Buddhist Monks On: Letting Go of Shame, The Opposite of Depression, and Dealing With Criticism | Ajahn Kovilo and Ajahn Nisabho

This is the 10% happier podcast, Abdan Harris. [MUSIC] Hello, my fellow suffering beings, how are we doing? Today we're going to talk to a fascinating pair of American Buddhist monks about how to get

“stuff off your chest when you need to vent your spleen, how to live with less shame and regret,”

how to give feedback without pissing people off too much, how to accept feedback without

getting pissed off yourself, or getting defensive, how to stay sane in a crazy, never-ending

news cycle, why being miserable about the state of the world doesn't actually help anything, and how to cultivate the opposite of depression. Let me just say before we get too far into this, that I think there might be a reflex among some of you to think, well, what do celibate monks know about navigating the complexities of human relationships or about navigating life in the real world, and the answer, as it turns out,

is a lot, especially these monks who are quite young and yet incredibly smart and experienced, said monks, both go by their formal Buddhist names which start with the word adjon, adjon as the tie word for teacher or master. So my guests, names are respectively adjon, covid-low,

“and adjon nisobo. Together they have founded the Clear Mountain Monastery which is based in Seattle,”

they also host a podcast of their own, which is called the Clear Mountain Monastery Project. Before we dive in though, I do want to quickly tell you about a meditation challenge, a free one that we're running over on my new app, which is called 10% with Dan Harris. This is a five day challenge inspired by a new audible book or an audible original, it's an audio book, it's called Even You Can Meditate, which I co-wrote and co-recorded with the

great 7A Celacie. The challenge starts on March 23rd and alongside the daily meditations that you'll get from 7A, 7A will also do two live meditation and Q&A sessions. So there's a lot going on here, there's the release of the audible book, even you can meditate and then there's the challenge that runs alongside or is in celebration of the release of this audible original. You can get all the details if you go to Dan Harris.com or you can just download the app wherever you get your apps.

All right, we'll get started with Ajahn Kovilo and Ajahn Nisobo right after this.

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time terms and conditions may apply. Ajahn Kovelo and Ajahn Nesavo welcome to the show. Thanks Dan it's good to meet you good to be here. How did I do with my pronunciations there? I thought it was great yeah better than some of my family members. I'm not sure how low or high a bar that is but fine.

“I have a million questions to ask you we've been behind the scenes calling this episode monk hacks”

and I want to jump into those hacks but first I would love to briefly hear how you got into being monks so Ajahn Kovelo let me start with you with your background here. Yeah so was in university studying world religions and studying to be an elementary school teacher and had a great teacher named Alan Hottar at Hampshire University who taught comparative religion and transcendentalists so reading a lot of Emerson and Thoreau and of course the Walden pond experiment

was just very inspiring and then had a friend who recommended that I go to a Goinka retreat one of these 10 day deposit number traits I went because it was free and that was really my first big dive into meditation I tried a little bit before but as you probably know these going

“to retreats or 10 hours a day for 10 days straight that was a lot but it was also very much a”

life changing life reorienting experience the first two three days basically how if it seems like such an easy task just watch the breath at the tip of your nose but when I would sit down to do that the mind would just be anywhere but at the tip of the nose and so totally frustrating for those first several days and in the third day my kind just settled into that space of

peace and had some levels of happiness and contentment that I'd never experienced before

you know when I'd given up my phone given up my entertainment my relationships being quiet and to have this totally other type of happiness well-being peace to be able to experience that based on nothing and almost totally independent it seemed a type of happiness that I could create seeing that that was possible and that I put in the causes to bring that about very much shifted the course of my life and after that 10 days sat religiously an hour in the morning I went

the evening but still it took me about two years to realize that those teachings were from a care about a Buddhist context and yeah after three years from that first retreat I was basically ready to move into the monastery and pretty much have been there ever since it's amazing my view we need people making this level of commitment to the practice because it benefits everybody else because you can teach us so Ajahn needs about what your deal dude I suppose Ajahn Kobi was speaking in the

language of happiness maybe I'll shift to the language of purpose I grew up with somewhat Buddhist

parents they listened to Jack Cornfield and really gave me a good grounding but I always just felt

I could never give myself to the different hobbies and activities that my peers did so when I was 15 I read Sadartha like many emerging hippie and we were just being moved by the image of the Buddha and the idea of a monk like that you could dedicate your life in that way and started meditating every day it just became a bigger and bigger part of my life until by the end of college I went to college in Portland I'd seen that it was kind of the core of what I found most meaningful was

that center of getting to sit and find stillness I went to India and saw a doctor working in kind of the slums there and that was my goal actually was to work as a doctor but she was emotionally really a bit of a wreck very ragged and it was this very clear indication to me that there needs to be a spiritual kind of grounding aligned with that external work and that was what I felt

the time of the Buddha monastics in our tradition we don't touch money we don't use money we live

you know really beautifully simple lives and it was we met people there who were you know enlightened and that is something you don't get to see every day in the West I feel so that was very special and since then it's been time in monasteries and then with Ajinkovilo in our little monastery here in Seattle

“all right I appreciate the background I believe this is true for both of you it's just incredible what you're”

doing so let's get to the monk hacks and sorry for the flip and tone here so I have an outlined in front of me that to two of you in collaboration with our senior producer Marissa Schneiderman put together really talking about what the rest of us can learn from those who are living a monastic

lifestyle and there are really three areas that we want to talk about in the first is how to be in

you know healthy relationship with other human beings which is not easy as I am often say in my perhaps overly glib style we need other humans to flourish and often overlooked fact we need other humans and yet other humans are a titanic pain in the ass so how do we navigate this and you have this practice that you recommend and it's essentially a practice of confession which is a term that carries a lot of cultural baggage so COVID law will start with you again what

do you mean by confession in this context yeah so it's a integral part of a monastic life whether once a monk or a nun the Buddha stipulated that we have to it's useful to know the holly word the word that the Buddha was using is avi karate which literally means making open so it's an opening oneself up and then Buddha framed this practice as being one of growth in the doma when you see a mistake and a spire or dedicate in front of someone else who's keeping the

same rules keeping the same principles the same integrity then that's growth in his teaching and in his discipline so what the Buddha stipulated for monastics is that every two weeks we come together and do this avi karate opening ourselves up we've got lots of rules we've got lots of

