeah. And then the other thing I think is complicated is trying to figure out how to deal with the fact that there will be people at different levels of practice and people at different levels of understanding. There are some people who in their life will never get beyond the fact that they like a tradition, they like its costumes, they like its aesthetics, they its sort of basic moral message and its general sense of theory, and that’s all they’re ever going to do with it, and that’s what’s comfortable for them, and that’s okay, and maybe it provides them some benefit that way. And then on the other far extreme, you will have advanced technical practitioners, people with deep levels of realization, mind ability to call up remarkable states of mind within themselves, to do remarkable things, more exotic, interesting things that they can figure out how to do with their hearts, minds, bodies, and reality and things that they can perceive, and then people in all stages in between. And the problem is, historically, if you look at sort of the faith-based followers who like the costumes, the trappings, the language, the scene, the social support, all of which are neat things, cool, good, and then on the far side you have the realist people, the mystics, the deep practitioners, they historically in tradition after tradition have had a profound degree of tension between them, a lot of jealousy, a lot of misunderstanding, a lot of, people can get very freaked out by, and the sort of advanced meditators look at the sort of faith followers and could be sort of subtly condescending and critical of them, and the people who, you know, like the traditions and the techniques, and stuff but don’t have some of the more meditative abilities and understandings, whatever, always sort of looking at them going, “Yeah, yeah, those pretentious, arrogant, presumptuous people over there, how can they really know that stuff? Are they just making it up?” And so, that historical tension, and it happens in all the traditions in Christianity, the tension between, the Catholic mystics say and the Catholic church, they were as likely to burn them at the stake as they were to canonize them were both, and in the same way, the Sufis in Islam versus, the traditional, hierarchical aspects of the Islamic faith, they haven’t gotten along at all in general, and you see the same thing in all the meditative traditions, where the people with real understanding for some strange reason often have a hard time getting along with, communicating to, being accepted by the people who are more into the faith end of the thing. And so that’s going to, I think, continue to happen as it’s been such a trend for so long, and figuring out ways to work with that that are skillful is, I think, a problem that hasn’t been well addressed or articulated. Does that make sense?
Rick: It does, and it may be, I see a trend, I don’t know if it’s true, but that there’s a shift toward the more experiential.
Daniel: I hope so.
Rick: As opposed to the merely faith-based, and that, at least in my own attitude, I’m perfectly comfortable if people want to just go and sing hymns on Sunday, or chant Hare Krishna or whatever they want to do, that’s fine, great, do it. And I don’t mean that condescendingly, I think people are naturally gravitated toward what is meaningful for them, and if it ceases to be meaningful at a certain point, they’ll gravitate toward something else. I think, unfortunately, as you were saying, historically the faith-based crowd has been in the majority, and they’re the types that gravitate toward administrative positions. [Laughter] So, they end up taking over the thing and persecuting the mystics, and driving them out into the desert or whatever. But perhaps the tables are turning, perhaps the experientially oriented folks, will become more of a majority, because that’s really what it’s ultimately all about. I mean, Jesus and Buddha and whatnot weren’t real big on faith, they were into experience. But if you don’t have a means to gain that experience, then what are you left with but faith? The costumes and this and that, you need to have an effective means of getting down to the real nitty-gritty.
Daniel: Right, yeah. Yeah, these are perpetual opportunities and problems. Actually, my first introduction to meditation was actually in a Quaker school. So, these Quaker hippies in the mid-70s, we sat in meditation every day, And actually, I took a course taught by these Quaker hippies, Christian hippies that was called Close Encounters. It was my first introduction to meditation, fourth grade as an elective. In this interesting hippie school I went to Carolina Friends School, Durham, North Carolina, long ago. It was really important actually, I think. So, you can put meditation in schools, and you can actually put meditation even in Christian contexts, recognizing one day some of these groups will remember this began as a meditative tradition with Jesus’ meditating in the desert, and get back to some of that stuff. Who knows? So, there is hope.
RICK: Yeah, because ultimately, you and I both know this, but it bears repeating, what we’re talking about is very much experiential. And just sort of having faith in something that is really supposed to be experiential, is no more gratifying in the end than standing out on the sidewalk, believing how good the meals are in this particular restaurant, while slowly starving to death. You really need to have the experience. I kind of think people are drifting in that direction. There’s this whole theme these days of people being spiritual but not religious. And by that I think they mean that they are really interested in spirituality as an experiential thing. It’s not like they’re opposed to religion, it’s just that they’re not satisfied by it. They’re not satisfied by mere belief.
Daniel: Yep. And then the other question is, some people also who totally are into the experience of the thing and practice and clarity and mental development and all these things, also can really miss the churches and the social gatherings, and the potlucks and the songs and the music and the beauty of the pipe organs. And so, we’ve got to remember that that is also feeding some obvious human need, or there wouldn’t be so many churches and pipe organs and people singing, and congregating together and having potlucks. And so, then the question is remembering that, because that also nourishes a lot of people and supports a lot of people. There’s endless data to show that people who are involved in church organizations, have better health outcomes, they live longer. And is that the nourishing casseroles of the old church ladies bringing them to their home when they’re sick or whatever? I don’t know, but maybe.
Rick: You’re probably not referring to those guys that handle the rattlesnakes, this is the other denomination.
Daniel: No, not so much. Luckily the number of them that die from that is pretty small.
