Joseph Goldstein Interview

Questions this interview answers

• What is enlightenment from a Buddhist perspective?
• Are there stages or levels of awakening on the spiritual path?
• How can one reliably assess their own spiritual progress or attainment?
• Is it necessary to have a teacher or can one progress alone?
• Do all spiritual traditions lead to the same goal or have the same aim?

Key takeaways

• Enlightenment in Buddhism is defined as the mind freed from greed, hatred, and delusion.
• Different traditions use varying metaphysical descriptions as skillful means, not absolute truths.
• Non-clinging and freedom from identification are central to Buddhist awakening.
• There are recognized stages of awakening, and mistaking early stages for completion is common.
• Self-honesty and mindfulness are essential for assessing spiritual progress.
• Guidance from a trusted teacher and study of tradition help safeguard the spiritual path.

Transcript

Introduction to Joseph Goldstein

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest today is Joseph Goldstein. Joseph is co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society where he is one of the resident guiding teachers and at Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, which are both in Barre, Massachusetts. He is the author of ‘

Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening’, ‘A Heart Full of Peace’, ‘

One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism’, ‘Insight Meditation’, and ‘The Experience of Insight’. Those are all separate books, not one book with a long title. He has also co-authored books with Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield. Joseph has studied and practiced meditation since 1967 under the guidance of eminent teachers from India, Burma, and Tibet, and he leads Insight Meditation retreats around the world. So, thanks Joseph for coming on the show.

Joseph: It’s a pleasure.

✨ Defining Enlightenment

Rick: So, I have a lot of questions for you, some that I’ve thought of and some that a friend of mine submitted, so I’ll be asking those a little bit later. As I understand it, Buddhism is all about enlightenment ultimately, so I thought maybe I would start by asking you for your definition of enlightenment.

Joseph: I think the very simplest and most pragmatic description of the enlightened mind from the Buddhist perspective is the mind that has been freed of greed and hatred and delusion. So rather than try to describe it as some esoteric metaphysical state, I like this definition which comes right from the discourses, from the suttas, because it’s so pragmatic and we can check our own minds against it. Has greed and desire been weakened and uprooted or not? Has ill will been uprooted or not? I like the pragmatism of that way of understanding it.

Freedom from greed, hatred, and delusion is the essence of enlightenment.

Rick: I like that too, because sometimes you hear people claiming to be awakened or enlightened or something and they’re still acting like schmucks, so you wonder. Now, you said the ‘enlightened mind’, is that perhaps an oxymoron? Is it the mind that gets enlightened or what exactly happens when enlightenment occurs?

Joseph: Well, it’s that reality which appears when the mind is freed of defilements. So, what obscures the enlightened state, one might say, are precisely those forces of confusion, aversion and greed. So, we can speak of the enlightened mind or the enlightened heart. In many Asian languages, the word for mind and heart are the same, and that gives a fuller picture of what we’re talking about. Here in the West, we tend to divide mind and heart, so it can get a little confusing.

Rick: Yeah, I like that. I guess you would say then that if the mind is full of impurities, or defilements as you put it, then it tends to be very opaque, and that obscures. What does it obscure exactly?

Joseph: Well, one could say it obscures the true nature of mind, or the purified nature of mind.

Rick: So it obscures itself, you’re saying?

Joseph: Yeah.

Perspectives on True Nature and Metaphysics

Rick: Okay. Now, as you know, in some spiritual traditions it’s understood or taught that there’s a pure essence or pure consciousness, sometimes referred to as the Self, with a capital S, as some kind of ground state or foundation or bedrock of our existence, which is not even personal, it’s universal, and that the impurities you’re referring to obscure that. So it wouldn’t be that the mind is obscuring itself, but that it’s kind of obscuring one’s true nature with its defilements. Would you resonate with that or no?

Joseph: You’re getting right to the depth of things here! You know, even within the Buddhist traditions, there’s a wide range of description of what we’re calling the mindful or the awakened state. So, depending on which tradition you’re speaking of or with, you’re going to get different metaphysical descriptions. I went through a bit of a crisis with understanding these differences some years ago, which was actually the prompting for exploring and then writing my book One-Dharma, because I had been studying the Burmese teachings of vipassana, insight meditation, for many years, 30-35 years. I then started practicing with some very renowned Tibetan masters, and their description of enlightenment, was like a different metaphysical system, and some of what they were saying was contradictory.

So, this became a real spiritual burning for me, it was almost like this koan that I needed to resolve in myself, and I was proceeding with the question in my mind, “Who’s right?”. If one was right, then the other must be wrong. After struggling with this for quite a while, and specifically on one particular retreat, this burning question, I realized I was asking the wrong question. That it’s not so much a question of who’s right, I framed it more in terms of metaphysics and metaphysical descriptions, as skillful means. That is, are these teachings skillful means for freeing the heart? Rather than having the metaphysics be some statements of absolute truth, if we take the teachings as statements of truth, then differences of view really create conflict. If we take them as skillful means, then we ask ourselves, “Do these teachings help to free us?”.