“some rules we've just got rules on top of rules and I think the principle of discipline equals”

freedom is one which is paradoxical but one which I think most monastics who kind of stick it out really are able to see and so every two weeks we come together and we open our parts to our trust in brothers or sisters in robes it's a humbling practice and it makes us just have a level of metacognition about what we're doing and yeah a lot of us especially Western monks were making very clear choice to become Buddhist most of us weren't born into Buddhist families oftentimes

the monal of monasticism does mean singular one so a lot of us go into monastic life thinking that we're just going to be by ourselves all the time where as Sangha is this group of people where the bunch of adult human dudes man living in sometimes very close quarters and we didn't choose the individuals who will be living with so we've got the whole range we've got extrovert monks extrovert monks monks who really bear their hearts in a very open way in this confession practice

and others who were yeah just do more of a formulaic version of it but I've personally just sounded a great practice of keeping track and an eye one level removed of watching my actions of speech and actions of body and amari transgressing by doing things that a better part of myself wouldn't want to be doing than I can lay myself out there for the friends who I trust that's a beautiful kind of description of much of it and it kind of echoes this opening term so much of the

language we have to speak about these practices are loaded with enormous cultural baggage for people which is problematic but it's the language we have so confession might be a bit heavy but opening is a really good one and it speaks to the power of living in community people have this idea of

“monastics is kind of living off in these little huts and honestly I've rarely seen that work for most”

monastics at least for the first five, six or seven years like living in community we live

you know our great malady in modern life right now I think is the siloed alienated existence from that sanctity of communion and relationship either with some higher ideal or with each other and so a really key quality of the lineage we're part of the origin child lineage is living in community with a bunch of adult people and you know I've heard one teacher say look you can either have the suffering of living alone or the suffering of living in community but it's much better

that suffering of living in community because it's the mirror like it's you opening yourself

really good metric for modern practitioners is flourishing normalcy and warmth and if you're cold,

weird and not flourishing like people around you will point it out so it's a really good metric and the confession is just a way of you know ritual has a lot of baggage in our society but it's a way of framing up these moments in a meaningful way so every two weeks we get together with companion and this is how you do it with someone in your life a spiritual friend is every week or two weeks something you trust or if it's too much even just a Buddha image or some image you

respect and kind of lay open the things that you wish you could have done a bit better those things you appreciated and it's not like some kind of commandment from on high you're trying to purify yourself against it's just you're opening the dark corners to the light of day and

“letting kind of the eye of awareness clean it so that's what the practice is essentially.”

I like the way you say that the eye of awareness cleaning it or as my favorite indie rock band

of the 90s pavement put it brightening the corners so I'd be curious to hear a little bit more though but for those of us who are not monks and are new to this what are the practical steps. What we do is every two weeks is mentioned we get together to recite all of our rules and before we do that is when we pair off monk with monk or nun with nun to open ourselves and show those corners to one another I think this is something people can do one of our teachers

Ajahn Jaya Saro in Thailand will suggest that families actually have a very clear contract that they write up you know actually talking with your family members about what the expectations and the rules and certain things are within the family I haven't known too many people who've tried to do a

“confession I've known anybody who's tried to do it with a child but certainly with a spouse I mean Ajahn”

nissible and I right now in Seattle it's just he and I so we're usually confessing to each other one principle is that if we have the same offense you can't confess that rule to someone else so we'll oftentimes contact one of our monk brothers that are different monastery say if we've broken some minor rule we'll contact them to open ourselves up to them so we come together and we as Dr. Nissible said you know bow to a Buddha statue as our highest kind of goal is our

role model in life and then we open ourselves up with a poly formula where you say first we praise

the Buddha homage to the blessed one the noble one perfectly enlightened one and then we will say okay in the last two weeks I had to run a little bit to catch the bus and monk starts supposed to run in public because it was a blessing being chased and we're allowed to unless we're being if letting chase you can climb trees even if we're doing something but whatever rule we break we confess that last two weeks I did this and would like to show restraint in the future

and our monk brother will say do you see and we'll say it is a bit formulae but we also do try to live this yeah I do see actually that it is a little bit unbecoming to do this or it is inappropriate to transgress that rule that we had agreed upon and then the other monk says will you show restraint in the future and we say yes we will try and we both say sadu sadu sadu it's great it's wonderful that you're trying to practice this so that's a little bit of the formulae it's a useful formula

because often when you're confessing the other person wants to respond somehow and either that can take the form of putting a little too much weight on what you're saying or trying to say oh it's no big thing and often they're just supposed to be there as a bit of a mirror and a caring mirror so that's where the formulae can be useful like you say something that came up in your heart do you see I see will you be restraining the future I will sadu it's simple and then you can go a

little deeper if you want but that basic formulae allows a back and forth and it's supposed to be

“held confidentially you should do with someone you trust and then we usually follow it with”

gratitude things we think we did well and often it's just aligning with our higher ideals like it's not explicitly against our monastic rules for us to speak a bit too hurriedly sometimes well way too fast maybe it's those little things where you're like I wish I'd been a little more beautiful there and that's that polishing like after a time the language of right and wrong stops holding as much power in our practices the language of beautiful and unbeautiful

or trivial and non-trivial like there comes a point where practices operating at that different strata of language and that's what you're really looking at like what could I have done a little more beautifully yeah it's not supposed to be held to heavily would not with any self or combination it's just a chance to open your sealer which is the poly or the ancient word for ethical conduct is I would imagine quite refined more refined than for example mine so I've got

it gets probably this practice might get a little bit more complex for quote unquote regular people