Rick: Well, this is an interesting point actually, which we haven’t quite touched upon, which is that I can think of a number of examples of very experientially grounded, enlightened people, such as Ramakrishna or Papaji, who we mentioned earlier, or Nisargadatta, who also really loved the ceremony and the pujas, and the devotional practices. I have a friend who was raised Jewish named Eric Eisen, and I interviewed him about a year ago, and I remember when we were teaching back in Detroit in the 80s, and he used to love to go into … he had very deep, rich, profound experiences all the time, really off the charts, but he used to love to go into Catholic churches and just sit and witness the ceremony and the stained-glass windows and everything. He said it would just send him into these kind of heavenly ecstatic states.
Daniel: The majesty of it is remarkable.
Rick: Yeah, it can really be an enriching thing. Yeah, I totally agree. We’ve got an amazing Catholic church not too far from me, that looks like something you would find in the best of Spain, the Spanish cathedrals there, that’s just down near Cullman, Alabama. You’d never know it was there unless you knew it was there. And the marble and the gold and the huge, vaulted arches, it’s just an amazing place. How could you not like that from a certain point of view?
Rick: So maybe the overarching point here is, resist the temptation to pigeonhole anything. Firstly, there’s the different strokes for different folks point, but also, there’s nothing wrong with a more complete package. It doesn’t have to be plain vanilla non-duality and anything else that’s superfluous frills.
Daniel: Well, that alienates nearly everybody. The number of people who can get into that is a very small number. They might go very far with it. The few who can get into that are probably going to go very far, but that’s the way narrow end of the funnel in terms of people getting into this stuff.
Rick: Let me ask you a question. Two weeks ago I posted an interview, which you may or may not have seen, in which I had a panel discussion of people who were having what we would call refined or celestial perception. I was interested in this because the religious iconography of every tradition, and of the scriptures of every tradition talk about people having these kinds of experiences, seeing halos or auras and angels and all this stuff. I know there’s a lot of this in the Buddhist tradition too. I knew it would be a little bit of a controversial. So, I had this panel discussion of people who actually have that sort of experience on a daily basis. I knew it would be controversial in that there would be some camp who would say, “These people are off in la-la land, and even if they’re having valid perceptions, it’s a distraction, it’s a hang-up, it’s not relevant and valid on a serious spiritual path.” And others were saying, “Thank God, I’m so glad to hear this, because I’m so tired of the dumbing down of spirituality where any kind of relative phenomena are dismissed as irrelevant.” So, what’s your take on all that?
Daniel: Well, I didn’t see the interview, so tell me a little bit more about what they were perceiving and what it was doing for them, how it changed or positively impacted their life.
Rick: Well, for some of them it was relatively new, and for some of them it’s been going on for decades. And one woman has all kinds of stuff about seeing light coming out of people, and she can tell if a person is lying because sparks come flying out of their heads. She can see people’s past lives, whether or not she wants to a lot of times. And I’ll just summarize really quickly. Another guy had a spiritual awakening quite profoundly after 30 years of being a Trappist and Benedictine monk, and was grounded in pure consciousness 24/7, we might say, but after a little while began to see subtle beings, angels, attending to people, and doing things on a regular basis, all the time, basically. And he doesn’t know quite what to make of it, but it’s very kind of… and he’s not distracted, in fact he didn’t really want to talk about it, I kind of twisted his arm because he felt like it was too private and intimate. Another guy has been having this for decades, and really kind of deep, profound, extraordinary cognitions on a daily basis. And one time I was taking a walk with him, and I said, “Well, what is your experience?” He said, “Well, I see millions of souls coming in and out of my body, I see the Devas or the laws of nature that are governing the various levels of creation, I see them functioning and so on.” I said, “You mean in meditation?” He said, “No, right now.” And this guy is a practical guy, he’s a businessman, a family man, has a couple of kids.
Daniel: Yeah.
Rick: Then there are a couple more. So anyway, people are having this kind of experience, sometimes quite by surprise, and usually not culturing it intentionally, but they’re having these kinds of experiences. This is out there, it’s part of the scene. From your experience, what would you say to it?
Daniel: Well, actually, starting off just with the theory and tradition, that’s all-stock standard textual stuff. If you read the old Pali Canon, there’s endless people seeing beings and ghosts, and Devas and all kinds of realms, and that’s actually so totally part of the thing. I have the book on my desk, The 31 Planes of Existence. It talks about seeing all these different realms and beings and these things. So, I’ve had some experiences of different realms and seeing different things like that. So, the question for what I call the powers, if we broadly lump them all in the category of powers, is, A, there’s no question that these things happen to people, and then that’s the way they perceive reality. For most people, these things are transient. Most people will have temporary glimpses of very altered ways of perceiving reality. So, I remember I was on this retreat, the retreat right before I got stream entry, as would be the first stage of awakening in a Buddhist map point of view, for those not familiar with the dogma. But right before I got that, I was walking around the Thai monastery in India, in this interesting state where I was seeing everybody simultaneously as Buddhas, fully awakened beings, and mush demons. So that’s sort of this funny way to explain it. There were these sort of sad squat creatures with sort of big eyes, very cartoon looking, and sort of arms and kind of fur coming off, look like some sort of strange sort of unfortunate Muppet or something. These sort of sad, limited, scared creatures, and yet fully awakened beings at the same time. And that was my experience. It was true of the chickens and the puppies and all these little, and the birds up on the wires, I was seeing them all in this same context, simultaneously the sort of the luminous dance of God, and as sort of small, scared individual creatures all at the same time. So, I’ve definitely had some of these experiences, though I don’t walk around perceiving reality that way all the time. But this is stock standard stuff. So that’s sort of ordinary things to happen. I’ve talked to plenty of monks and other meditators who’ve had lots of experiences like this, who’ve seen angels or celestial beings or devils or demons, or other divine presences or other stuff. But you raise the point of saying, these people are family people who have jobs and relationships and lives, and they’re functioning just fine.
