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#110 - Buddhist Psychology Meets Western Therapy with Bill Belanger M.A. · State Of Mind Mental Health Podcast

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this whole idea that selfishness and even rigid individualism makes us happy, I don't see any evidence for that at all.
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And I think the
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Western world would agree now because there's so much research on the importance of relationships and people who use first-person pronouns more in their writing and we're
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prone to anxiety and depression.
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think it's one of the real problems in the West, we just fixate on the sense of self so much, we're so selfish.
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with this narcissistic influencer culture, it's really disturbing, honestly, how far it's gotten.
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Hello everybody, welcome to the State of Mind podcast.
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Tools, stories and truth on being human.
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My name is Mike Stroh and this is a podcast for living with courage, clarity and compassion.
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On today's episode, I am speaking with Bill Belanger.
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Hello, Bill.
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Thank you so much for being here and sharing your expertise with us.
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Can you please tell us a little bit about yourself?
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What brings you to this moment in your life and a little bit about the work that you do?
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Yeah, well, thank you for having me first of all.
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So I was trained as a psychotherapist, but I've also been very involved in Buddhist psychology and meditation for about 20 years.
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So I have a couple different paths professionally.
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A lot is in the corporate world, but more and more moving more into focusing on the integration of Buddhism with Western Psych.
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So yeah, that's basically what brings me here today.
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Great.
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Uh, I, well, one thought I'll just say it out loud that popped into my head is, you familiar with the book thoughts without a thinker?
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Yeah.
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Um, I think, I don't think I finished that book, but, um, not due to lack of interest.
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I think he sort of talked a little bit about that integration.
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Can you, do you still work as a therapist?
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No, I don't.
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So most of the work I've done has been more psycho education in the corporate world.
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Okay.
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And can you tell us a little bit more about how did you get into meditation?
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What, what led you there?
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I'm not exactly sure what led me there, but I've been interested in it for very long time, starting at age 14, probably.
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So started reading Buddhist books, was interested, but really didn't know.
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I didn't really understand what I was reading.
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Honestly, I had a high school English teacher that introduced me to Taoism.
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So that was kind of more of the first piece of understanding that in relational context of somebody kind of embodying some of the ideals of Eastern spirituality.
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And then when I got to college, I formally learned mindfulness.
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eventually traveled to Bhutan.
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Then I went back to Asia, to India, Nepal, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia.
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I did some retreats in Buddhist countries.
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So yeah, it's just been something I've been very fascinated about.
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And I was more into Buddhism first and then psychology after.
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So I think it's reversed for a lot of people.
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So then I eventually got my master's in counseling psychology in a program that focuses on the integration of Western psych with Buddhist psychology.
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And then for me, the most important relationship was with a teacher named Dr.
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Daniel Brown, who was a psychologist at Harvard, but a really prolific Tibetan Buddhist teacher.
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So I studied under him for about 10 years until his passing, which was, I believe, about three years ago.
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And then in the meantime, done all these other retreats, worked with other teachers.
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So yeah, it's something I've just been very interested in.
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And sometimes the language that I use is oftentimes...
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In the West, mindfulness or meditation is used in service of therapy.
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So if somebody goes to therapy, they have a therapeutic goal and then mindfulness is used to help that.
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And that's fine.
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I tend to look at it from the other perspective, which is more Buddhist meditation centric and how can therapy and the Western understanding of the mind compliment that.
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So I think both are legitimate.
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They're just slightly different ways of looking at it.
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Yeah, can you perhaps, can you describe?
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the difference in how perhaps Buddhist psychology understands the mind versus perhaps a more traditional Western psychological clinical psych type of perspective.
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Yeah, so one of the answers I give to that question usually is what one of my teachers, Dan Brown, talked about.
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He argued that from Freud and civilization and its discontents, Freud says that psychoanalysis is used to cure neurotic suffering, but not the ordinary suffering.
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So in that sense, we might go to a therapist because we're anxious, we're depressed, we have trauma, we have relational issues, and therapy can help us to deal with those things
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very effectively.
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but they don't go as deep into more of this existential question of why do we suffer as human beings?
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And Buddhism kind of picks up where therapy leaves off.
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So Buddhism is definitely more universal.
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Their techniques are more about how do you reduce these core processes, I guess I would say, of why we suffer.
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So the different traditions analyze that at different levels of depth, but broadly speaking, it's because our mind is fundamentally reactive.
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So we have this chronic reactivity where always
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moving towards things we like and pushing away things that we dislike or we're dissociating from experience.
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So mindfulness is the antidote to that.
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That's kind of like the early Theravada school of thought.
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And then Mahayana Buddhism, we can unpack that if you want, they go much deeper in analyzing a much higher level of why we suffer.
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But, another, another simple way to think of it is therapy is really good at dealing with mental content.
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So my, my, my personal history, my thoughts and feelings, whereas Buddhism is more, how do we relate to content in general?
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So it's not so much of we're trying to replace maladaptive beliefs or have a happier disposition.
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It's about more of a non-reactivity no matter what is arising.
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So again, I think they complement each other very well, at least in the Western setting.
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Yeah, thank you.
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That's helpful.
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trying to.
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navigate my thoughts of bringing this into a therapeutic dynamic versus.
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everyday life as you describe how so many people say, I can't meditate because I don't stop thinking or I don't have time or I can't clear my mind.
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Can you help describe that misperception perhaps?
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And how would you, how do you help people understand that idea?
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So one of the things is just clarifying the term meditation.
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So meditation is in my way of thinking, it's a very broad term.
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It's almost akin to exercise.