“yeah I think it can but it really is just a matter of having an accountability buddy you know”

someone who maybe especially someone you admire like at the monoceros we have because I mentioned a whole cast of characters but I've got certain monthly choices really look up to the way that they

speak like someone who's always honest or is always very careful with his speech and if I've

a little bit loose with my speech I might go up to him he's someone who I admire and then there might be someone else who's just very refined in their the way they move through the world like physically so I might confess other things with them and here in Seattle this has been a practice that a lot of lay members are non-monastic community members of the clear mountain broader songa have taken on and they do they'll have peers not necessarily a spouse but somebody who they

look up to and who they trust and it's like get together and maybe have go out for a tea go out for meal and then do this and it doesn't have to be heavy can be as light as you want and you

really want it to be something which does feel sustainable which doesn't feel like a crunch it's not

something that you're dreading every two weeks but even something that you're looking forward to I want to improve in this realm of my life and this is a buddy this is a friend who I can kind of make that more explicit with and iterate with and reaffirming our values regularly is really important they did a study where they had people report for their car insurance claim the amount of miles they

“driven in the past year and they had half of the people sign their name saying I will report honestly”

at the top of the document and half at the bottom after they'd written the number in and those who wrote their name as kind of a signature of truth at the top they reported a much higher amount of miles like they reported more honestly because they'd affirmed their identity as someone who told truth at the very beginning of that moment so it might seem like we don't really need to reaffirm our values and kind of goals in the way we want to live but there's real power psychologically

everyone or two weeks kind of saying this is how I want to live this is how I want to steer my life so that's much of what this is about is saying what we're aiming at. I want to say something to see if you how it lands for you feel free to disagree or correct me but my understanding this word sealo which is in the ancient language of poly the language in which the Buddha's teaching was written down it translates as ethical conduct one translation it's such a frated term in the

West because we have lived through enormous amounts of hypocrisy from the harrogons of and the public faces of organized religion thundering from the pulpit about this or that and then doing the opposite in their private life and also these often male dominated structures have set out ethical

“guidelines that were designed to repress people or often specific groups of people so it's I think”

we're conditioned not to love this whole idea of ethics and ethical conduct but in the Buddhist context to the extent that I understand it it's not really about especially for nonmunks and nonnons it's not really about policing every aspect of your behavior because we want to control you it's about helping you to be happier there's this term the bliss of lanelessness the idea that if you're living according to your values you're living the corners of your psyche aren't dark they're

brightened through regular unburdening and a real focus on keeping your ethics game as tight as possible you're just going to be happier if you're not spending so much time keeping your lies straight or feeling guilty etc etc your meditation practice will be more focused there are just many benefits that you could characterize and I use this term not in the pejorative as selfish self gratifying so I said a lot there but how does all of that sound to the two of you

I think it's right on the mark that bliss of being blameless is in Polly on Avajasuka the bliss of

blamelessness and it gets to the core of well first as a teacher said the sign of virtue is peace of

mind or concentration the nemata of seal is somebody and why that seems relevant is when our virtues really feels clean when we're living in line with our values at different strata of patterning of our being to action to deepest values there is a sense of the mind is able to calm down and it relates to the concept of sada or faith in Buddhism faith is a term that's not totally appropriate to the Buddhist concept because there's an epistemological humility in Buddhism where

and take on these commandments the starting point of a Buddhist sada confidence or faith is

taking on enough of these teachings with enough confidence to take them on as working hypothesis and because the practice can reveal the truth or not of them you can really test them out at every level of your path and the same goes for virtue the Buddha didn't give commandments he gave

“things to be trained in and if then statements if you want to get a calm mind you're probably”

going to have to stop lying and you don't have to just believe that like that's one of the beautiful aspects of meditation practice is if you start sitting half an hour a day you'll notice if you expressed anger if you lied if you kind of transgressed the steeper values of your own how you want to live your life you'll notice the mind does not settle and it just becomes a very clear vision of why virtue is key to unity of mind and happiness but it's not something

they have to take on faith you can test it out day to day so I think that is a good run down agenda of anything to add yeah just you were pointing to it a bit is that oftentimes Buddhism gets a bad rap and that we're only talking about suffering or maybe if you've ever met a monk and their repressed internally and you think that a whole monastic life is one of total suffering

“all the time and the Buddha did talk about sufferings the phoneable truths but he also talked”

about the conditionality of happiness there's a framework which he uses again and again and again that we call the well-being cascade and he gives this image of just as there's a cloud or rain cloud that's filled with rain and then it rains down on the top of a mountain and then the pools at the top of the mountain collect and fill and they overflow into the pools below them those overflow and fill in the rivulets which then overflow into the the streams which go to the rivers which

go out to the great ocean eventually by practicing this is just one instance of it by keeping

precepts this sense of integrity of morality of inner virtue it fills up the first pool is called

pamoja or well-being and that fills up and it fills up the pool of pt or rapture or joy which fills up to bodily tranquility which leads to suka or happiness which then fills up and leads to samadhi so a lot of people think once I get my samadhi together once I can meditate then I'll be happy whereas in this framework of the well-being cascade the Buddha is saying it's actually the other way around once I'm happy then my concentration my meditation

can come together and see luck can be that rain clown that's really cool so just a few practical questions here about this confessional practice would you recommend we do this with the friend rather than our spouse I guess you're the wrong guys to ask this given that you don't have spouses but I don't know on that one actually yes yeah depends on your spouse some depends on your friend you really want to have someone who you can speak very openly to about this kind of thing

like it's possible that we married our spouse for all sorts of other things where is this aspect of our lives of revealing our things that we don't feel good about for whatever reason they're

“not into that whereas maybe a friend is or maybe vice versa so I think it really depends you haven't”

got no I just even if we have the main practice with a calian amita what we call a beautiful spiritual friend and that's a different sort of relationship than worldly friendships that are predicated on how much pleasure you get from each other's company like a spiritual friend the foundation of that relationship is supporting each other's values and de-brasperations and it's meaningful to have it instead of like in twine strings it's like sympathetic

resonance where you pluck a string and the others that are tuned the same all resonated at the same time it's gentler but quite profound I think you definitely want a friend like that and as many as you can but even if your spouse isn't quite as interested in in these spiritual practices as you are there's something very powerful about at least asking forgiveness from them for what you have done in the relationship at a regular basis which wasn't perfect and that is its own sort of

confession or opening but like that's another thing monastics do is whenever we leave a modest

day we'll always ask forgiveness because there's always something we've done that could have

been a little more beautiful so I'd say even if your spouse isn't your prime spiritual companion in this sense there's still something about opening yourself on a regular basis because of the beauty of that act and the relationship and so again I just want to make sure that I understand and by extension that the listener understands that the way this goes is you say to your