Rick: Functioning better.
DANIEL: Yeah, functioning better. Right. And so, it’s funny, I wish I could — I should have had you read the second draft of the book, because I was just writing it actually just last night and a few recent nights in the Powers section. So, you have people who, they listen to the garden gnomes, and the garden gnomes tell them how to grow vegetables, and the vegetables they grow are totally amazing.
Rick: Yeah.
Daniel: What’s the problem? So, in terms of — that sounds great. I wish there were better vegetables with the instructions that the garden gnomes to the smaller ones that weren’t as good. So if it’s enhancing function, me being a pragmatist at heart, I care about function. You see what I mean?
Rick: Yeah.
Daniel: And so, if this is enhancing people’s lives in some way or other, providing benefit, great. Cool. You know? And so, I like Freud’s definition. Freud talked about mental illness as that which interferes with love and work, basically, was his, course conceptualization, obviously, is more complicated than that. And so, if it’s not interfering with love, our ability to connect with people and have relationships, or work, our ability to function and maintain our lives, and eat and feed our families or do whatever we need to do as our work, or if it’s enhancing that, then cool.
Rick: Yeah.
Daniel: You see what I mean? I don’t see — A, I don’t see a problem, and it sounds like it could be very enhancing. I got a lot out of actually my periods walking around, where I was what you might think of as psychotic, but actually, it was really enhancing function. There was no obvious downside, and it really enhanced my ability to appreciate what was going on in the world around me.
Rick: And I think it’s worth discussing it, because like some of the other things we’ve been talking about, it is something which people experience, sometimes quite by surprise, like we were talking about the high school curriculum, maybe you’re going to have to say, “Well, you might start seeing angels.” But if there’s some preparation or some understanding that this is part of the trip, then it won’t scare people and they’ll take it in stride. And perhaps just as importantly, they won’t blow it out of proportion, and think that it’s uber important, or try to develop it specifically, whereas it really perhaps should be a side effect or a symptom of a certain stage of development.
Daniel: Well, actually developing those things specifically sometimes is really cool. So, take the Tibetan Tantra people, who spend hours and hours and thousands of hours visualizing deities. So, these Vajrasattvas, and Thousand-Armed Chagrin Resigs, and all these-they have a whole specific canon of things they learn to visualize, and not only to then see the deities, but then to actually become the deities and walk around embodying themselves as the deity, and actually, seeing themselves as the deity, and then merging with the deity. So that’s actually explicit tantric practice. So sometimes that’s the path. And I know a lot of those people who have gotten a lot out of doing that, and have actually spent some time visualizing deities, and doing some of those things, and found it totally fascinating. And if you get your visualization skills good enough, these things actually become these remarkable, transparent, luminous, intelligent entities that often seem to be totally intelligent and totally interactive. And then you can recognize that your nature is the same as their nature, and actually, have these remarkable experiences, where you collapse into the awareness and cognition of them, and they merge, and all these profoundly transforming things. And so, some of those practices can be absolutely skillful and fascinating, and actually, cultivating the powers. So, the powers are one of these topics a lot of people don’t like to talk about. But you can get a lot of remarkable things to happen to your consciousness by cultivating the powers. It’s also a possible quick trip to destabilizing psychosis, as you learn in the TM world. Because anytime you’re doing a visualization or a mantra, or even more, the two together, that’s pretty much how you get into that territory, seeing stuff and hearing stuff. And that can, as you know, from I’m sure your TM work, that can be very transformative, and also, sometimes cause people to flip out, which is why the Tantric path has been called fast and dangerous. I see why now.
Rick: Yeah, and what I infer from that is that these deities you refer to, in this case and point, are not just hallucinations or figments of imagination. One is actually learning to kind of tune in to a particular level of creation where such things actually intrinsically exist. So, you’re just becoming more adept at exploring the territory. Go ahead.
Daniel: I’m actually very cautious about that point of view. So, if you go assuming an absolute ontology, meaning this is the structure of reality, and I know this to be some sort of ultimate structure of reality, from a relative point of view, that these things actually exist. I’m actually, that language makes me sort of nervous.
Rick: What does that book say that you just held up, the 31 levels of creation?
Daniel: Yes, so it talks about these.
Rick: Are they imaginary levels or is it saying that there’s actually these strata which are part of the way creation actually is structured?
Daniel: How about we actually assume that there are multiple other points of view than that standard stock scientific materialistic dichotomy. So, imagine that there are other points of view of looking at that. From my point of view as a pragmatist, these experiences, if they happen and you say, “Oh, that is definitely real. I saw an angel, and I’m sure that angel is the truth, and that angel exists, and that angel is definitely an angel,” that can be very compelling when you’ve just seen an angel, and it seemed to be true. Does that make sense?
Rick: Yeah, but that degree of certainty sounds a little bit rigid or too adamant.
Daniel: It’s too adamant, and I think somewhere in there, you have to maintain some, not call it skepticism, it’s not quite the right word, but an empiricism or how do I know? It’s not even the right word.
Rick: A bit of a grain of salt. Just keep a grain of salt.
Daniel: A bit of a grain of salt. You have to be careful whenever you’re having these experiences, to not take them so seriously because it can run people into trouble, particularly if the angels tell you crazy stuff, which sometimes these things are going to do, right? Sometimes they’re going to tell you crazy stuff.