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So if we said, I can't exercise, the first question is, what type of exercise?
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So there's a very big difference between boxing and jogging and swimming and yoga and Olympic powerlifting.
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So there's different types depending on your stage of life, how old you are, what type of body you have.
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So obviously, you know, something really intense might not be good if you're 80 years old.
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Or maybe if you're 20 at that stage, it is.
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So there's so many different types of meditation that I think it's unfortunate that honestly, mindfulness is the most popular.
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think it's one of my least favorite styles of meditation.
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So I do think when we set up meditation is it's a struggle and I have to sit down and do something I don't want to do and I'm fighting against my mind.
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I'm not really a big fan of that style.
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Actually, I really like compassion.
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Meditations is an entry point to meditation.
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I think that people can get into it much quicker.
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It's almost more intuitive.
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I think it's more helpful for people that actually have relationships and we're living in the world.
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We're not in the monastic setting.
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So that's the starting point is again, what type of meditation and then encouraging people to experiment because there's a lot of different styles and mindfulness just might not be
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a good fit for you.
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Yeah, lovely.
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I absolutely love the mindful self-compassion stuff that Christian Neff and Germer are sort of acknowledged for in the Western context.
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I really do love that stuff a lot.
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And I really like how you mentioned that tends to be maybe a more direct route into what we're actually trying to learn here or one aspect of that.
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Maybe can you then describe
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some of these different, I know there's many approaches, maybe first, can you talk about how, are you familiar with the term mcmindfulness?
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Yes.
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Okay.
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Maybe how, how the pop, I can never say this word, the pop pure popularization of mindfulness in the West, particularly over the last 20 years, even more so the
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commercialization of it all.
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how that may.
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maybe confuse people or not provide a depth of understanding about what the whole endeavor actually is.
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Yes, I have very mixed feelings about mik mindfulness in general.
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I probably a little bit more critical of it.
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I'm probably more on that end of the spectrum.
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That being said, I think there's a lot of people that got into mindfulness that would have never been interested in traditional Buddhism.
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So I think there's a place for it.
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That being said, my understanding is a lot of mindfulness in the West is mostly coming from a very limited traditions coming from the Burmese tradition of Burmese mindfulness
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and the Theravada school of Buddhism.
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So it's kind of like one very, very small piece.
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of one particular tradition for some reason has become enormously popular.
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So again, using the exercise analogy, it's as if we have, you know, 330 or whatever the population is, the US million people, and there's all this desire to exercise.
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But if we said walking is the only type of exercise, walking is not bad.
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Walking is fantastic.
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But we're leaving so many other things off the table that would be very beneficial.
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So I think there's a few problems.
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think partly is just the different practices that I think admittedly sometimes have more cultural baggage, but are very helpful, could be of more benefit.
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But the other maybe deeper, more difficult to talk about piece is the framing of it.
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So in Buddhist philosophy, meditation is never just done on its own.
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It's usually done with what they would say is ethical training, which basically just means living a good life because the therapy language we would use is
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our behaviors and the meditation is bi-directional change.
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So if you meditate, but you're getting drunk every weekend and you're in a bad relationship and you work at a toxic job, you're not going to get that far.
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And then also in the Buddhist tradition, not just living the right lifestyle, this philosophical study, which it kind of contextualizes while you're practicing and it gives
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you a different view on such changing your thinking patterns.
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So it's basically like mindfulness is stripped out of all of that.
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And it's kind of plopped into this Western setting.
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So I think people just don't get enough out of it.
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And then I also think it doesn't really solve the Western problem of narcissism.
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And I don't just mean clinical narcissism, which is its own animal, but it just, we view everything through this lens of being an individual.
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And this is my meditation practice and I have my app and I am optimizing my routine, et cetera.
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That's just not how the Buddhist world traditionally thought of it.
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It was much more communal, much more relational.
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And again, that part just got lost.
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So in some sense, I think it's really good with the McMindfulness that it got, that got meditation in the door and got people interested.
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I'm somewhat optimistic that there's a little bit of a shift happening where people are kind of getting sick of that approach and looking for more.
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So I kind of think our generation of practitioners are responsible for what's this next step in kind of getting these other practices to people in a way that's accessible and a
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way that actually works instead of just.
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doing it the same exact cultural way they did in Tibet a thousand years ago, which I think is just difficult for people.
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Beautiful.
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Okay.
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trying.
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I have so many things I want to ask you because I love all this stuff so much.
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I'm going to, I was going to stick to pull on the sort of ethical thread.
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So maybe you can help me understand some of this a little better.
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I got into mindfulness slash meditation through MBSR, the John Kabat-Zinn stuff, uh, in my addiction recovery journey.
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So I started with AA and are you familiar with AA the 12 step stuff?
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Yeah.
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Okay, so the, I mean, the the main, well, there's many, but I would say one of the main most helpful things of the 12 steps is teaching people how to live an ethical life, which
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I think is sounds to me in some sense, that's what you were saying has been has been stripped out of a lot of the mc mindfulness stuff.
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And
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I started learning the, the MBSR stuff.
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Then I did some other really sort of operationalized meditation programs here.
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did a lot of the m mindful self-compassion stuff.
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I had a lovely teacher, guess a few teachers.
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So I was sort of learning both in conjunction and in a lot of these programs, the
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I guess it's the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path.
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Those things are not taught in any of these programs.
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And even, know some organizations that teach MBSR that have even taken out the seven attitudes of mindfulness from the teachings that Jon Kabat-Zinn presented.
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Anyhow, so that's maybe another thing, but.
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I don't really know what I guess I'm trying to say is like I that's how I came to understand trying to live an ethical life and alongside my mindfulness practice.