I guess you could language it how you want but something to the effect of do you see the person

who's confessing says yeah I do I see and then the other person says so will you be restrained in the future and the other person says I'll try and then at the end it's like high five good job holding fist bump if you want yeah you can use the same formula for gratitude afterwards or things you've

“done correctly I found I was able to navigate this I gave at a time when I think two years ago I”

wouldn't have even thought to give do you see I see you know will you encourage that sort of behavior in the future we rejoice in that I will and high five after if you want coming up out John Kobylo and Ajahn Nisa Bo talk about to the Buddha's guidelines for giving feedback and other ways

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“this one requires the other person to be fully bought in I believe what we're about to talk about”

which is how to give feedback only one person could be following your advice here the other person doesn't have to be you know participating in the exercise so robustly am I right about that before we dive in yeah definitely so the boot of himself actually gave instructions on how to give feedback he did yeah and he pointed out the drawbacks of not giving feedback very well like if you are someone who just jumps in at the wrong time and you are angry yourself and you're actually

you do the same thing that you're trying to call somebody else out on if you do any of these then the other person just isn't going to listen to you so it's not for any kind of mystical reason that the boot of gave these principles to consider when given feedback is just very practical it's people won't listen to you or even if they do listen to you because you've got some kind of

helpful for allowing that and some of them are to just examine oneself before giving feedback okay

what is my mind state and then to try to so first to look okay what is my mind state why am I

wanting to give this feedback is it out of hatred is it envy or is it because I want them to improve is because I care about them and then if it's for any of those less than beautiful reasons like I'm just angry at them or I'm in bad mood or I'm angry or whatever it is just trying to establish the heart and it kind of even prompting oneself if I am going to mention to this to the person then I want to establish a heart of loving kindness of friendliness I want the best for this person

and then looking for the right time so time and places important if you get that wrong there not going to be able to hear you and it can go wrong in or sorts of ways so those are a few

principles looking at your own conduct am I actually doing or refraining from doing the thing

that I want the other person to not do so my pure in this action about your speech because if you're not then they'll see that hypocrisy in that and only follow with resentment quite a few lists actually but it loves lists a lot of lists stand and one of them no angry feedback that's good I mean the ones I didn't cover the point did to especially noticing what your intention is I think are just

“so key and usually we sing about three or four or five of these to really check and I honestly”

so much of our karma of the damage and the good we do in the modern era is all through speech and I really feel like if people took on this principle of giving and monitoring their feedback it would be a pretty holistic spiritual path in and of itself so some of the key points are like Ajay and Khabilo said only speaking from a mind of loving kindness so if there's any other intention even kind of a splinter of annoyance you don't give feedback from that spot you can just say

oh it's just a little bit of annoyance but people can sense that sliver of contempt or exasperation it changes everything and often all you have to do is wait 15 minutes or an hour although I do know one monk who had to wait a whole year before he could fulfill that one. Speaking from a mind of loving kindness right time like Ajay said speaking truthfully speaking to the matter hand and this is a big one is asking and receiving permission so I really like to single those two out the

“speaking from a mind of loving kindness and asking and receiving permission and I feel like honestly”

if people took on this principle around giving feedback in their relationships that firewall it just gives you so much to work with because often 15 minutes later or 20 minutes later things are so different I think that it studies on married couples and the midst of arguments and they'd be filming it and then sometimes they'd tell the married couple that the cameras had broken and they had to take a 15 minute break and then after they reconvened 15 minutes later like the argument was

easily resolved because the adrenaline had dropped all the activation and gone away and so I think these principles are actually really quite important for people's relationships. One good way to remember some of those it's a slightly different list but the acronym or memory aid is the booted and give this but it's a modern memory aid is bagel so before you open your mouth if you think bagel and so B is this going to be beneficial for the other person A is this accurate G and my speaking

gently E as an expedient and by that I mean timely as if the right time and am I saying it in a timely way and then L is with a mind of loving kindness so you want to for you open your mouth just check the bagel and if it's all bagel then it's all good and what is the other option Ajahn if it's

all bagel yeah this one isn't as good but the other option is donut which is basically all the

opposites of those yeah it's not beneficial but for a deleterious reason if it's obviously untrue you're speaking from a noxious mind versus the loving mind if it's untimely and from a treacherous space so donut acronym not so good bagel I love everything you're saying I would just add one other thing that I learned from the communication coaches Joseph Goldstein who I'm sure

“you're a photo I think he's been on your show as these friends he introduced me to many years ago”

Dan Klamin and Moody Todd and this girl their Buddhist practitioners and they teach communication skills and one of the things that they've taught me to do that I found very helpful is once I've established my wholesome intentions for giving somebody feedback I also repeat those intentions to the recipient of the feedback I'm telling you this because this relationship matters to me or

that's beautiful and what Ajahn Colby was pointing to about the preciousness of feedback with the brutacolbed bramaganda the sort of ultimate punishment was telling the community to not speak to another monk because they just got off the rails and hadn't been open to feedback and he spoke a lot about how you know if someone points out your flaws it's a treacher it's like

“they're pointing out treacher to you and I think we've all seen like that humility of someone who”

can receive feedback well and people often ask like how do we model spiritual practice to our

children how do you kind of teach them to be whatever I think one of those powerful things a

parent can do is have the humility to apologize to their child when they do something wrong it's such a powerful act of receiving feedback for what you're accountable for kind of you know acknowledging that yeah so I really appreciate this practice a lot you've brought me exactly where I wanted to go which is the next item in this outline that I'm looking at that you and Merissa put together which is how to receive feedback which I think is even harder than giving feedback how do you deal

with criticism because often it's not delivered skillfully the Buddha apparently had a lot to say about how to be open to a feedback what was it what did he say he's got a lot to say the whole thing

centers around one particular virtue which is highlighted by the Buddha and Pauli is called Subecha

which literally means being easy to speak to sometimes is translated as being easy to admonish or easy to give feedback to and it's kind of a shame there isn't a better English word