Rick: They may not be angels.
Daniel: Right. Who knows? Whatever. Or something. So, I think from a pragmatic point of view, and from an experientialist point of view, those are the two ways I frame this, in that these experiences definitely occur. You can have these experiences. That’s what you experienced. That was your reality. And then there’s the interpretation of that, which is also going to be part of your experience, and arise dependent on conditions. And you have to recognize that these things are causal. Does that make sense? So even if you were a pure scientific materialist who said, “Oh, these are just hallucinations. These are just your imagining internal experiences,” well, they’re missing something because these effects are causal. They determine what’s happening in what everybody considers ordinary materialistic reality. So, to dismiss them as not being a part of reality, when they’re actually causally impacting reality, is obviously very paradigmatically problematic. Does that make sense?
Rick: I think you left some nice multi-syllabic words there.
Daniel: Yes, thank you very much. So, if they’re impacting reality, there’s some aspect of experiential reality and causal reality. I think you have to recognize that from a pragmatic point of view. And then the question is, from a pragmatist point of view, what good comes from these experiences and how do you make the most of them? And from a paradigmatic fluency point of view, how do you interpret them to get the best outcomes from them? Does that make sense? So those are the things I find the most interesting. And from my point of view, the real gold standard from the power, from a power’s point of view, is how skillfully do we relate to them, and how do they benefit our lives? You see what I mean? If these people are experiencing angels and it makes their lives better and they become more functional, and it gives them insight, and it helps them navigate in reality and life is better for it, cool. And if those angels are telling them to suicide bomb people and do other things like that, I hope they have the wisdom to recognize that that is an experience, and that they have a mature, fluent ability to interpret, and relate to that experience from a point of view of kindness and wisdom.
Rick: Yeah.
Daniel: Does that make sense?
Rick: Yeah, sure. I can also imagine a scenario in which people open up to this sort of realm of subtle phenomena and it’s a bit overwhelming at first, just as other types of awakenings might be overwhelming at first. And initially it doesn’t enhance your life, because you become somewhat dysfunctional by virtue of it, but over time it gets integrated and stabilized and you get it under your belt, and then actually things have been vastly enhanced, and you’re kind of on a new level of functioning.
Daniel: Right, definitely. And recognize that any time you enter into new territory, and new experiences and new wiring, there’s likely going to be some instability. There’s usually an awkward period, as you might call it.
Rick: Yeah. There’s a whole section, a number of sections in your book, where you talk about your personal attainments or realizations, and a lot of the terminology is unfamiliar to me, even through stream entry I don’t particularly understand. And then you talk about arising and passing away, and then there’s stream entry, and da-da-da-da-da-da, all kinds of things here. And then you talk about the third path and Naroda Samapati, and all these developments. Wouldn’t it be useful for you to sketch out some of these stages of development in general and with respect to your own experience?
Daniel: Sure. Wow, how much time do you have? It’s a huge topic. Maybe if you had some of them, we could try to narrow it down, but there are a hundred models of development and awakenings.
Rick: So, let’s give us the Reader’s Digest version. So, what’s stream entry, for instance?
Daniel: What’s stream entry? Okay, so again this gets kind of, “wow.” My problem is, as a technical practitioner, it’s hard to … well, anyway, I’ll do my best to Reader’s Digest it. Okay, so stream entry would be the first stage of awakening, from a Theravadan Buddhist point of view. I would associate with the first, Bumi of the Tibetan path, multiple Bumi model, where there would be …
Rick: What’s a Bumi?
Daniel: A Bumi would be a level or ground, so a standard Tibetan map. It means something like ground or level. And then, so, stream entry would be first taste of some sort of really clear understanding of reality, as well as first taste of what we would call fruition. So, which is where reality vanishes and reappears. So, right in stream entry, the first, the few moments before stream entry, are brief, sort of three or four burst taste of incredibly clear cognition. The field cognizes itself totally, shudders in some way, vanishes, and then reappears. And then, when that happens, the mind is sort of reset in some way, and channels of perception that one had been developing, are suddenly sort of locked in. So, that sort of then causes a number of specific technical transformations. God, it’s so hard in a short period of time.
Rick: Well, maybe I shouldn’t have put you on the spot.
Daniel: That’s all right, but first taste of awakening. So, it’s the first taste of real, what they would call, awakening. And so, what it does is allows a person to relate to the stages of meditation differently, to be able to call them more easily, to navigate them more easily, and many people to be able to reattain to that very clear way of being, that causes reality to synchronize, vanish, and reappear, called fruition.
Rick: Is it a permanent shift?
Daniel: Yeah, so it’s a permanent shift. It’s a permanent shift. It’s what we would call the first of the really permanent shifts, from a Theravadan mapping point of view. And so, it comes, so the stages that lead up to it are the arising and passing away, which is the Kundalini awakenings, the explosions of consciousness, the rapturous visions, the energetic stuff, the spontaneous movements, the bright lights, the visions, sometimes powers opening. So, all that stuff is the arising and passing away, which usually people think of the first stage of awakening if they’re not model people because it’s so totally impressive, which is usually followed by the dark night, sort of dissolution. Those openings start to sort of restructure, sort of alter the sense, sort of, you might even say, violate the sense of identity of continuous stuff, and cause from your own stability is sort of the operating system kind of tries to figure out how to navigate in a world that’s less like it thought it was. Then you come to equanimity, which is sort of a balanced, “okay, now I’m fine with those things I’ve seen,” and you start to integrate them into the full field of understanding. And when the whole field gets it for the first time and sees itself as it is, poof, reality vanishes, synchronizes, reappears, stream entry. So, that would be, yeah, I could go on and on about that. But anyway, so that’s …
Rick: Yeah, portion out your time to give us a taste of some of the more other significant stages.