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So I guess how, how, how might we, and I don't even know how to do this myself to be quite honest, as I sometimes I'll teach a little bit of mindfulness to my clients or in a group
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setting, but how did the, how do you see that's a long winded, mind dump.
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How do you see the development or the integration or, or as you said, our generation of practitioners bringing this into the fold?
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You mean in terms of the ethical piece?
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You know, I think that Westerners often have an aversion to something that is too prescriptive and that it's too rigid.
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And I'm like that too.
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So I don't suggest that.
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Just in terms of even as a clinician for people working with clients, I think part of it is just you can use the basic language of mindfulness, but just bringing it to different
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behaviors.
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So it was interesting.
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I did this retreat once.
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where we're in retreat and you're cultivating all these states of calm and openness.
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And the retreat leader had us do what he called Dharma trash talking.
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So the goal is you have, doing compassion meditation all day and then he paired us up and we have to do trash talking about somebody, but you're just really noticing how it feels.
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And what ends up happening is you start to notice the states of mind we're cultivating are not really compatible with that type of language.
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just, they don't mesh well.
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So it's either your state of mind is gonna shift into something more negative, or you just kind of find it hard to engage in the trash-dropping doesn't go anywhere.
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So the point was, when you're bringing awareness to these little activities, that you just start to intuitively notice, it doesn't feel as good as I thought it did.
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So something like gossiping in the list of the 10 harmful actions, that's one of them.
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So it's not like the 10 commandments, like if you gossip, you go to hell or anything like that, it's just...
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When you gossip, it tends to reinforce feelings of duality.
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So I'm different than this other person.
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And from a Buddhist understanding, that sense of being this reified, separate sense of self is really at the core of our suffering.
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It also makes us feel negative.
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And then when we see that person that we're gossiping about later, we might feel a little bit guilty.
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So it's all just kind of noticing, hey, this actually doesn't feel as good as I thought it did.
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So the same goes for, you know, lying or stealing or killing.
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from the Buddhist way of looking at things, they're not talking about them as absolutes, it's just they're very disturbing to the state of mind.
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So something like killing somebody is extremely disturbing to your state of mind.
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Even if you're just looking at it from a totally selfish perspective, it's just not really in your best interest to act like that.
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So even with substance use that you mentioned, the same thing, where somebody drinks and I go, can handle it, it's going well.
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If you invite a lot of mindfulness to how they feel the next day,
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We usually just don't want to deal with that but it's like hey actually if I look at the entire trajectory from the drinking the night before How well I slept the next morning
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without trying to be self-aggressive It's actually the ROI of this is not as good as I thought Like I might maybe I felt good for a couple hours, but I felt really grumpy for
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eight or ten hours It just starts to naturally shift things So I think I think partly just in the way of teaching meditation that again, these are these are interdependent or
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they're bi-directional
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our life choices in meditation.
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They're not really meant to be in a vacuum.
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They both impact each other.
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Okay, and do you see maybe this is more of a east-west question.
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How do the ethics of the 12 steps, if you're familiar with them, how are they similar to the Buddhist ethics and how do they differ?
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I don't know the 12 steps off the top of my head.
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you remind me of them?
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I've been to AA meetings with family members and I just, memorize them or anything.
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Yeah, of course.
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Of course.
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So, so the, I'll just read, I think the simplest way is, so there's steps and traditions, the steps they say are to prevent suicide and the traditions are to prevent homicide and
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sort of, you know, a joke of like, how do you live with yourself and then how do you live with other people?
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The principles of the steps are, I think I can get them all.
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not, that's okay.
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Um, honesty, hope, faith, courage.
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integrity, humility, responsibility, love, service.
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Those are that's I think that was 10 or so.
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Yeah, that's the gist of it.
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Yeah.
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Well, I mean, just what strikes me is some similarities and differences.
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So those sound more like positive character traits, maybe, or dispositions.
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Whereas in the list I referenced of the tech, these are the ones are concrete actions.
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So stealing, lying, sexual misconduct, killing, gossiping, this type of thing.
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That being said, I think it seems like it's still gearing you to how do I make a decision in the world?
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So that one of being truthful, it's kind of the same thing of just test it.
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If you lie to somebody, it doesn't feel as good as you think it does.
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And I think when people start to get sober and they start to make these decisions, I think in the best case, it becomes reinforcing because it feels good.
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And if you have to do something that makes you feel bad all the time, it's hard to stick with it.
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So I mean, that's the reason when people have a good exercise habit, it feels good.
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You enjoy it.
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That tends to be more sustainable.
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So yeah, it sounds like there's some similarities.
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But again, I mean, I guess the AA model actually, now that you bring it up, embodies a lot of the things I'm advocating for in Western Buddhism.
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It's the relational piece actually, I think is huge.
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And some of the people I know that have had success with AA, think that's half of the benefit is they had friends they were getting high with and drinking with, then that was
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their whole social circle.
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And then they go to this other circle where people are trying to be positive and make some improvements.
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So you're not just doing it alone, you're doing it with a group of people, there's something that's guiding you.
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So yeah, I think there's a lot of wisdom in that program.
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Yeah, there definitely is.
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There's so much to that community aspect.
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How might, maybe I can ask you this, for clients, one of the things I often.
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I guess feel limited in is for people that perhaps a 12 step program maybe isn't required or something like that, or maybe it's not so bad, or maybe they don't suffer with
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substances, although they are quite alone or and they don't have much of a social support system.