“for that because it's so important as Arjuna spoke said if you're really taking to heart that”

feedback from another person can be like someone pointing out hidden treasure then you want to be able to receive that well there's a discourse of the Buddha called on inference in the middle length discourses number 15 which has got this all long list of ways to make oneself easy to speak to and the Buddha says someone might think oh I want to be easy to speak to and to make myself easy to speak to but they might do the things which make themselves hard to speak to like

you're getting feedback and you counter-reprove the reprover or you respond with stubbornness or you respond with entrenchedness or you totally change the topic or you get angry or you speak words ordering on anger which is fascinating that even if you were to write out the things that I'm saying it would seem totally innocuous but I'm speaking with such venom that there

“words bordering on anger so the Buddha gives it's amazing list of about 16 or 20 of these ways”

to poorly receive feedback and that one does the opposite actually rather than responding with obstinacy or to change the subject or responding with anger to speak words bordering on anger or to counter-reprove the reprover I'm actually going to value this quality of being so much easy to speak to and he gives a beautiful simile which is actually practical you know oftentimes the Buddha would give simile is not just because they're interesting but because

when you bring them to mind it can change the heart so he gives just as a young man or young woman a young person fond of a dormant might look in a mirror and if there was a smudge on their face or some dirt they would wipe it off you're being conscious of their own beauty so to someone who cares about their character development cares about being a good person cares about being a mint they'll see these smudges these things of responding to feedback with obstinacy or a version

that's a taint that's a non-woody it's a smudge on the face of someone who's really wanting to receive feedback well so it's really fantastic beautiful list I really appreciate it and that virtue in general is one which it's hard as you note down it's hard and why the list is fastening is because although the Buddha was gave it 2600 years ago I see myself almost check check okay I'm being bad to give feedback to in this way this way this way but leaning in a different direction

because I want to be easy to speak to okay so let's get super practical I mean you've given some overarching themes from the Buddha what can we actually do in our minds in our mouths it are bodies in order to be easy to speak to in this regard yeah I appreciate how you continually kind of bring things down to what we can actually act out you know after speaking to this or listening so in our bodies the motion of angely it might seem form but it is really hard to

be stubborn and recalcitrant when you're holding your hands like this and if it's prayer hand yeah

prayer hands exactly the emoji prayer hand it's a very powerful symbol and it might be strange in

makes you for a time take a certain receptive stance internally as well as externally and

in terms of mouth I would say not you know really taking seriously those principles of admonishment in terms of counter admonishment so if you're not able to speak from a place of non ill will if you're speaking for reactivity just not speaking from that and you can kind of respond to the feedback after that initial impulse towards defensiveness has faded away and you've really

“gotten a chance to sit with it and so I think there's something very powerful about that about”

just saying to someone who's giving you feedback thank you for what you said I don't know if I can agree with all of it but I'm going to take this and think about it for about 15 minutes and I'll get right back to you that motion is very meaningful and you won't lose anything through 15 minutes probably the other thing you can do with the mouth is use Marshall Rosenberg's non-violent communication framework we use this a ton this might be harder to remember another it's not really an acronym

well it is but it's not a fun one like donut but stating your observation I noticed you know you seemed angry in this way feeling it's just made me feel worried afraid need when I'm with you I need to feel like I can speak to these things request tell me how that lands what's coming up for you we use this framework consistently observation feeling need request and it's just an extremely

powerful way to receive and give communication even on very difficult subjects because often one

person will be operating on the level of observation and another person's completely in the level of feeling and if those two are misaligned you're having two very different conversations that are orthogonal and do not intersect so that's very useful and then in terms of mind I would just say noticing you're breathing this is where meditation and a meditative practice is meaningful notice you're breathing slow it down come into your feet if you feel that kind of

tensing up of anger and then just spread loving kindness and true metapractice loving kindness requires a certain agility because the temptation is to spread it towards the person you're angry at ways often it's a much more humble and human motion of spreading it to yourself and just feeling how much it hurts to be angry like it really hurts often a hand over the heart can help that so if you're receiving feedback and just feeling a lot of pain vibration you want to lash out

whatever it is just bringing a gentle glove loving kindness directed at oneself and letting that kind of hold you through the period where you're just vibrating like a wound and then once the vibration is died down then you can actually you know decide what to do from there whether it be to respond or accept or apologize whatever it is one tiny less the good a cave when you're on the receiving end of feedback is just two things keep two things in mind one of them is true is this true

is this really true that's the first one and then the second one is not being provoked so okay

I'm on the receiving end I didn't ask for this maybe they didn't get the right time and regardless of all of that maybe they spoke with the mind of inner hate and it was the wrong time and it's unbeneficial and it's even untrue but still I'm not going to be provoked so those two things is this true and I'm not going to be provoked he also said if you're being sawed limb by limb by a

“band of bandits you should not get rise to even one thought of ill will so speaking of not being provoked”

yeah if one does then they're not practicing if we're just teaching so high bar if your space is not on your limb by limb limb from limb you're doing all right but you say high bar and your voice is light you know you're laughing about it but like that's a ridiculously high bar like yeah how do we think about that a huge part of the path is noticing how to put forth right effort and if you notice that you aren't able to achieve that absurd amazingly high bar obviously the

right motion of the heart is not self-recombination oh like look at I'm supposed to be a practitioner in here this anger is coming up that's more aversion and just acknowledging we have our conditioning our patterns and we're working with them as best we can but I think the Buddhist sometimes gave those simile is just for a clarity of you know there's so many ways we justify our anger

“well I deserve to be a little angry I mean how could that person do that I think this is the”

Buddhist way of just cutting all that off and there's a real compassion to that action of just being like there's so many times where I feel like my anger or annoyance was simply slightly justified and I'll just be proliferating around it and I realize it's because I'm trying to justify intellectually something that my heart knows was actually not beautiful in the way I want to be and there's such a humility to just being like you know I wasn't actually perfect there and I can

negotiating anger's never useful and it's never part of this path in terms of expressing it

it can be a messenger but it's not something you want to lay on another person basically in that same discourse where the Buddha is talking about this simile of the saw and the name of the discourse is the simile of the saw he actually gives three or four other really striking similes which might be more approachable it says if someone is coming at you with feedback again whether it's good or bad or true or false or their anger or whatever it is still you can pair the heart

to be like the great earth just as if someone would come along with a shovel and start thinking okay I'm gonna totally dig up the whole earth there's no way they could do that because the earth is