Then we can actually use opposing teachings, if they each serve to free us in certain ways, then there’s no conflict at all. Then I further asked the question, “Well, skillful means for what?” And really trying to apply it in my life and practice. I came to see that the underlying teaching of all the traditions was to free the mind from clinging and grasping. Within Buddhism, certainly, there’s no teaching that says “cling.” So that became the bottom-line reference point for my practice. So, then it’s a question of really examining one’s experience when the mind is free of clinging. What is that experience like? I think that’s a more helpful approach than trying to pin down the metaphysical reality. It’s always going to be done just through concepts, and concepts are always limiting.

Are these teachings skillful means for freeing the heart?

Rick: Would you say that there are different metaphysical flavors that you run into in different areas and different cultures. We can broaden this beyond Buddhism and speak of other spiritual traditions around the world. I don’t mean to say “blind men and the elephant,” because these people aren’t exactly blind, but just that we’re all kind of approaching the same reality from within different cultural contexts and with different nervous systems, and therefore our expressions are naturally going to vary from one to the other according to our orientation, our culture and the language in which we’ve been trained in our spiritual tradition.

Joseph: I think that’s definitely true. There are many cultural expressions of the spiritual path. It’s not to say though that I think necessarily that all spiritual traditions aim to accomplish the same thing or lead to the same place. There may be many that do, but there may well be different spiritual paths that actually have different aims. So, it takes a fair amount of discernment to see where a path is leading.

✨ Comparing Hindu and Buddhist Views of Enlightenment

Rick: Yeah. I think that might segue into one of the questions posed by a friend of mine. You may know this guy, his name is Dana Sawyer, he’s a teacher of comparative religions at Maine College of Art in Portland, an old friend of mine. He asked several questions here – “Several religions that originated in India have the goal of enlightenment, though they each tend to define it differently. What do you think of the Hindu view that enlightenment is a state of consciousness in which one is continuously having the experience of Brahman or the divine ground of being? How is that criteria of enlightenment different from and either superior or inferior to the Buddhist definition?” Maybe this kind of harkens back to your answer to the previous question.

Joseph: Well it does, and I also have no experience with the Hindu tradition or practices, So, anything I might say is just basically hearsay. I think the key point from a Buddhist perspective with respect to awakening is whether there is still any sense of identification with anything at all, even with consciousness. So, to go from a small sense of self to a big sense of self, if that big sense of self involves being identified with it, then from a Buddhist perspective that would not yet be awakening, because we’re still imprisoned by a sense of “I,” a sense of the knower of it all. Freedom from identification with anything. That’s why I like the reference point of liberation through non-clinging. And it’s not clinging to anything, not clinging to consciousness, not clinging to big self. So, the operative experience is the non-clinging, not the state.

The operative experience is the non-clinging, not the state.

Rick: So then for instance, the Upanishadic statements such as “I am that”, “that thou art,” that kind of statements, denotes a sort of clinging to you still, or a personal identification with the ultimate reality?

Joseph: Well it could, and again, people use language and descriptions in so many different ways, and to rush to a superficial judgment about what’s meant by that phrase I think would not be wise. We’d have to really explore what’s meant by that.

Rick: Yeah, fair enough. One could actually utter such a statement and not be saying that ‘my personal individual self is that’, in any sense of the word, but that the universal reality I have come to know as my true nature (so to speak) has come to know itself through the instrumentality of this.

Joseph: Yeah, one of the things I’ve learned from my practice of 40 years or so, mostly within the Buddhist tradition (I’ve done some readings in other traditions), one of the things that I’ve seen from within the Buddhist context, is that it’s very hard to know what a text means without having practiced it. Because we can read it and get some conceptual or intellectual understanding of it, but that may be quite different than what the actual experience is, so I’m a little reluctant to pass judgment based simply on reading.

Rick: Yeah, that’s very good.

Joseph: It’s should come out of experience.

✨ Stages of Enlightenment and Mistaken Attainment

Rick: Right, yeah, and I would agree. We talked about enlightenment a little bit, and you defined it as the freedom from mental defilements which cause the mind to obscure one’s true nature, if I’m stating that correctly. In that regard, and in your tradition and your experience, do you regard there to be stages or levels of enlightenment or awakening, for instance, preliminary stages, intermediate stages, and have you seen, if so, do you see a tendency for people to sometimes jump the gun and mistake a preliminary or intermediate stage of awakening for the final thing?

Joseph: Oh yeah, I think that’s very possible. Within classical Theravada teachings, the kind of Buddhism that you find in Thailand and Burma and Sri Lanka, the path is very well mapped in terms of the stages of awakening, and there are what are called the four stages of enlightenment, they’re called stream-enterer, once-returner, non-returner, ‘arhant’ – the fully liberated. At each one of the different defilements are uprooted and the further ones weakened. So that’s the gradual process of uprooting those forces in the mind which create suffering. It is very possible that people have a certain experience of awakening at one of the earlier stages, which can be so powerfully transforming that without proper guidance they might think that “Well, I’m done, I’ve finished the path,” whereas there might well be further obstructions to work with.