Daniel: Sure. And so that is very transformative, but in terms of how it transforms people’s walking around experience, it varies between people but often is not very complete. So, it’s sort of like a first taste. It’s kind of like getting into college, , okay, yes, you’re in college, cool, but you’re now a freshman in college, if that makes sense.
Rick: Yeah, sure.
Daniel: Usually lots to go, lots to see, and that understanding now, it’s called stream entry because now you’re in the stream of the thing. So, there’s going to be a lot more spontaneous dharma happening, and obviously so. Cycles, shifts, perceptual changes. Now you’re in the throes of the thing. You’re in it. Does that make sense? Stuff’s now going to be doing you kind of more than it obviously was before. It was always sort of doing you from a certain point of view, but now it’s sort of …
Rick: You’ve gotten out of the way to a great extent.
Daniel: Right. Now stuff’s going to be happening. The first real switch has been thrown, and now some machine of deconstructing the sense of permanent, continuous identity, is now woken up and working to go through layers of mind, layers of delusion, layers of stuff to begin to wake those things up from a sort of map theory point of view. Okay. Next term you were interested in.
Rick: What is the next one?
Daniel: So, the next would be second path, and here we get into model divergence. So, the standard models talk about, okay, now we’ve got to talk about the Theravadan maps, which is the problem. So, the Theravadan maps, very briefly, involve what’s called the 10-fetter model, and in the 10-fetter model you’ve got the 10 fetters, and it would say that each of these is eliminated or attenuated at each path, which is one of these …
Rick: And a fetter means like handcuffs, it’s something which binds you.
Daniel: Kind of, yeah. Yeah. But the specific 10 fetters are … I’m going to give you the stack Theravadan dogma and then try to make some sense of it. So, at stream entry would say to eliminate personality belief, the sense of the fact that there is some continuous personality as a belief, not that one has experienced the total dissolution of that by any means, but the basic belief that there is such a thing. They would say that it eliminates skeptical doubt. You now know that these techniques and these practices and these things can lead to real transformation. And so, it also, in theory, eliminates the belief in rites and rituals, that rites and rituals alone would be necessarily enough to be transformative, but instead, would, in theory, right in people who have attained stream entry, that one needs more direct, clear understanding rather than just the faith-based stuff. So, anyway, not that every stream enterer will necessarily automatically describe their experience that way. So, we get into all kinds of problems. But here’s the … I’m giving you the dogma. So that’s the dogma. And so, then they would say at second path, that would attenuate greed and hatred, is sort of the standard dogma, and also means you’ve completed a whole other insight cycle at a deeper level of mind, through a new arising and passing away.
Rick: So, you can be a stream enterer but still be greedy and hateful.
Daniel: Actually, you can actually be all kinds of realized and still be those things from a functional point of view.
Rick: Right.
Daniel: Did I say that?
Rick: Yeah, you did.
Daniel: Yeah. So, it’s not going to be popular, but yeah, I said that. So that’s the dogma. I’m giving you the dogma and then you’ve got the reality. So, the problem is that the Theravadan maps and models at once have models that talk about just the bare, clear comprehension of what they would call the three characteristics of reality. It’s impermanence. It’s selfless nature, meaning it’s too impermanent, too transient, too non-dual, too whatever, to constitute a true self, a separate, permanent, continuous, observing, controlling entity. All processes arise on their own. They’re causal. And so, there is not actually the free will that we generally think there is. There’s not this separate observer somewhere in our heads watching everything and controlling everything, a little man working the controls of the brain that we think there are. Those are all just natural causal processes that are part of this luminous, natural field of manifestation, transient, aware where it is, intrinsically conscious or just manifest or whatever you want to say. So anyway, it’s got those models of just bare perception and clarity, bare perceptual clarity, which I consider that’s really the awakening stuff I find interesting. And then it unfortunately adds on to those things about emotions and emotional perfection and other stuff, which I consider naive. So, I don’t like all of the Theravadan models and have attempted to reform and revise them for those who are traditionalists and not liking my attempts at that. I’m sorry. But anyway, so then second path would, in theory, according to the Ten-Fetter Model, eliminate or, sorry, attenuate greed and hatred to some degree. And from an experiential point of view, sort of does some more damage to the sense of a continuous center point somewhere. And one will have completed another whole cycle of arising and passing away, dark night, equanimity to get to that. So then third path, which would be called anagami or whatever, then would, from a Theravadan point of view, would eliminate greed and hatred in their ordinary forms, except attachment to the formless realms, to formed jnana’s, those are deep, rich, meditative, blissful experiences, or boundless experiences or whatever. But from my point of view, what that does is radically transform the experience of the phenomenal world, such that it radically decentralizes consciousness and perception, such that in the glass, the manifestation and the consciousness are the same thing, to a very, very, very large degree.
Rick: The glass is sort of seen in terms of consciousness, in terms of the self or whatever?