“huge so to you should make your mind abundant like the great earth just as someone might”

come with the torch and think I'm gonna burn down the ganji's river so to you can make your heart

as cool and broad and vast and flowing as the ganji's river or someone might come up with a paint brush and think I'm gonna paint in the sky and so to you can make your heart as open and spacious as in the sky because the sky just doesn't receive paint it doesn't receive all these marks it's sign less so some other beautiful similes of that kind of extreme one that's the one that would end with the simile of being sawed limb from limb but these other ones are also and you

can feel that you can kind of ground into yourself when you're on the receiving end of things like the earth or like water like space that's very helpful I feel a little better coming up on John Kovilo and Ajahn Dicebo talk about some practical ways to handle the dumpster fire of modern life Okay just to reset we've been talking about there were kind of three areas of again I'm using this term respectfully I hope you receive it as such of monk hacks that we're we're gonna cover in this episode

I don't know if we'll get to the all three areas that you and Marissa talked about but the first big area

we've just spent a huge chunk of time talking about skillful relationship we've talked about confession we talked about how to give feedback and how to receive feedback the second area that you two wanted to talk about is how to handle the dumpster fire of modern life how to navigate skillfully in troubled times and once again you have a bunch of really practical thoughts based in the Buddha's teaching so I'll shut up and let you hold forth we'll do feel free to you know

chime in as well then you have navigated the fire whether it be a dumpster fire or a beautiful you know fire around wood whatever it is for many years so I'm sure you've wisdom to contribute as well this just seems like a very it's on people's hearts right now whether it be the difficulties in navigating the current cultural landscape or political landscape or news landscape or just the intimacy of relationship that's difficult but to speak to that wider

context of that landscape one useful thing to know is the Buddha would sometimes divide the noble example path into three aspects or ways of approaching it one is sealer so I like to think of this as things we can do by body what we can change in our life externally the next is some body so concentration how we can cultivate wholesome emotional states to counteract the negative

“and the third is Pania or wisdom and that's how we can with clear seeing step into a place of”

greater echo boys and love so just to lay that threefold approach on the current landscape for example with news Hagle said that evil lies in the gaze that sees evil all around it there's a great deal wrong with the world and there's a great deal right with the world with the seal aspect what we can change externally I think there's very practical stats people can take about really checking how often do they need to check the news

can you wait to check the news until after your morning practice session of meditation and can you put down the phone after six p.m. at night can you take just one day a week to not look at news these are very small steps but important resets and it's astonishing how easily people forget the bright garden their hands working for the faint whisper of a serpent and that serpent is real people need to take action but how many times they need to step to look at their

“iPhone every day to know things they can do is something that they really I think we need to take a”

careful look at because as practitioners we really have a duty to keep our minds bright and loving we do no one any favors by being miserable and depressed about the state of the world with somebody cultivating wholesome emotional states I just say really emphasizing loving kindness

spending them on loving kindness would be a good start so at the very beginning of the day

“right when you wake up you'll notice the mind trying to crystallize around something it'll”

usually crystallize around an argument or an obsession or a plan or desire and so at the very beginning the day really being very guarded and making sure to crystallize the mind around loving kindness so just right when you wake up bring the attention to the heart get a glow of loving

kindness going and for the first 15 minutes of the day instead of like arguing with this imaginary

person in the shower you know keep in mind loving kindness mantra may be well may be happy may be filled with loving kindness whatever it is and that will pay dividends the rest of the day because you're orienting your trajectory along mecca and the third is with wisdom kanya we call Upaqa echo poise a bird's eye view just a gold scene says it's looking at the wild affairs of earth through the lens of Venus and Venus is the goddess of love I think actually heard that on your podcast

Dan but I think there's something about just noticing a wider view of like things are difficult right now and they were difficult in the Buddhist time there was child mortality of 50% there was famine and war the world is difficult and it has been before and still the saints and beautiful beings of

“the past navigated with equanimity and care and that's what we can bring to this moment as well”

and I think that wider context is significant in letting the mind constrict less around the moment I'd just hold you bring up to this nice beautiful way to break things down but just on a level of things we can do with the body and this level of virtue or integrity something else to be paying attention to is generosity yeah and response to all the poverty and all of the trouble that you see around us especially with input from all over the world

we're seeing images of the carnage and the poverty from everywhere in the world and part of why it feels overwhelming is because it is overwhelming and there's nothing that we can singly do about it about so much of these things but one really useful practice is what we call sarnia practice sarnia is a polyword it means either to be remembered or that

which is endearing it's a practice specifically of giving before consuming so first encounter this

in a monastery in Sri Lanka where as happens monks we go down there's a food line often pretty much every day after we go for alms we give up all of our food to the communal table and then we go through and then take food from the different dishes and then at this particular monastery after one has gotten the food all of our food and one bowl we eat our one meal a day and one bowl still these monks there would take food before they ate out of their bowl

and then put it into at least one other monk friends bowl before they ate this is based on a saying by the Buddha where he said if beings knew as I know the power of giving and sharing

they wouldn't eat without first having given and so on join this post birthday was last

Wednesday and his parents who as you noted were Buddhist they asked what can we get you and he said that's a very nice offer to make but something I would like more than anything material

“because honestly it is hard to get a gift for him but so what can we get you in an”

adrenaline specific rather than anything material actually if you could take on this sarnia practice for any period of time is figure out some way to instantiate your desire to give every day whether that's composting a bit of food before you eat or feeding the dog before you eat or taking like power bars and protein bars carry around like 10 of them every day and aspire to give one away before you eat or something like that just some way to instantiate your

generosity and to to make it real and to aspire to do that every day or once a week I'm going to go to a soup kitchen every every week and so his parents took that on and we actually introduced it to our whole community so now people are making these sarnia aspirations to okay from now until new years every week I will go to the women's shelter and make a meal or every day I will serve my child before I eat or something like that and it's a really

creative and beautiful and real hands-on way to practice generosity, beautification of body body yeah I drink coffee though often we'll drop like little nuts into my bowl right before he sees he does this all the time try and back with some stingy, Aging Kobilo you know it's kindly pointing out the smoker on the birthday but it's it's an astounding practice what happens to the heart when you start to give like that I've seen teachers who I'd find them after the meal like

while feeding little bits of bread from their bowl to the line of ants like this aspect in