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I do often encourage people go to a Buddhist temple or find a meditation group or, or
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try an AA meaning, don't know, I guess, do have any insight on how people can develop a sense of community that does have tradition behind it and sort of a framework of how they
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can live their lives in a way that's more helpful?
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Mm-hmm.
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This is a rabbit hole for me.
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So I don't know how far we can go down it.
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We can try.
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It's something I've really been interested in for very long time.
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My way of thinking is that the way that the Asian forms of Buddhism have brought, come into the West, there's a misalignment with this community piece.
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And I'm not really entirely sure how to solve it, but it's something that I'm working on as side project I'm playing with.
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So I've been part of a few different Buddhist communities.
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I think if, just to name, if somebody can find one that they're interested in, I think that's fantastic.
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Again, I would encourage people to experiment.
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There's a lot of different communities.
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There's no problem if you go check them out a couple times and try different ones.
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And I would trust your gut.
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If something tells you this feels really good and this is something positive, that's fantastic.
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And you should go with that.
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Where I think there's a bit of a problem in the West is the way that a lot of Buddhist imitation centers are set up.
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They tend to be oriented around a single tradition or a single teacher.
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And I've come to see that's very problematic for a few reasons.
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One is that these different centers are very isolated from each other.
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Economically, the centers are struggling.
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A lot of them, it becomes kind of a very rigid traditionalism in some of the centers, which I don't think works well for Westerners.
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There's teacher misconduct issues that have happened because if you have one person at the head of a center, it can become problematic.
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So I think that's something that is yet to be figured out, honestly, is the vision that I have is more of how do you have more meditation centers that are cross pollinating
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different traditions and there's no one teacher and it's a little bit more accessible for Westerners.
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It's something I'm very interested in.
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And yeah, frankly, I just don't think there's enough of that yet.
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Yes, I definitely agree.
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I do think the AA model is one that works really.
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mean, is AA is an absolute, for lack of a better word, miracle that it exists.
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It functions.
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There is no real hierarchy.
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The groups, the leadership of the groups sort of circulates.
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which I think addresses a lot of those things you were just mentioning.
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Although there is a single purpose for the group and that's partly what keeps it together.
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Mm-hmm.
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Yeah, do you find, maybe can you talk a little bit about MBSR?
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So mindfulness based stress reduction.
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often there's a lovely teacher and I live in Toronto in Canada and you can get MBSR covered by the government covered by our healthcare system.
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So I often encourage people to go there and do that program so they at least get a sense of that community experience of being in a room with it.
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I don't really know what the question is.
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It's something like, how do you see MBSR fitting into this whole structure and what...
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how does it align with the bridging that gap between East and West or if it does?
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Yeah, and I'm a little rusty.
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I've done MBSR, I don't even remember when it was, years ago, I did one of their programs.
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So I think they're a great example, obviously, of a very successful model.
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And I think it's kind of what I mentioned earlier, you're using mindfulness in service of a non-Buddhist vision, basically.
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So it could be pain reduction.
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I know a lot of people that have done that.
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Stress reduction, the way that...
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they would frame it, I guess, as more the same thing.
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Your life is maybe decently okay, but you have this chronic pain or stress or something.
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And then you go do those programs and it kind of takes that, um the volume down on those things, you can function a little bit better.
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So yeah, again, I think it's really positive.
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And I'm definitely of the view, there's the more the merrier.
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I think there should be a lot of different approaches and people should figure out what they resonate with.
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yeah, I think it's,
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the way I would look at it, think it's really positive.
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I'm a fan of it.
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It just doesn't go that deep in my experience.
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But some people, not that deep is always better.
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It isn't.
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Sometimes that's fantastic for what people need.
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And when you say deeper, that, do you mean what you were sort of mentioning before about the perhaps more cultural, civilizational community stuff and the ethics or what do you
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mean by that?
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I mean, more from the Buddhist perspective, and maybe we can, if you want, we can dive into this a little bit of their diagnosis of why do we suffer, essentially.
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So I'm actually in the process of writing a book.
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So this is, testing my framework with you and tell me if it makes sense or not.
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What I'm arguing in the book is that that fundamental question of why do we suffer, the Buddhist tradition has three answers to that question and they build on each other and
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they go progressively deeper.
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So it's, it's similar to something like
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physics and it remains true even when quantum physics emerges it doesn't negate physics but it just this subtlety it keeps going down different levels of depth.
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So on that baseline level the answer of why we suffer is chronic what I translate is chronic reactivity, dukkha.
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So it's usually this idea that it's sometimes translated that life is suffering or life has this quality of dissatisfaction.
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The way my teacher translated it was more it's more talking about the reactivity of the mind.
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that we're hardwired to be reactive.
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But because things are, oh, everything isn't permanent, including ourselves, we get in this existential conundrum where everything is constantly changing, we're constantly
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changing, but we're trying to grasp onto things to find lasting happiness, and it just doesn't work.
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So at that level of analysis, you learn to be present with everything.
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And good or bad, pain, stressed or not stressed, and basically have this non-reactivity of mind.
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where there's ultimately no preference whatever is arising.
26:17
And so that's kind of like that entryway in that first level of reducing suffering.
26:21
So broadly speaking, we could say that's the early Buddhism Theravadan tradition.
26:26
They go much deeper than that, but that's kind of the...
26:29
Sorry, go ahead.
26:30
No, yeah, sorry.
26:31
I didn't want to interrupt you.
26:32
But because a lot of people or I can just hear maybe my past self or just people who would say something like, can you hear me?
26:42
Okay.
26:43
Okay, cool.
26:44
You know, well, if I don't have a preference to anything right or wrong, then how do I take actions?
26:50
How do I choose what I want to do?