So that’s very possible, and I think that happens a lot when we see teachers in the broader spiritual scene getting into trouble in one way or another. I think it’s often because they may have had a genuine realization and think perhaps that the job is all done, but still there are other work to do.

It’s very possible to mistake a preliminary stage for the final thing.

Rick: Do you think the job is ever done?

Joseph: I hope so. One of the phrases one finds in the text, which has always inspired me from the very beginning, it’s like the song of the enlightenment, the enlightenment of beings in the text, and they say, “Done is what had to be done,” which really does imply, yes, there is an end to the path, and I find that very reassuring.

🧘 The Buddha’s Ongoing Practice

Rick: I mean, as I don’t know much about Buddhism, and you know it’s ironic because this is called Buddha at the Gas Pump, and I’ve only had a handful of Buddhists on the show and I sometimes get called out on that, so it’s good to add to the tally here talking to you. As I understand it, the Buddha himself still engaged in spiritual practice for the rest of his life after his awakening, he still meditated a certain number of hours a day. If that’s true, was that just to set an example or do you feel like even in his case there could still have been some refinement or something taking place?

Joseph: As it’s described, and of course I don’t know personally, but the way I understand it, he was really done, ‘done, what had to be done’. However, what that means is that one is abiding in a place of awareness, and one abides in it in various postures – sitting, standing, walking, lying, in communicating and not communicating. In one sense, there’s nothing else to do except to be practicing meditation in that sense, which means simply being aware. So, one of the ways he would be abiding in his awakened state would be sitting in meditation.

Rick: I seem to remember some quote where he said it was good for the body or something, restful.

Joseph: Yeah, certainly.

🕊️ Spiritual Ego and Latent Defilements

Rick: Getting back to where we were just a minute ago, do you feel that some latent defilements, to use your term, in the mind would be responsible for a person assuming that they’re finished when they’re not. In other words, some kind of “spiritual ego”, one has some kind of awakening and the ego gets spiritualized, but it’s still very much intact, and yet one is blind to that because of some defilements.

Joseph: Yeah, I think that’s very much the case. It’s interesting, in the classical list of the unwholesome states that are eliminated at the various stages of awakening, in one of the lists there are 10 of these states mentioned, ignorance, the final ignorance in the mind is not uprooted until the last stage of awakening. So even after one has seen through the illusion of self, when one comes to an understanding of the basic selflessness of the process, still there’s levels of ignorance in the mind which kind of catch us up in terms of desire, in terms of aversion, in terms of restlessness, in terms of conceit. The sense of “I am” is also not uprooted until the very end. So even as one has had a deep understanding of emptiness and emptiness of self, the habit pattern of these other obstructive forces are still there, which is why more work needs to be done.

Rick: You know the story of the Buddha where he finally sat down under the Bodhi tree and he said, “This is it, I’m not going to get up until I’m done,” but then he was assailed by all these forces of temptation and horrible things and all that. Do you think that there’s sort of a conspiracy in the way the universe is structured to try to thwart our final enlightenment by throwing us off the track?

Joseph: I don’t know if there’s a conspiracy, but it definitely seems to be the nature of the unenlightened mind. There are these deeply, deeply conditioned habit patterns of all those forces you mentioned, the forces of Mara, which were assailing the Buddha under the tree. They’re really personifications of forces in our own minds. I love that image because sitting on retreat and teaching retreats as people are sitting in the meditation hall, in one way they’re sitting under the Bodhi tree, just like the Bodhisattva, facing the same forces. Desire arises and ill-will arises and restlessness, because this is the nature of the un-awakened mind. These forces are there, deeply conditioned, and from the Buddha’s perspective, this did not have a beginning. Since beginningless time, these forces have been at work. So, I don’t see it so much as a conspiracy, it’s just the nature of things.

These forces are personifications of forces in our own minds.

✨ Is Enlightenment Inevitable?

Rick: Oh yeah, well I mean, are we all destined ultimately, in the Buddhist perspective, after X number of lifetimes? Are all beings flowing in that stream toward that goal, or not necessarily so?

Joseph: In my understanding, not necessarily. It really depends on the effort or the interest in the effort in the investigation that a person makes, because if we were all heading in that direction, given the infinite time that has already passed, we should have already been awakened.

Rick: True, although that gets into this whole esoteric conception that maybe new souls come along and rise up through the process, and universe after universe, this whole cycle continues, who knows?

Joseph: Who knows? ‘Who knows’ has become one of my favorite mantras.

📚 The Importance of Maps and Guidance

Rick: Hearkening back to something you said a few minutes ago about Theravada Buddhism having this nicely delineated roadmap of different stages of awakening, I just want to comment and maybe get your comments. It seems to me that’s something that contemporary spirituality in the West could really use more of. Unless I guess one is really established in a tradition which has laid something like that out, there’s a lot of vagueness and fuzziness in contemporary spiritual thinking about what actually the possibilities are. That’s why I asked that question earlier about is it possible to have an awakening and think you’re done. That’s probably more likely if there hasn’t been a clear intellectual understanding of the full range of possibilities.