Daniel: No, it is the thing. So, the experiences are where they are. We usually think of reality as being, this is the thing that’s looking out at all those things, and when this looks out at them, this experience is that there. You see what I mean? As opposed to the that there bearing the experience. You see what I mean? So, third path, from my point of view, really does major walking around damage, to the notion that there is the central controller, doer, observer, perceiver, and attenuates that to a profound degree, leaving stuff that is pretty subtle from that point of view. So now the field is much more the field. The field is more awake. The field is more directly representing itself, if that makes sense, in a much more boundaryless way. The body, the mind, the speech, are all much more clearly just seem to be happening, as things that are happening as a natural part of causal unfolding reality. And so, in that, we get much more of a sense of just the field is the field, the experience is the experience, and there’s something really nice about that. Except that in third path, there is still some subtle something that’s not quite perceived in that same clear light of just direct seeing or direct knowledge or clear comprehension from a walking around point of view. And then our hot chip, from my point of view, would be the last and final elimination of that, as a walking around experience or option or possibility of the way reality perceives itself.
Rick: Cool. And you’ve pretty much gone through all these stages. And then what do you see on the horizon? How many more such stages are there to go through? Are they endless or is there some kind of final resting point?
Daniel: That’s a great question. So, in terms of axes of development, I actually consider that to be basically the only axis that has an obvious endpoint. And then there’s all the rest of the axes, which I don’t see obvious endpoints to. How kind can you be? I don’t see an obvious endpoint to that. How well can you speak? How well can you interact with people? How well can you understand human interaction? How well and skillfully can you try to help the world? How well and skillfully can you understand the depths of psychology? How well and skillfully can you do anything? How deeply can you master the stages of concentration? So, the jnana, the deep samadhi states. I don’t see any obvious endpoints to all of those things. Does that make sense?
Rick: Yeah.
Daniel: So I see an amazing amount of capacity for development on all of the other axes of development. But strangely enough, on that single axis of clear perception and dissolving a sense of a center point, of a doer, of a controller, I actually see an endpoint. So once the final thing flips over, once the knot unties, that seems to be it. And so that happened to me about 11 years ago. And it’s one of the remarkable things is that it stayed consistent, meaning I don’t see… I’m a skeptic and I’ve misjudged my practice so many times that I continue to go, “Wow, really? Are you totally high?” And yet, so my best skeptical inquiry into the nature of the thing doesn’t find any last little things. And if they’re there, I’m totally deluded about them, which is another option. You’ve got to keep that one in mind. I might be just totally full of shit. But if it is, it’s a level of delusion I haven’t managed to crack. So, I’ll leave that skillful door open, if that makes sense from a reasonable skepticism point of view. But that you could do that, and that you could have it hold up and last. What’s interesting is there’s something… stable is the wrong word, but when you stop habitually turning something into a constant thing that’s trying to figure out its vantage point, there’s something stable about that from a weird point of view. And that something has stopped because it’s a process to constantly trying to imagine the vantage point from which something is separate. Do you see what I mean? It seems to be here, and it seems to be the back of our head and then it’s our nose and then it’s our eyes and then it’s here. Because before, if I would look at the back of my head, it would seem like the eyes sort of tried to turn backwards, and the back of the head would sort of be perceived from some vantage point. Whereas sometimes it seemed like the back of the head was sort of looking out that way, so, it kind of moved all around. And there’s something you have to do sort of in this weird kind of distorting way, and sort of ignoring the true nature of phenomenal way to maintain that. You see what I mean? It’s actually an active process of selective delusion and moving redefinition of yourself. That has to happen all the time. You can actually stop that process. Does that make sense? And now the field is just the field. And there’s something really amazingly better about that. Really amazingly clearer about that, where everything just is where it is. So, the back of the head is now just where the back of the head is and the eyes are just where the eyes are. But nothing seems to be observing, controlling or redefining to try to figure out how it’s looking at everything, and what its relationship to everything is. Now the things are just where they are. And I must say that beats the heck out of the previous way of being. So anyway, so …
Rick: So, what you said a minute ago raises kind of an interesting question, which is that I guess you can be full of shit and think you’re enlightened, but can you be enlightened and still think that maybe you’re full of shit? And in fact, is that attitude actually a healthy sign of genuine enlightenment?
Daniel: God, I hope so.
Rick: Or would a genuinely enlightened person be kind of like convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that he’s got it and he’s not full of it?
Daniel: Well, it’s a very, very slippery proposition, isn’t it? So, the interesting thing is that the experience of the question is so … What’s the word? The experience of the question of whether or not I’m full of shit has that wonderful non-dual perception to it, which is very reassuring.
Rick: Yeah. Good.
Daniel: So even if I’m totally full of crap, I can definitely tell you that I prefer this way of being to the previous way. Do you see what I mean?
Rick: I do.
Daniel: I would not go back. Just to summarize and reiterate what you’ve been saying the last few minutes, as I understand it, you’re saying that you have reached, we could say, an absolute, or a clarity, with regard to the absolute dimension of life, which really can’t be get any more absolute, because absolute by definition is absolute, can’t be more shiny or something. But on the other hand, in terms of the relative dimension of your life, there is, in anyone’s life, there is no end to the possibilities of refinement and insight, and clarification and skill and all the rest.
Daniel: That’s my current take on it, for better or for worse.
Rick: Good. Well, I think people are dying in Huntsville, and you probably need to get to the hospital pretty soon. So, let me just, I guess, make some wrap-up points, and I think you have to be there in half an hour or so, don’t you?
Daniel: Actually, I’ve got maybe 15 minutes, but I don’t know what your time is like, so cut it off anytime you need to.
Rick: Lunch is probably ready pretty soon. Okay, so we can take a few more minutes. I have your whole table of contents printed out here, and I’m sure every single point on the table of contents could get us into a half an hour of discussion.
Daniel: I would love to sometime, if you ever want to. That’d be fun.