26:53
Won't that just make me lazy type of thing?
26:55
And
26:56
Sorry, one last thing I would say is I just heard this from Joseph Goldstein, who I think is more of a vipassana, whatever, teacher.
27:03
Duca or life is suffering can be described as the inevitability of unwanted experience, which is, yeah, like I really liked that one too.
27:14
Anyhow, so yeah, how do you kind of help people navigate that idea that being aware, having that non-judgmental,
27:23
viewpoint doesn't mean non action type of idea.
27:28
Yeah, so I mean, I like that Goldstein quote a lot.
27:31
It's more about the internal states that you have.
27:33
It's not that you just sit on a couch and don't do anything.
27:36
I guess you could if you wanted to.
27:40
And maybe at some really extreme level, it doesn't really matter from some very deep level if you're a monk.
27:47
But that's not really what the tradition is saying.
27:49
It's more it's just about how we process our experience.
27:52
So if we have this fantasy that something in the external world, in a world of
27:57
something that is things that are always changing is going to lead to lasting contentment.
28:01
It's just not rooted in rationality or reality.
28:04
So it's more what they're pointing to that, you know, we clean, I'm going to get a new house and I'm going to finally be happy.
28:10
might not even consciously realize that's how we're thinking, but we're constantly chasing something or the next dopamine hit.
28:17
And it's more of an invitation to notice that.
28:19
And to be honest, is that, is there any evidence that that is working?
28:23
Is there any evidence that's even rational?
28:26
The Buddhist analysis would say no, it's it's irrational.
28:28
So it's can't really lead anywhere good So then the that that's kind of like the foundational level the second level is more of Mahayana Buddhism And it's this
28:37
introduction of this idea emptiness, which is a difficult term to translate in the West But Nagarjuna and other philosophers came along and said, okay, that's fine with that this
28:47
baseline of understanding, but we're still Assuming you're an individual self separate from the rest of the world
28:54
Is that really the case?
28:55
And with their analysis, they realized that it's actually the way we experience things is not really the way that things are.
29:02
This sense of being in Buddhist language, independently self-existent self is mistaken.
29:07
It's like an apparition or a mirage.
29:10
It's not really the way that things are.
29:12
So there's a whole different set of practices for opening that up and it's much more nuanced.
29:16
And the way that I'm writing about it in the book is I use this metaphor of the sensory bubble.
29:22
which is a term that's used by some biologists of how every animal experiences reality.
29:27
So basically a dog, for example, can smell all types of things that we can't smell.
29:33
At every speech, all these different animals have these sensory capacities that we don't have.
29:37
So when we walk around and we look at the external world, we think it's just this world that's totally separate from us.
29:43
But we know that's not really the case.
29:44
It's more of a construction that we're making on an extremely limited amount of limited sensory data.
29:50
So it's almost like our minds create this 3D construction.
29:54
We mistake the constructions as real, and then we cling to it and we get unhappy.
29:59
So this level of analysis, emptiness, again, it gets misinterpreted.
30:03
It's more pointing to that the mind is making these representations of an external world, of our sense of self, of even time, that they're not really real in the way that we think
30:13
they are.
30:13
It's more that they're mental constructions.
30:16
So you start to see through that.
30:18
And in the Mahayana view, opens up
30:20
this feeling of interconnection because then we realize actually there's really these boundaries we make between self and other are constructed in the mind.
30:27
They're they're not, they're dependent on the mind.
30:29
Without the mind, there's really nothing there.
30:31
So it opens up compassion as this gateway where we see that we're deeply interconnected and we have compassion and empathy for everybody.
30:38
And again, we see through the sense of self.
30:40
It's, it's a mental construct, which again is, is, I think is very compatible with a lot of Western theory where we might.
30:47
help somebody make a more healthy sense of self.
30:50
So we realize that they have maladaptive beliefs about themselves or trauma and they might think they're a horrible person.
30:56
we implicitly, we understand that these are just constructions.
30:59
They're not totally real.
31:01
There's something that we're making up in a sense.
31:04
So in therapy, we're trying to get it to be on the other end of the spectrum, which is healthier.
31:07
You can function better.
31:08
Again, Buddhism just goes a little bit further and says, well, let's just look at that construction and see it as insubstantial.
31:16
So again, we're not getting rid of it.
31:17
We're not trying to, I don't even like the idea of like ego death or getting rid of the ego.
31:22
It's just, you're seeing that it's not as solid as you think it is.
31:26
So I'll pause there before the third solution.
31:30
This is a man I love.
31:32
I love what you're talking about and I am a prime target market for your book here.
31:39
um
31:41
As I'm hearing you talk that to me, I'm not a Buddhist scholar.
31:46
I listen and I've read a lot around it.
31:48
And I've obviously trained in a lot of these things from the Western angle, through the Buddhist teachings, this idea of, uh, no cell for, is that what you would call non-dual
31:59
awareness?
32:00
That idea.
32:01
Yeah, and the different traditions have different flavors of it.
32:04
The Theravadan has this idea of no self.
32:07
The way that I was taught in the Mahayana, they say more emptiness of self.
32:10
They're slightly different.
32:11
But yet it does this kind of...
32:13
In my book, the way I'm talking about the third solution is a little bit more emphasized emphasis on no dual, but Mahayana is fundamentally non-dualistic.
32:21
So it's exactly right.
32:22
So using that sensory bubble analogy, right?
32:25
The non-dualism is that if I'm looking at my mug here,
32:31
You know, normally mistake that it's totally different from me.
32:34
It has nothing to do with me.
32:36
But using that idea that it's actually something that's constructed within my field of awareness.