Joseph: Yeah, no, I think that’s very true and it points to two very helpful approaches with regard to that. One is that it’s very helpful for people who are committed to a spiritual path, first to, at least for periods of time, have a relationship with a teacher that they really trust, who’s very familiar with the path, the stages of the path and the unfolding, so there can be some guidance and feedback. And the second aspect is I found it very helpful to engage in some study within the tradition because there is a tremendous wealth of teachings within each of these traditions and a lot of the map has been explained in exquisite detail. But the combination of having, doing some study and having the personal guidance from a teacher really is a safeguard and keeps us going straight rather than wandering off.

The combination of study and guidance from a teacher is a safeguard on the path.

Rick: Yeah, well that kind of relates to the next question I had written down, and you kind of answered it but maybe you can touch on it just a bit more. Can a person reliably judge their own attainment or is a master necessary to do this?

Joseph: Well, that’s an interesting question. I think it’s possible to reliably judge one’s attainment if one has the right metric of assessment and that’s why, going back to my initial description of enlightenment, why I find that particular description so helpful because it’s not about, “Did I reach this state or that state?” But rather really looking to the mind to see, “Is there still desire in the mind?” Is there still grasping in the mind? Is there still clinging? Is there still a sense of self or has that been seen through? So that becomes a very pragmatic mirror to assess one’s experience, much more so than having some experience which perhaps is momentary and perhaps transformative, but then not having context of anything. Not having a way to check back, “Okay, what actually happened with this?” That’s different than putting a concept on that experience and calling it enlightenment.

I like that mirror-like quality of really examining what’s going on in the mind.

Rick: So to do that then your introspective muscles have to be pretty well developed and you have to have a sort of a ruthless self-honesty to really recognize it and not delude yourself.

Joseph: Well, exactly. I talk a lot about that in my last book, ‘Mindfulness’. The subtitle is ‘A Practical Guide to Awakening’, because it really goes through in a lot of detail the Satipatthana Sutta, which is the Buddha’s discourse on ways of establishing mindfulness. He called in the discourse in the first opening lines, saying this is the direct path to awakening. Even though the Sutta, the discourse itself, is quite short, there’s a wealth of teachings and descriptions which provide a possibility for assessing our practice. So yeah, it is possible, but I think it’s also helpful to have feedback from people we respect.

✨ Enlightenment in the Buddha’s Time and Today

Rick: I heard one time, I don’t know if this is true, you can correct me, I heard that it was said that in Buddha’s lifetime, maybe 500 of his students or contemporaries became enlightened. I don’t know, but if that is true, how do you think it’s going these days in terms of the number of practitioners who become enlightened? And the follow-up to that, which I might as well ask right now, is if the numbers are not quite so good, do you feel like perhaps there’s been a dilution or a distortion or a misinterpretation of what the Buddha was originally teaching? Or are you confident that what is being taught today in the name of Buddhism pretty well mirrors exactly what he would have taught and was teaching?

Joseph: First, my impression, and it is only an impression since I don’t remember being there at the time of the Buddha, although I might have been off, not practicing when I should have been, but my impression from reading is that there were many, many more enlightened beings than 500. So, it was much, much more extensive than that, and certainly many, many more at different stages of enlightenment.

In terms of what’s happening today, there are definitely people who are reaching different of these stages of awakening. Probably not as many as in the time of the Buddha, for a couple of reasons. One is the Buddha himself was the consummate teacher. He was able to see precisely what a person needed in order to awaken, and so the blessing of actually receiving teachings from him would have been enormous. Also traditionally, from the Buddha’s time and up till now, most people deeply committed to the practice and on the path to awakening, many of them would choose to be monastics. That structure very much supported people’s going to great depths of practice. It’s very interesting now as the Dharma has come to the West, at least to date, it’s mostly been carried by laypeople.

In the lay life it’s much more challenging, because we’re living with so many responsibilities of family and work and living in the world.

🧘 Lay Practice vs. Monastic Life

Rick: Are you married?

Joseph: No, I’m not.

Rick: Okay, so you’ve been a monastic?

Joseph: No, not monastic either. I’m just an ordinary lay person. And even with the simplicity of not being married, just being an ordinary lay person, it’s very different than being a monk or a nun. The whole living structure supports the kind of intensive practice that furthers one’s understanding. So, it’s not surprising that there may be less people, fewer people, going to that same depth. But even with that, there are many people who have really attained significant levels of understanding and awakening.

✨ Speaking About One’s Own Awakening

Rick: Now it’s my understanding that in Buddhism it’s sort of a tradition that you don’t speak much about your own level of awakening. If somebody asks the Dalai Lama if he’s enlightened, he’ll just sort of give some simple self-effacing answer. So, if I were to ask you that question, what am I going to get?