Rick: But is there anything else that comes to mind that you feel is important that, on your way to work this afternoon you’re going to think, “God, I wish we’d talked about that”?
Daniel: Well, I think just the basic point of having a lot of fun engaging with these things, is really important. Like, this stuff is fascinating.
Rick: Yeah, I agree.
Daniel: This stuff is totally fascinating, exploring your mind and exploring what these ancient and interesting techniques do, and learning to figure out all the unbelievably cool things you can do with your mind is just so much fun. You know what I mean? And I hope people get–that’s the attitude I would hope to convey the most. Like, this stuff is just–it’s the most remarkable adventure. It’s like the coolest video game ever. Like, learning to unlock the Easter egg functionality, which is a video gamer’s turn, for like, when you hop up and down on the mushroom three times and then grab the gold coin, and then hit this button on your control thing, all of a sudden, this cool door opens, that you never knew was there. That same kind of thing is true of the human mind.
Rick: Yeah.
Daniel: There is just amazing functionality, amazing states and experiences that we can get into, amazing insights that we can have, amazing things that we can explore, from the energetic point of view to the magical point of view, as you discussed, to the insight point of view, to seeing the true nature of phenomena, to opening our hearts, to dealing with our emotions, to experiencing great archetypal energies or whatever it is. Like, it is just so totally amazing to explore this stuff. And as long as you recognize that if you have good people to help support you through the more complicated, awkward phases, to put it nicely, of this stuff, you’ll do a lot better. And, I think keeping an open mind and really trying to be honest about what our experiences are and how they line up with the maps and how they don’t and trying to avoid the shadow sides of practice, those are the things I care about. Realizing that we will all fall down, we will all make mistakes, we will all delude ourselves, we will all recognize, “oh, no, actually, no, definitely more to understand on that point. I’m totally full of it.” And keeping that level of humility, realizing that some of these experiences are so compelling, that it’s nearly impossible not to, attribute to them some, unbelievably ultimate final status, if that makes sense, because that’s just what the brain chemistry does. It’s like it just released such a massive amount of dopamine or whatever in our brains. We’re like, oh, my God, that is it. Dude, no, whoa. And realizing that’s just normal. And being forgiving to ourselves if we later revise that and being forgiving to our colleagues if they later revise their opinions and recognizing that that’s just normal in this business. And having a good time and talking to people about this and making it sort of a collective, fun, social adventure is, I think, the attitude that works the best, rather than some, all the other attitudes I see out there, if that makes sense.
Rick: Yeah, that’s a great riff. Thoreau said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation,” and you get the sense that for millions of people, billions of people in the world, life is a pretty drab and miserable affair, because it’s a struggle, it’s suffering, it’s boring, otherwise why would people commit suicide and so on. And the reality of the situation you just described beautifully is that- I think there’s a song by John Mayer called “Your Body is a Wonderland,” but I think we could say that of the entire universe and the mind is a wonderland. And there’s such an unlimited realm of possibilities to explore and experience that, life need not be drab for anyone, really.
Daniel: Right, the richness. And we forget the freshness. There’s something in the glory of just the sensei contact that when we really tune into it, has something remarkably interesting in it. We get so lost in our minds and our goals and our ambitions and our fears and our neurosis and our stuff that just the simple fact, I don’t mean to be like, “Oh my God, like my fingers, like some tripping person.” But there is something of that, you know what I mean?
Rick: There is.
Daniel: When the tripping people are going, “Oh my God, my fingers.” Well, actually bringing something of that spirit back into this has real value, because we can learn to remember that way of being by just tuning into that way of being. And it helps ground us in our bodies and our sensei worlds, and it helps get us out of our fears and our, not that it isn’t sometimes important to go into our fears, but to see them as the fears as rich and interesting experiences too as part of this field of experience. And that helps to give us a broader, more clear, more immediate perspective on them, to see all the emotions as colors of space, as textures of space, as rich and intricate experiences, in this body-mind as part of this whole field of the room that we’re in or the sky that we’re in, the planet that we’re a part of. Seeing them as living integrated experiences in this field now and embracing them and being clear about them really helps. So, that’s another point of view, I wanted to make sure I got in there somewhere.
Rick: That’s a good one. And hopefully we have time, I guess we have about five minutes.
Daniel: Yeah, I’ve got a little time. What you just said about fingers reminded me of something, which is that I’ve understood that Buddhism really doesn’t talk about God, that it considers God to be a moot point, not something that is open to exploration. But when I think of fingers, I think,- take the tip of my finger, there are more atoms in it than there are stars in the known universe, and on every level, anatomical, molecular, cellular, molecular, atomic, subatomic, there’s such an incredible thing going on here, and such an amazing intelligence governing the functioning at every level. And of course, we’re not just talking about the finger, we’re talking about the entire universe and every iota of it, every square centimeter, being governed on gross and subtle levels by some unfathomable intelligence. That to me is God. And so, it would seem to me that Buddhists would eventually encounter that level of experience and believe in God, not as the old, bearded guy in the sky, but as an all-pervading intelligence that contains us, and that we contain, that we’re part and parcel of.