32:41
And if a dog or a bat or an elephant or an insect viewed this, they're not seeing what I'm seeing at all.
32:48
So we're not even talking about the reality of the mug outside of my consciousness.
32:52
That's a different thing.
32:53
We're talking about whatever it is that I'm is mediated through my limited senses.
33:00
And my awareness.
33:02
And so the other thing they would say, it's, kind of like the classic, idea of if a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody there to hear it, does it make any noise?
33:09
So it's the same thing of does the mug exist as the way that I'm experiencing it without my awareness, right?
33:15
Of course not.
33:16
There's what I'm experiencing is awareness and this construction and this limit limited sensory data.
33:22
So again, you can't really define the boundaries between what I'm experiencing and my awareness and the way that we think we can.
33:28
Yeah, yeah.
33:30
these are difficult things to talk about.
33:31
I different meditations get into it a little bit easier.
33:35
But yeah, I mean, that's kind of the way that I would describe it.
33:38
Yeah, no, it is difficult to talk about.
33:40
And I have to ask you, if a tree does fall in the forest, does it make a noise?
33:47
I don't know if there's supposed to be an answer to that.
33:50
I think that's the point of the tradition.
33:52
um So in Zen, I did Zen for a while.
33:55
you answer yes, you're wrong.
33:57
If you answer no, you're wrong.
33:58
Took a question like that.
34:00
So there's no winning.
34:02
Nice.
34:03
have you heard that story?
34:05
I think I heard this in a Dharma talk or somewhere at a conference or something of two monks meeting from different traditions and one of them put up in orange and said, what is
34:14
this?
34:15
Do you know that story?
34:16
I know exactly who the teachers are too.
34:18
you can you perhaps tell it for us oh in a more accurate way?
34:23
Or if you remember whatever?
34:25
it was Zen Master, I think his name is Soo-Gon San.
34:27
He's a Korean Zen Master and he did it too.
34:30
believe Kalu Rinpoche is a Tibetan master, but they're different styles.
34:34
the Zen style is they're trying to lock you into using your thinking mind to your affirming or negating something.
34:40
And they're trying to basically show the absurdity of that.
34:44
And that doesn't really make sense until you're kind of left puzzled.
34:47
And then they're opening you into what they call the don't know mind where you just like, don't know.
34:52
I don't know how to answer that.
34:53
And that is kind of their, I guess, metaphor entryway into having some awakening or non-dual experience.
35:00
Because as soon as the intellect is trying to say yes or no, or categorize things, we're in this dualistic mind.
35:05
So the Zen teachers can be very provocative, where they're basically just messing with you until your psyche starts falling apart.
35:13
And then that's the way to invite you into having that experience.
35:16
The Tibetans are very different.
35:18
So I think it was a very, the way I heard it was an awkward interaction and was not very fruitful for either of them.
35:25
But it you the difference.
35:26
The traditions are very different.
35:28
They have different ways of doing this.
35:30
Right.
35:31
And wasn't the punchline something like, doesn't this guy know that's just an orange?
35:36
Right?
35:36
That's what today.
35:37
the Tibetans would say there's the two truths doctrine that there's relative reality and there's ultimate reality.
35:48
So it's an elegant way of dealing with things like that, where on relative level, of course, an orange appears or my mug appears.
35:55
And we're not trying to say that's all unreal or we're getting rid of it.
36:00
It's more that, of course, we all have to live together in relative reality and the constructions we make are useful.
36:05
I mean, we can't get through the day or raise children or work at a job if we don't have that.
36:12
But it's more, it's also true on the ultimate level, they're not solid in the way that we think they are.
36:18
So on the ultimate level, we might say that you and I are fundamentally not different and there is no hard boundary we can find, actually, if we really investigate it.
36:28
But in the relative level, you shouldn't give me your bank information.
36:31
You still have normal boundaries.
36:34
Like that doesn't negate that.
36:35
So I think they do a good job of that.
36:38
Nice, nice.
36:39
heard, what's his name?
36:41
Jack Kornfield say.
36:44
We need to remember our Buddha nature and our social security number.
36:48
And I think, yeah, I think that speaks to what you're saying.
36:51
Yeah, right.
36:53
Okay, I think I derailed this from you had given, yes, yes, yes, yes.
37:00
is a really non-dual piece, so that's from traditions, broadly speaking Vajrayana Buddhism, but in particular, traditions called Mahamudra and Dzogchen, which are
37:10
considered the more advanced, ironically the most advanced of all Tibetan practices, but the most simple.
37:16
So they're advanced because they're so simple, our minds just can't handle it.
37:20
We like to have things complicated in stages.
37:23
But from that tradition, it's the simplest, it's that the reason we suffer is we don't recognize what they would call our true nature or the nature of mind.
37:30
And so the distinction from a dualistic perspective is we get caught up in mental content.
37:36
So, you know, thoughts, emotions, perceptions, we get caught up in what I call mental structures.
37:41
So our sense of self, the sense of the external world, the sense of linear time.
37:47
And we, but we miss awareness that permeates all of it that is basically beyond any of it.
37:52
And that's our true nature, or the nature of mind that they call.
37:55
So that's the most simple, elegant way of teaching it, is if we recognize that, which is a shift into this non-dual awareness that is basically beyond any of those things, but it's
38:05
not different, it contains all of them.
38:07
Basically, that's kind of the most direct and nuanced path to reducing suffering.
38:13
Because from that perspective, there's no...
38:15
We're not really clinging to anything.
38:17
There's no individual self that is suffering that lives and dies.
38:20
It's just basically all arising within this large field of awareness.