Joseph: I would try to find some simple self-effacing answer. This comes right out of the text, where the Buddha, in the discourses, he describes how one should speak of these experiences. He says that one shouldn’t speak of them with reference to oneself, for a couple of reasons – one is that the very nature of awakening is to see that there is no self. Self is a concept. And so, to lay attainment, or to reference attainment to a being, to a self, already misses the point. The suggestion that the Buddha made was to speak of it in terms of, at different stages of awakening, what qualities of mind have been purified. So, in the text you read, as people would declare their attainment, they would say, “In one who is an Arhant, conceit has been uprooted.” That’s all.

Rick: Of course, we refer to the Buddha, we say, “Well, the Buddha was enlightened.” And obviously even that, that’s almost as absurd as saying, “I am enlightened,” because it’s not like the individual here got something, right? But the language itself is kind of structured in a way that it’s hard not to talk like that.

Joseph: Well, it is. I just think the Dalai Lama’s approach I find very appealing.

Rick: Yeah. But on the other hand, doing this show, I’ve spoken to a couple hundred people now, and my sense is that they’re at all different levels of attainment, but almost universally they’ll say, “Well, I was crossing the street one day and all of a sudden, boom, the whole world fell away,” and very many different stories. But they can actually refer to various awakenings or stages of awakening that they had, many of which are not just flashes in the pan, just something that happened on a Thursday the 22nd and they’re gone again, but abiding states or stages resulted from those shifts or those shifts were harbingers of abiding states, however you want to put it. So, there do seem to be a lot of people waking up around the world.

Joseph: No, I think that’s true.

Rick: Yeah, from all kinds of traditions. Some people who had done intensive practice, others who had never practiced, and all of a sudden, boom, something happened.

Joseph: Right, of course, no, I think that’s very true and we hear stories like that all the time and it’s wonderful because often they’re very transformative. It’s just that we can never really know from the outside what the boom is.

We can never really know from the outside what the boom is.

Traits vs. States: What Matters Most?

Rick: Yeah, no, I really like that. In fact, one of my questions here from my friend was, “Houston Smith has said many times that traits matter more than states, by which he means that compassionate and moral traits of behavior matter more than elevated states of consciousness. Although the two may be interrelated, which is better or more valuable to the world, a person experiencing mindfulness or a Red Cross worker?”

Joseph: Well, I don’t see those two as being contradictory.

Rick: No, I don’t either.

Joseph: But I really like what he said about traits versus states. First because there are many powerful, refined states of consciousness, which can bring enormous power and are tremendously subtle, which from at least the Buddhist perspective are not necessarily enlightenment, not necessarily awakening. And so, it becomes very challenging to discern the difference between what might be powerful states, powerful experiences, and the freedom that comes from liberation. It’s very tricky to assess these, especially from the outside.

✨ Ethical Behavior and Enlightenment

Rick: Although the external appearance and behavior of various people is naturally going to be different (since variety is the spice of life and we’re all different), do you feel that if you had a hundred enlightened people in a room, despite all their surface differences, if you could somehow step inside their eyes, so to speak, step inside their body and experience the world as they experience it, that there would be a fundamental similarity among them all in terms of certain kind of quality of the enlightened state?

Joseph: There’s a good possibility that there would be, of course, different traditions may call different states, ‘enlightenment’. And so, one would really have to know if people had similar experiences, then I think their internal reality would reflect that.

Rick: Their internal reality, yeah.

Joseph: We don’t really know whether the experiences that they’re calling awakening were the same.

Rick: Yeah, I guess the reason I keep dwelling on this from different angles is that I do consider it an important thing for some reason. I feel like if we had litmus tests of enlightenment or awakening and its various stages, if there were kind of a more of a universally understood road map, like you say that Theravada Buddhism has, it would be useful. For instance, one characteristic that I often come across is that people who’ve had an abiding awakening, a main pure awareness or self, I know you don’t like the word ‘self’ as a Buddhist, but awareness is maintained 24/7 throughout sleep, it’s never lost. And then there are other things, refined perception, eventually comes along and one begins to apprehend the subtle levels of creation, where previously one’s attention was just on the gross. Things like that.

Perhaps a thousand years from now in our culture, if things go well and we survive, this kind of road map or understanding will be more or less matter of fact, it will be taught in schools and there will be a kind of a more universally agreed upon understanding of what this whole thing is all about.

Joseph: It’s possible, and again different traditions might emphasize different aspects of the map rather than contemplate the end result. I think it’s more helpful to look at the beginning stages of awakening where more people are likely to have had these experiences. This also comes right out of the text of the Theravada and the Pali Canon. One of the qualities that said, or a couple of the qualities that said to manifest at the first level of enlightenment, stream entry, that people become more generous, they’re freed from the taint of stinginess, that their ethical behavior is unbroken. So, these are very pragmatic, down to earth expressions of what awakening means. If you have some fantastic meditative experience and are still stingy and hoarding and breaking ethical behaviors, it might call into question, “What was that experience really about?

What was the transformation?” I like bringing it down to earth.

If you have some fantastic meditative experience and are still stingy and hoarding and breaking ethical behaviors, it might call into question, “What was that experience really about?”