Daniel: Well, there is actually apparently one line in the Pali Canon somewhere that does actually mention that sort of divine perspective. Christopher Titmuss told me that I haven’t bothered to track it down and look it up, but he was a monk for a long time, maybe he knows that. And Buddhism does talk about gods. So, it talks about Brahman and various gods, considering them relative creatures. And Buddhism has a very uneasy relationship to what you might think of as true self. And the dogmatists here are going to be thick and fast on both sides. So, this is navigating a political minefield of the people who, on one extreme, the people, “Oh my God, Atman Buddhism, true self Buddhism, it’s a curse, it’s a plague, it’s the worst thing that ever happened to Buddhism, it’s a total corruption, it’s like, oh my God, it’s going to bring down the planet.” Okay, you’ve got those extremists. And then you’ve got the other extremists within Buddhism, sort of the Buddha nature, ground of being, people who posit something incredibly stable, incredibly permanent, incredibly something, which in experience you actually cannot find anything permanent from a very technical Buddhist point of view. You have these two extremes, both of which I find pretty annoying.
Rick: Yeah, extremists are always annoying.
Daniel: d And not that they aren’t making their interesting points, in an attempt to counterbalance each other. And then from an experiential point of view, the whole field seems to be happening on its own in a luminous way. The intelligence or awareness seems to be intrinsic in the phenomena. The phenomena do appear to be totally transient, totally ephemeral. So, I would reject from an experiential point of view something in the harshness of the dogma of the rigid no-selfists that can’t recognize the intrinsic nature of awareness that is the field, if that makes sense, because they tend to feel …
Rick: And not only awareness, because awareness has a sort of …
Daniel: And intelligence.
Rick: Yeah, intelligence, I want to make sure that word comes in, because awareness seems kind of flat and plain vanilla, but intelligence,
Daniel: Right, and then I also reject from an experiential point of view the people who would make this into something permanent, something separate from, something different from just the manifestation itself, because there tends to be both. I don’t like the permanence aspects, because from a Buddhist technical point of view, I do not find anything that stands up as permanent in experience. I find that quality always there while there is experience, because it’s something in the nature of experience, but it’s not quite the same thing as permanent, if that makes sense. So, while there is experience, there’s experience. So that means there is awareness from a certain point of view, manifestation awareness being intrinsically the same thing, intrinsic to each other. So, while there is experience, I would claim that element is there, it has to be for there to be experience. And I will claim the system seems to function very lawfully, which has a sort of … it’s easy to feel that as sort of an intelligence.
Rick: Okay, cool. Well, you think about what’s actually going on. You’re a doctor, you cut people open all the time, I suppose, or sew them up or something. But when you think about the miracle of what’s actually going on, just taking our bodies as a case in point, but those flowers behind me or anything else, and you look closely enough, if you actually pay attention microscopically or whatever, there’s something miraculous in every iota of creation, and that’s permanent. Our experience of it may not be permanent, we may zoom in and out of that, but what’s actually happening, to which we are generally oblivious, is a miracle. Not a miracle in the sense of something supernatural, but in terms of something vastly more profound.
Daniel: The feeling of profundity.
Rick: Yeah, profound.
Daniel: The feeling of miraculousness.
Rick: Right.
Daniel: The wondrous component. So, as the Tibetans would say, “Amazing! It all happens by itself!”
Rick: Or as the Nouveau Tibetans would say, “Awesome, dude!”
Daniel: So, yeah, that’s funny. So, there is something intrinsically amazing about this. Yes, it’s very refreshingly amazing that the thing happens, and that things cognize themselves or are aware where they are or manifest. Manifestation is truly amazing, and tuning into that amazingness, has something really valuable about it, from a pragmatic point of view. Yes, so true.
Rick: Great. Well, let’s end on that note. Oh, this has been really stimulating. I’ve really enjoyed talking to you.
Daniel: Me too. It’s been a lot of fun. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity.
Rick: It really gets me firing on all cylinders to have a conversation like this. So, we’ll do it again someday. But let me make some general wrap-up points here. So, I’ve been talking with Daniel Ingram. And Daniel, as we’ve been saying, is an emergency room physician, but he’s also an ardent and dedicated and experienced Buddhist practitioner, and author. He has written a book entitled, “Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha,” an unusually hardcore Dharma book. And I’ll be linking to that book on his page on batgap.com, and linking to his Dharma Overground website, which is a place where you can participate in lively discussions.
Daniel: We will hope the BatGap bump doesn’t overwhelm the server.
Rick: Yes, you might need to upgrade.
Daniel: I actually just did upgrade it. We’ll hope it’s enough.
Rick: BatGap overwhelmed its own server. They kicked me off at one point and I had to go to a dedicated server.
Daniel: Oh no.
Rick: But they kicked me off without warning. The whole site was down for three days.
Daniel: Oh no.
Rick: Anyway, so a few general points before I conclude. This interview has been part of an ongoing series. There have been about 230 of them previously now, and you can find them all on batgap.com. They’re indexed in various ways, alphabetically in the right-hand column. There’s a “Past Interviews” menu where you can find them indexed chronologically, and also topically, and we’re continuing to refine and develop that. There is a “Donate” button, which I rely upon people clicking if they feel inclined. There’s a place to sign up to be notified by email every time a new interview is posted. There is a forum, a discussion forum, that has a section dedicated to each interview, so, you’ll see a link to that on Daniel’s page. There is a link to an audio podcast, because you can listen to this on iTunes, and some kind of podcast reader and not have to sit in front of your computer for two and a half, three hours. So, all those things and probably more, just explore the menus. Thanks for listening or watching. Thank you very much, Daniel. It’s been great fun. We’ll see you all next week with a pretty far-out interview next week. It’s by this guy named Darryl Anka, who channels somebody called Bashar. There were a lot of requests that I interview him, so it’s going to be a bit of a wild ride. Stay tuned for that.
Daniel: Have fun. Bye. Thank you. [music]