38:24
So again, I'm doing it very, you know, in a very simple way, but it represents these different traditions and the way that they look at it, but they don't negate each other.
38:32
so, you know, you, she still developed that non-reactivity.
38:35
You still have an ethical life.
38:36
You still do compassion and practice.
38:38
It's just, but it's kind of like the deeper that you look, it just gets, yeah, more nuanced, more subtle.
38:44
No, that's music to my ears.
38:47
I never came across Soak Chen until I started following Sam Harris's Waking Up app.
38:54
Are you familiar with his?
38:56
Yeah, it's a wonderful app.
38:59
This idea of no self, think I try to maybe you can give me a little teaching here or clarification.
39:07
think I
39:08
To me, I love also the, the point, the no head stuff.
39:13
Yeah.
39:14
Like that, just that notion of like, there's nothing here, but there's everything out there.
39:18
can I stop rambling here?
39:19
So the, the, sense of self from an experiential perspective is just another, I experienced it as just like an energy in my head.
39:31
It's like, I think that's me.
39:33
but I'm aware that's just a rising sensation or whatever.
39:37
And then I can sort of let it go or watch it evaporate or whatever.
39:41
Does that seem aligned with the teachings and does that make sense?
39:46
Yeah, so the way that I learned it, and I also just want to name, there's a million approaches and I'm not a scholar either.
39:53
I'm just based on my experience.
39:56
The way I learned it is within emptiness meditation, it's almost like an investigation.
40:01
So it's kind of like if you get an injury, you're playing a sport and you, something feels wrong, you pulled something, you go to the doctor.
40:08
You might just say, my leg hurts.
40:09
And the doctor will say, where does it hurt?
40:12
So you bring your awareness.
40:13
It's not intellectual.
40:14
You're bringing.
40:15
Awareness into the leg and then you're trying to be aware and say actually It's it's in the knee on my right side and then he might ask you feel anything in your ankle No,
40:25
actually, I I felt this pain radiating he's gonna ask is it is it intense?
40:30
Is it does it feel like a stabbing pain?
40:32
Is it dull?
40:33
So you're in that process that most of us have had something like that you drop the thinking mind and you're just investigating your experience so
40:43
You're basically using a similar thing when you do this emptiness of self meditation that I take my sense of self as Bill as being solid, but on the meditation cushion, you
40:53
basically, you can do it with your eyes closed or halfway open and you just try to find where is that sense of self.
40:59
And anytime you look, just look closer.
41:02
So then it's like, it seems in my sense in the head.
41:05
But if you really look with awareness, not with your mind, there's nothing solid to find.
41:10
Yeah.
41:10
It's there's just energy and movement and you keep doing that until All that there's there's a rut.
41:16
Maybe there's arising thoughts.
41:17
Can you find a fixed sense of self in any thought?
41:20
So you're not pushing away thoughts.
41:21
You're welcoming them and looking at them.
41:23
But well, no, there's no evidence of a Separate sense of self.
41:26
There's just thoughts changing.
41:28
There's perceptions changing.
41:29
There's energy.
41:30
There's emotion It's it's all we all we find is awareness and movement basically so then
41:38
It's the process is you're not trying to get some traditions do talk about getting rid of the sense of self I don't like that approach.
41:45
I don't think it's very healthy the way that I'm talking about it in the book is it's a dereification so Reification means we reify we make something solid with it's like if my
41:55
son who's two or three went to see a rainbow He might think he can grab it that it's it's but we know that's not really the way that it is it appears to It appears to us, but it's
42:04
not substantial
42:05
So that the Buddhist would say it's the same with a sense of self.
42:08
It appears solid.
42:09
If you really look at it, it's just this constant movement.
42:12
There's no, I can't find that sense of being Bill in my first person experience if I investigate closely.
42:19
Yeah, I love that.
42:20
And one another way you hear it put is turn attention upon itself, right?
42:25
Or look for who's looking that kind of thing that sounds those are the that's some of the language I've heard.
42:32
And as you also mentioned earlier, it is hard to articulate a lot of this stuff, right, which is why we practice and why we need to engage in these things, right, with teachers
42:42
and community.
42:44
Okay, so that's number three.
42:47
So we stick to your book thing here.
42:50
Yeah, so I mean that that kind of sums up the third solution.
42:54
So again, in traditional Buddhist settings, ideally you're doing different types of practices too.
43:01
So even these people that are these Dzogchen masters, they're doing all these other, usually are doing all these other sets of practices too.
43:09
So some maybe new age traditions kind of neglect that and people might have was, let's say, give them the benefit of the doubt, these legitimate spiritual experiences, but they
43:18
can sometimes veer off.
43:20
into, I don't know what we would say, maybe mania or they're trying to hold on to that realization.
43:27
But again, we all have to live in the world and you still have to wake up and brush your teeth and do your taxes and all the rest of it.
43:34
um So again, what I advocate for in the book is more of a blending of practices for people.
43:40
So for me, I'm someone that has had problems of being very disembodied.
43:45
in my meditation, especially when I started and I like being in my head and intellectual.
43:49
So I almost have to force myself to do some yoga, a little bit of yoga.
43:53
I know I don't do it every day.
43:54
I try to do a little bit to kind of get into the body.
43:58
I think the compassion practices are really good for the emotional life.
44:02
And so I think that balances out.
44:04
And then also the more pure awareness practices.
44:07
So for me, that is what I'm currently doing.
44:10
And I think people have different, you know,
44:13
dispositions and stages of life, but I do think that the Buddhist tradition is generally good at emphasizing balance rather than I'm just going to be in this far outmanic state
44:23
and cut off myself from everything else that's happened.