Ethics, Motivation, and Cultural Context

Rick: The correlation between ethical behavior and enlightenment, or degrees of enlightenment, do you feel it’s fairly tight? Could a person advance quite far in their enlightenment, their inner development, and yet the ethical behavior has not really caught up with that? Or could a person be ethically quite saintly and yet not have too much going on in terms of inner awakening? Or do the two pretty much go hand in hand?

Joseph: There’s a little more complexity, I think, in the question. It’s definitely possible that people have a very refined ethical norm and may not be awakened. So, I think that’s possible.

Rick: Mother Teresa, for instance, lamented that she felt like she had not really realized the inner experience.

Joseph: In terms of whether somebody who genuinely is awakened, whether the ethical commitment and the living of it follows along, I think to a certain extent it has to. If somebody is claiming to be awakened and is going around being dishonest, cheating, killing and stealing, it would definitely raise some questions in my mind about, “Well, what was that enlightenment about?” That being said, the key to determining ethical behavior is really the motive behind the action. And so, I can see the possibility of some actions looking a certain way from the outside, but the motive being quite different. So, motive might be wholesome, but to the outside it might look a little questionable. This is very tricky because it’s easy to rationalize unskillful behavior by claiming pure motive. I just don’t want to exclude that possibility. One of the expressions in Tibetan Buddhism is very powerful.

They talk about wrathful compassion. So, it might manifest as a lot of wrath, that strong vajra energy that might look from the outside as being unskillful, but actually the motivation might be compassion to help awaken somebody.

Social Engagement and Compassion

Rick: I read an interesting article by David Loy the other night. You know David Loy? It was an article entitled, “Why Buddhism and the West Need Each Other.” The essential point of the article was that neither individual freedom nor political freedom alone are sufficient to eliminate dukkha. Both are needed. He kind of gave examples of how a person could be individually free, but in a very repressive society in which there was a lot of suffering because of the social policies. And then on the other hand, one could be in a very kind of progressive, liberated society and yet be full of greed and personal traits that weren’t really very commendable. Do you have any comments on his premise?

Joseph: I think that the way people practice, how they manifest their understanding and their awakening, I think there’s a broad spectrum, that’s possible. A lot depends on individual interests and talents and motivations. For example, for many people, compassion will be manifest as social engagement and really addressing the suffering in society. Other people might well be sitting in a cave, you know, but sitting there with the motivation of what’s called bodhichitta, practicing in order to awaken all. For example, of the Buddha in his many previous lifetimes, as the stories go, he would be living off by himself as a hermit and you just see, kind of imagine his family thinking, “What’s this guy doing? He’s not helping anybody.

He’s just off by himself in a cave.” And yet the fruit of his practice, because it was motivated, “Let me awaken for the benefit of all,” so his enlightenment, the culmination of his practice, we’re talking here today, is 2600 years later because of what he did. So, I’m reluctant to take too narrow a sliver of life and say, “Oh, this is more compassionate or less compassionate.” We have to look at the big picture and really examine the motivation. And then it will manifest in many different ways, and I think there’s a beauty in that.

Rick: Let’s talk about mindfulness a little bit. Well, first of all, what is the mind?

Joseph: The mind, again this goes back to a particular Buddhist teachings and particularly as it’s talked about in the Abhidharma, which is Buddhist psychology. This is a very elaborate, sophisticated analysis of consciousness and all the different mental qualities. So, the mind within this framework is taken to be basically that which knows, it’s the cognizing faculty. So, it’s just bare knowing. Now this knowing doesn’t arise by itself, it arises in combination with a lot of different mental qualities. In Buddhist jargon they’re called mental factors. So, it’s consciousness or knowing arising flavored or colored by a whole assortment of different mental qualities and some are wholesome, some are unwholesome. Greed is a mental factor, love is a mental factor, mindfulness is a mental factor. So, each one is just functioning in their own way.

Rick: So, mindfulness is an attentiveness to what is at hand? I’m going to ask you to define it because I’m totally a neophyte in that tradition, but how do you define mindfulness?

Joseph: It’s an important question, especially these days because mindfulness is getting such wide play now. It’s amazing, the way mindfulness is popping up.

🧘 The Nature and Practice of Mindfulness

It’s interesting, someone, I was sitting at our center in the staff dining room and just over the lunch table somebody asked me, “Well, can you define mindfulness in just a few words?” And phrases like, “living in the present” or “being attentive to the present moment” are what come to mind. But asking what is mindfulness, it is a little bit like asking what is art, what is love. The word, although very simple and even prosaic in English, has a wealth of meanings. So, I’ll just give a few examples, both of what it is and what it isn’t. You can say mindfulness is living in the present moment, but that is really not enough because one of my favorite examples is, you’re familiar with black labradors or golden retrievers?

Rick: Sure.

Joseph: These amazingly playful, friendly dogs running around, they are living in the present moment, but they don’t look like they’re being too mindful. They’re literally being led around by the nose.