“giving just so deeply instantiated we have one community member who whenever he would see someone”

on the street and give them food and you know we have people who you can buy McDonald's gift certificates and other things to give away if you want or protein bars whatever it is to carry around with you but he'd have three things he did when he gave something is he'd lower himself to their physical level on the street so crouch down or whatever it is he'd learn their name and he touched their hand and like that aspect of making sure there's connection along with a

gift like what would it really mean in a life it would be transformative to really take that on day after day and in the west we can see of this practice is just meditating and kind of achieving these deep states of wisdom but just the act of giving and relinquishing self in that way is the

most maybe one of those powerful acts I've ever seen in people so I hope people can take that

yet beautiful and it cuts right against the misery and overwhelm that many of us feel about the state of the world because the expression that gets used a lot which I like is that action absorbs anxiety it feels like you're doing your little piece to heal the world even if you know it's not going to solve climate change or polarization or whatever it's meaningful nonetheless and so just to put the list together again just to recapitulate it for people who heard all of that

and want to just a brief summary again what the Ajans are recommending here is a combination of Cilla or Virtue Samadhi or Concentration or Meditation and Panya/Wizdom so under Virtue it's like can you renounce your phone a little bit like as my friend seven iselasi says no news before noon and also under Virtue you know maybe having some sort of generosity practice that makes you feel a little bit better about the state of the world under concentration or meditation can you start the

day with meditation or right when you wake up generating a sense of warmth, loving kindness

for someone or for everyone and then finally under wisdom you can you develop some equanimity

can you develop a bird's eye view on the noise and machinations and frequent developments and cruelty of the world by maybe as Joseph recommends viewing it through the lens of Venus just you

“see it in a different light so how's that for a summary it's good and I think it circles around”

this one misconception in the west I think we often have that's to honor the suffering we see around the world we need to be suffering ourselves and that's a useless narrative in some extent but at least it's not a helpful one all the time. Karina compassion in a Buddhist sense that one of the Brahmavihara's these boundless states of art is a bright luminous state and

Dominoza is the polyword for depressed mind and that's never wholesome and you know if you go to

the doctor or the nurse or whatever you want your doctor or nurse to be happy you don't want them to be like oh man this looks really bad I'm just gonna you know give me five minutes to sort of collect myself before you even talk to you if we're intent on helping the world and bringing brightness to it we can keep our minds in a bright space even as we interact with the world and that's one of the best gifts we can give it so yeah all these practices they are about keeping

the mind and a bright spot while doing something good in the world but we have to dispel that in city as narrative that lies beneath the surface often if people's interaction with these situations that they need to be depressed and suffering to honor the depression and suffering they see the way you honor those things is by bringing brightness and healing to them and you can have a

“bright heart to do that you need to have a bright heart to do that the quote that comes up not”

in frequently on the show I think it's Joseph Campbell talked about engaging joyfully in the sorrows of the world and I just think about that a lot and I love what you just said okay so we've got a limited amount of time left let's see if we can hit the third area that you and Marissa we're hoping we would get to which is this concept that came up earlier of faith which is another loaded term in the west but in the dharma has a different connotation what is faith why should we

develop it and how should we develop it yeah it's a great question we were in our own minds conceiving of this conversation something like faith for fidgety skeptics and yeah I appreciate the shout out to a great book title and I have I think I've tried to arrange to get that book for several family members and I don't know how successful they've been implementing my practices but um yeah

means sud means heart and ta means to place or to hold so it's really a holding or placing of the

heart and we just all have to acknowledge you know as Bob Dylan's famous songs says you got to serve somebody it may be the devil or it may be the lower but you got to serve somebody and whether we recognize it or not or a conscious of it or not we are operating from different pre-suppositions and we can't know so different possibilities are that the universe is just totally by chance or the universe is totally determined or the universe is totally taken by

fate or by some kind of divine beings will those are all possible but the state of the world of the Buddha said and this is really the foundation of Buddhist sada or Buddhist faith very very simple is that it is possible to abandon unwholesome mind states that's a direct quote and that it is possible to cultivate wholesome mind states that's itself its own discourse in the Buddhist teaching and that's the foundation and you can believe that or not and we are

operating from that perception like if you're actively cultivating any positive habits or giving up any negative habit you're operating from that underlying pre-supposition that it is possible to give up smoking or drinking or to take on that exercise habit whatever it is that's a Buddhist

“right view that is faith and why it's important to actually make that conscious and we do we do a lot”

of bowing so this is the way that we instantiate that faith every morning first thing we do

as soon as we wake up we bow three times to the Buddha to the Dharma to the Sangha and before we go to bed we bow three more times and before we eat we bow three more times and after we eat we bow three more times so much now we bow a lot we bow a lot it's a good hamstring stretch this is true yeah Buddhist burpees and good exercise and it's meaningful as Western convert Buddhists we're not bowing to some deity because someone else is making us do it

it's because we've examined this this principle of the Buddha as awakening this principle is Dharma is the truth the way things are the Sangha as the principle of love and these all have other meanings in which we might go into but those are things which I want about to every morning and I don't want to operate from some other underlying that mechanism pre thought mechanism that it's not possible this is actually the mechanics behind the depressive mind state is that it's

not possible to abandon unhorsome mind states it's not possible to cultivate mind states so why even try it seems like I'm just trapped in that it's very easy to fall in that if the brains chemistry tweaks in that direction you can really fall into a really dark place very quickly but if you've been actively nurturing this placing the heart in this principle it is possible even though my heart feels very dark it is possible to abandon this darkness for me to go

out and speak with a friend or to exercise a little bit or to meditate for a little bit so that yeah it's nothing super it's not at all mystical thing is just recognizing that we're all placing the heart on something and just being more conscious of how we do that and what we're placing it upon I've done many many long we're long for me ten-day silent meditation

retreats and I do bow to the Buddha at first I was really skeptical about this but you know

15, 16 years ago but now I see it the way you're describing it which is just a physical

“tribute to what I believe and and find uncontroversial which is that through”

you said it before the Buddha the Dharma and the Sangha the Buddha is just an avatar of the potential for training the mind the Dharma is his vast body of teachings for doing that for training the mind and the Sangha is other people who are interested in doing the same thing so bowing to the Buddha in that way it feels good it's just kind of it it's a great embodied reminder of the Norse star for my life it's a fascinating subject here and it's beautiful to know that you appreciate that

practice Dan we don't support blind faith and there's a suit to call the Chankisu to Majima in a kind 95 where a Brahman asks the Buddha how do you protect truth and the Buddha says if you have faith in something you say I have faith in this but you don't get come with the conclusion only this is true everything else is false if you believe in something because of logical reasoning

“you say I believe in this because of logical reasoning but you don't get come to the conclusion”

only this is true everything else is false etc and just this humility but then he says you know

hidden delusion is something we can know for ourselves and until then it's a much jettler faith

it's not this intense binary at the heart or the foundation of the whole thing it's a working hypothesis can we step into this practice and see if it works it's nice to present it to people because it's a very easy on-ramp but as you've noticed like something does happen over time where you keep practicing and you know the Buddha gave us a map you read there's trees there and you look in there's trees there and there's a river there and you look in

there's a river there and after 10 or 15 years you just begin to get the sense this is a really good map and maybe see some things on the map that you can't yet believe like there's these mountains

and you've never seen mountains this is Ajayasara similarly but you know do you immediately

dismiss the fact that there's no mountains or is there some kind of humility there of like this map has been right about so many things maybe that is also true maybe I don't have to dismiss this out of hand and then the final thing I'd say is like we like to translate so that is confidence because it's an easy kind of on-ramp it's a very secular word but there is a union substrate to the human psyche which speaks in the language of embodiment of its story of ritual and that's

where like you see some practitioners only enter on the level of the logical side of dharma and never get to the point where they can bow and it's like thin ice of a roiling waters because that deeper strata of the psyche has not been settled and crystallized and consolidated and these are technologies like it's just a statue but when you speak to embodiment if you speak to it in ritual and mythology in archetype something profound shifts at a

subverable level and that is very distinct and I think that is what is lacking and a lot of secular dharma circles in the US right now is like we need some way of remembering that deeper strata of being that is touched by beauty and that's a growth point how do we touch beauty and these deeper strata without asking of people more than they are interested in giving in terms

“of faith or a leap it's an interesting moment we're at and I think this is really important you”

know a bowing practice can be hugely transformational for someone and you definitely don't have to be Buddhist you know it makes sense that Christian certainly in the Catholic faith there is the genuine flexion in Islamic faith there's the culture prayer in the bowing you know five times a day and certainly in every Buddhist country but it's kind of sad you know come from a a secular family humanist family unitarian family and sometimes it can be confusing if you

don't have as you said this embodied reminder of your your north star or your afraid that you're being manipulated by you know some kind of monastic body you're being influenced by some you know it could be a cult like thing but just having that daily reminder we had a good conversation with Sam Harris recently and we titled it an end of faith colon Buddhism realized and this is kind of a reminder of this sutu where the Buddha asked his foremost disciple in wisdom

name sorry kuta he says oh do you believe this particular teaching and do you have faith in this particular teaching and sorry kuta foremost in wisdom says no I don't have faith I've seen it

“for myself he's realized it for myself and so yeah that's what we're inclining towards is in an”

end of faith and realization of faith in other words like the Buddha does want us to see these things clearly but this act and again you know bowing to your north star and really being clear about that starting your day off with it first thing you wake up you know we sleep all the huts we live in we have a Buddha shrine or something which is a symbol for what we care about most first thing we wake up bow bow bow bow it's a great way to start the day just a good reminder and

wouldn't love it if people could you know just spend two minutes three minutes thinking about what's

most important and is it worth bowing to we're not asking to you know if you don't like Buddhism

or it seems to religious to you about something about something that's more than just your your ego or your basic things that can take over if we're not more conscious about something higher

“yeah I think you make a really strong case Ajahn Koveelo Ajahn is about this has been a”

fantastic conversation before I let you go can you just and this is a funny thing to ask fair monks to do but can you please plug your podcast and also your monastic community so that if people want to spend more time with you virtually or otherwise they can do so yeah our monastery project aspiration is called clear mountain monastery project our

monastery project as well we have a lot of lovely teachings and teachers on we did just

“interview Joseph Goldstein as well and yeah we're in Seattle if people are nearby we hope you”

stop in otherwise we just have a lot of online chances to tap in and practice together so yeah thank you Dan yeah this has been fantastic thank you both really appreciate it yeah thank you Dan we we also asked we ask Sam Harris if we got another person to convert to Buddhism or Dan

“if he would ordain with us temporarily if we got Sam Harris to ordain with us temporarily would you”

ordain with us temporarily Dan oh a million percent saved my head where robes with my homies

Sam Harris yes all right we're lining him up on the roof Dan it's been great to thank you so much for what you do making these teachings accessible to so many who need them right now we should a lot

“right back at you thank fear work your level of commitment surpasses mine”

clearly so I'm impressed and grateful thanks again to Ajahn Kobilo and Ajahn these are both

awesome to talk to them they're really incredible as you've just heard by the way if hearing from them

inspired you to meditate let me just remind you that I've got a new app called 10% with Dan Harris and we've got a free meditation challenge we're running starting on March 23rd and running through the 27th it's called even you can meditate that's the name of the challenge and we're doing it in celebration of a new audible book an audible original that I co-wrote and co-recorded with my great friend seven acelasy that book is also called even you can meditate join the party head on

over to Dan Harris dot com to download the app where you can just get it wherever you get your apps

finally thank you so much to everybody who works so hard to make this show and they really do

work hard our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili are recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at pod people Lauren Smith is our managing producer Marissa Schneider men is our senior producer DJ Kashmir is our executive producer and Nick Thorburn of the band island's wrote rt.