Rick: They’re in a state of excitation for one thing. I mean, there’s this “ha ha ha”

Joseph: Exactly, and very much in the present. It’s not mindfulness. So, I call the lab quality of mind “black lab consciousness” to distinguish it. So, then we might say, “well, mindfulness means the observing power of the mind.” So, we’re really observing what’s happening as it’s happening.

Rick: Well, a black lab is doing that.

Joseph: Well, I don’t think there’s much observation, you know, like a stepping back and knowing what’s happening. In it, they’re completely, I mean, not remembering my black lab life, I’m just saying what it looks like from the outside, but they seem pretty identified with what’s going on. There’s not a lot of, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of self-reflection. So, when I say that observing power of the mind, it’s like that stepping back and knowing that we’re knowing, rather than simply knowing. But even that is not complete. That’s not enough for mindfulness, because we can be observing something through a filter of various mental factors. For example, if we’re observing something through the filter of desire, or through the filter of anger, and we’re not aware of that, so we’re observing what’s happening, but we’re not being mindful. So, mindfulness is yet something else again.

It’s not just being in the present. It’s not just observing what’s in the present. It’s observing it in a particular way. It’s being aware of what’s arising, but without greed or attachment, without aversion or condemning. And without delusion, without being identified with it. That’s a very particular kind of awareness. Right there, it kind of leads the understanding of mindfulness into an ethical dimension, because mindfulness is always a wholesome state of mind, because it’s free of greed and aversion. So, then we open up this whole ethical dimension to the practice of mindfulness. It’s very rich. It’s not a superficial quality of mind.

Mindfulness is always a wholesome state of mind, because it’s free of greed and aversion.

Integrating Mindfulness into Daily Life

Rick: So it sounds like, from what you’re saying, that mindfulness is something that not only would be practiced in meditation, but would be practiced during all one’s waking hours.

Joseph: Absolutely. And that’s really the goal. People come on retreat or do a daily practice as a way of strengthening that factor, so it is operative throughout our lives. It’s a tremendous blessing. The more mindful we are, the less we suffer.

Rick: But does that take effort? and if so, does it sort of, in a way, paradoxically divide the mind? Where let’s say you’re trying to do something, and yet at the same time there’s this effort to be mindful. So, it’s like you’re doing two things at the same time.

Joseph: Yeah. Both, two different questions there. Generally, in the beginning, it does take some effort to be mindful, because the habit of our mind is to be distracted. So just the effort to see that the mind is distracted and to come back again and again, until that factor, the quality of mindfulness is strengthened, so that it starts working more by itself. It doesn’t take…

Rick: It becomes second nature.

Joseph: Exactly.

Rick: It’s kind of like riding a bicycle. You have to really pay attention when you’re first learning, and after a while it’s

Joseph: That’s exactly right. Your second point is a very interesting point in a deepening understanding of mindfulness. Because very often, and this is a result of a lot of the language we use in talking about meditation and mindfulness. We use a lot of watching language. You know, say, “Watch the breath, notice the breath.” The language is a kind of dualistic. It’s as if we’re outside the experience tracking it. It’s not the best language that describes the actual experience, and I’ve been encouraging people to think of it more as feeling what’s happening rather than watching it. Because watching is from the outside, feeling it is from the inside. Then mindfulness just becomes, if you’ll indulge me, if we just do one little experiment now.

Rick: Sure, yeah.

Joseph: If you just move your arm from side to side but move it and just feel the movement.

Rick: Okay.

Joseph: Can you feel it moving? It’s that simple.

Rick: Yeah.

Joseph: That’s mindfulness. So, it’s not complicated when we’re in that feeling mode. If we’re in watching mode, then it would be more effortful. It would be like we’re trying to hold on to it. But when we’re in the feeling mode, it’s effortless. But it takes some training to have the mind remember that.

Morality as the Foundation

Rick: I read somewhere in your book, you said, we kind of talked about this, but it might be helpful to throw it in again. Morality is the foundation. Without it, it’s like trying to row a boat without untying it from the dock.

Joseph: Yeah, exactly. Because when we’re committed, from the time we’re committed to ethical behavior, then that frees the mind from remorse. If we’re living a life continually doing unethical things, when we start meditating then, all of this stuff comes to mind and it’s very disturbing, very difficult to concentrate. So as soon as, not that we’ve all done plenty of unskillful things in the past, but from the time we’re committed to a basic foundation of morality, that brings a certain ease and peace of mind that can then be built on. From that as a foundation, then it’s easier to concentrate, easier to develop insight. So, it’s pretty essential.

Morality is the foundation. Without it, it’s like trying to row a boat without untying it from the dock.

Rick: Here’s one that sticks more to Buddhism. This is his final question. In your book, ‘One Dharma’, you try to create a sense of common ground between the various Buddhist traditions of Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana by claiming that if we dig down to the essence of each of them, we find a common core. However, when you describe this common core, there was no element of it that would, oh, now here he gets into Hinduism again, there was no element of it that would exempt Advaita Hinduism from this one dharma. So, answer this if you can, but otherwise maybe just comment on the first part of the question. Do you see some kind of firewall between Buddhists and neo-Advaita Hinduism in the US today, as practiced by various famous examples. And if there isn’t an impenetrable barrier between the two traditions from sharing one dharma, aren’t we talking about the perennial philosophy?

Do you believe in the perennial philosophy?

Joseph: I mean, I can really only speak with any degree of confidence at all within the Buddhist tradition, and even that’s very broad.

Rick: So the first part of the question, within the Buddhist tradition, do you see a kind of a common core among the various branches?

Joseph: I do, I do. And there’s one phrase that is found in a lot in Theravada Buddhism, but is found also in Mahayana and Vajrayana, and I think it just gets to the very bottom line of what all these practices are about, where it says liberation through non-clinging. And it’s just so simple and so direct, that all the different methods, and all the different teachings and methodologies and practices are all in the service of non-clinging. And part of that non-clinging is non-clinging to the idea of self, some individual self. And part of the manifestation of that non-clinging is that it manifests as compassion. There’s a famous teaching by Dilgo Khense Rinpoche, who was a great, great Dzogchen master of the last century.

He said, “When we realize the empty nature of phenomena, when we realize the selfless nature, the energy to bring about the good of others dawns uncontrived and effortless.” And so, I love that, it’s like, it’s understanding from that place of not clinging to anything, not to the body, not to the mind, not to awareness, not to consciousness, the mind free of any clinging at all, that there’s that real emptiness of self, manifests as compassion, as responsiveness. So, I love the frame of compassion being the activity of emptiness. That to me brings the essential elements of all the traditions together.

Compassion is the activity of emptiness.

Union of Compassion and Emptiness

Rick: Yeah. Great. Well, that was a pretty comprehensive discussion. Is there anything you feel like is dear to your heart that we haven’t, you know, through my negligence, we haven’t really touched upon, that really kind of excites you or interests you that you, that you want to throw in?

Joseph: I think we covered a lot, and I’m glad we ended where we did, because I feel that understanding the union of compassion and emptiness, is just such a beautiful, simple expression of the path and of freedom and of awakening. It brings together just the essential elements, and I think this is what’s found in certainly the different Buddhist traditions, and perhaps many others as well. So, I think that’s a good place to close.

Understanding the union of compassion and emptiness is a beautiful, simple expression of the path.

Yeah, and also what you’re saying points to one teaching which is emphasized a lot in the Tibetan tradition, Mahayana, and is there implicitly in Theravada, although it’s not expressed so explicitly, and that is the whole teaching of bodhicitta, which is the aspiration that we practice, and we awaken for the benefit of all. I found that a very powerful addition to my Theravada practice. Before that I knew, and I understood that our practice will inevitably help others. If we’re less greedy and less angry and more generous and more loving, obviously everyone is going to be benefited. But to put that motivation up front, not to see it simply as the by-product of the practice, but to make it the motivation up front, “May my practice be for the welfare of all,” that added a tremendous richness to how I and others undertake the practice.

And that’s bringing the compassion aspect right into the heart of what we’re doing.

Conclusion

Rick: Imagine what our society would be like if everyone’s orientation, all the millions of us were for the welfare of others.

Joseph: Yeah, exactly. It would be very different.

Rick: Yeah. I mean, one way of putting it is if people come together just to take, then no one receives because both are just taking, but if people come together to give, then everyone receives.

Joseph: Yeah, exactly.

Rick: There was a story in some Vedic scripture where, for some reason, the gods and the demons all had their arms tied. You know that story? Their arms were tied with a splint so they couldn’t bend at the elbow, and the demons starved to death because they couldn’t feed themselves, but the gods realized they could feed each other.

Joseph: Exactly.

Rick: Yeah, nice. Okay, well, that is a sweet note to end on, and I think you’re a nice example of the principle. You’ve dedicated your life to giving to others, and that’s really commendable.

Joseph: Thank you. That was great talking.

Rick: Yeah, thank you, Joseph. Let me just make a couple concluding remarks that I always make. The interview you’ve been listening to is part of an ongoing series. I’ve done over 200 of them now, and there’s a new one each week. You can find them all at batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P. There you’ll find an alphabetical listing of them, a chronological listing of them, and you’ll also find there’s a discussion group that crops up around each interview. There’ll be one for this interview. There’s a donate button, which I appreciate people clicking. There’s a place to sign up to be notified by email each time a new interview is posted. There’s a link to an audio podcast.

And incidentally, regarding the audio podcast, I just discovered that Apple gives much greater prominence to podcasts that have more stars and reviews, and I’ve only got two reviews, one positive, one negative, and about seven people have clicked on stars. So, if you sign up for this, or if you click on that podcast link, you’ll be taken to a page where you can say subscribe, and it’ll take it into iTunes, and there you’ll see a ‘reviews’ button. If you click on that, you can click on the stars, hopefully five, and leave a review if you like, and it’ll help this be more recommended within the iTunes podcast thing. So, thanks for doing that. Thanks for listening or watching, and we will see you next week.