44:28
Okay, thank you.
44:28
are there more?
44:30
So if we stick to the book there, where does it go from there?
44:35
Or is that the sort of, yeah, yeah.
44:38
So that's the first part of the book is theory, which is more heady.
44:43
And I'm basically inspired by the Mahamudra system because that's what I studied.
44:49
So I break down in the book different chapters on investigating our sense of self is separate, the sense of the external world is being separate.
44:59
So the sensory bubble is the analogy I use for that.
45:01
And then even our sense of time is being separate from us.
45:05
Then the second third of the book is six different styles of meditation.
45:10
So uh if you want, we can dive into that.
45:12
And then the third is more about integration.
45:15
So the way, and this was interesting writing, like I'm about 200 pages in, I have a lot of it done, but it's been interesting too, because I've had to make all these choices of how
45:26
to categorize all these things.
45:27
And it's been a real learning experience for me of all these things I thought I knew I have no clue about or other things I.
45:34
do know fairly well, it's been like very sobering to kind of test my knowledge on some of these things.
45:40
So the way that I'm categorizing it is one-sides concentration, meditation, which is different than mindfulness and is more emphasized in traditional Buddhism.
45:50
So that's more, you're focusing intently on one object and you're actually are trying to tune out everything else.
45:56
And there's just some different systems for it, but you're training attention.
46:00
so that you can place the mind on something for long periods of time.
46:04
So I was diagnosed with ADD as a teenager, so this type of style is needed for me and I'm still very ADD.
46:11
And in this tradition, you wouldn't say that concentration makes you enlightened or anything.
46:16
It's more of just like really good mental hygiene and the terms they use making the mind pliable.
46:22
That if you can concentrate well, then you can do lots of things.
46:26
If you have no capacity,
46:28
For concentrations, it's hard to do any of the other meditations.
46:32
So I think it's the setting that we have now with the short form content and TikTok and YouTube shorts, it just destroys our attention, mine included.
46:42
And it's a struggle of how to cut.
46:44
think half of the practice is cutting a lot of that out.
46:47
So the next style, I'm trying to remember the order I did.
46:50
I think the next style is compassion.
46:53
So I go through...
46:54
four different types of compassion practice.
46:56
And then you might be interested, I'm drawing on some work of integrating attachment theory with compassion meditation.
47:03
So there's some visualization based approaches.
47:06
The other style is emptiness meditation that we touched on.
47:11
The other one is what I call mentor bonding.
47:14
So it's basically visualization using imagery.
47:18
So in Tibetan school, it's more tantric.
47:20
You're literally imagining yourself as a Buddha.
47:23
So you start to become like that.
47:24
So I'm trying to talk about that more of a Western way.
47:27
And then I think that was five.
47:29
And then the final one is just more of these pure awareness practices, similar to Dzogchen and Mahamudra.
47:35
I'm not teaching that.
47:36
I'm not in that stratosphere of teachers.
47:38
I'm just more kind of trying to have the essence of how those schools approach meditation.
47:43
Right on.
47:43
Okay, where does the the body scan meditation stuff fit into all this?
47:50
Yeah, I guess it depends.
47:52
In traditional mindfulness, you might say it's the mindfulness of body in Theravadan.
47:56
I don't even really get into that practice as much.
47:58
ah I guess my thinking is that the mindfulness stuff is so, there's so much of it out there.
48:04
There's no shortage.
48:05
And a lot of readers might be familiar with that.
48:07
But I think sometimes some of the traditional body scans are a little bit more adapted into Western audiences.
48:13
But I guess you would say mindfulness of body.
48:15
Got it.
48:16
em Okay.
48:19
Maybe the clock dwindles.
48:23
If you're open to continuing this another time, that would be amazing.
48:26
um Okay, cool.
48:30
Okay.
48:31
I guess it's a little bit of a segue as they say into Western therapy jargon.
48:37
So there's
48:40
there's act there's IFS there's, mean, I guess those are the, there's dbt.
48:46
All of these things in my understanding.
48:49
And when I read the manuals and see the practices or whatever are really just regurgitations of Buddhism in a sense.
48:59
I guess I'm curious if you agree one, obviously there's nuances and stuff and
49:04
I don't know if it's my own insecurity or, or ignorance or something.
49:10
I find it annoying that these Western, the Western therapy stuff is so
49:22
committed to never mentioning the connection to Buddhism.
49:28
Yeah, and I just, don't understand why they do that.
49:32
Hmm.
49:32
Yeah, it's interesting.
49:33
I'm not yeah, I mean, I guess I would I would guess because they don't want people to feel excluded, you know, if you have a Christian come into your office and you're saying hey,
49:44
we're gonna do this Buddhist practice.
49:46
It might turn people off.
49:48
I agree with you though.
49:48
I mean, I think that it's interesting because like so DBT that I know the least about but I think
49:55
Wasn't it, there was a Zen practitioner that started DBT, right?
49:57
So they had a Zen background.
49:59
Was it?
50:00
Okay.
50:02
And then ACT is super mindfulness based.
50:05
um IFS is one that I'm really interested in.
50:09
I actually think parts work is, I'm actually writing a whole chapter about parts work in the book.
50:13
Cause I am such a fan of it.
50:15
And I think it meshes really well with the Buddhist stuff.
50:17
Yeah.
50:19
I mean, I think part of the book I'm trying to try to present.
50:23
these Buddhist teachings in more of a Western psychological way that's palatable to people.
50:28
To criticize Buddhism a little bit, especially Tibetan Buddhism, which I really love, there's so much cultural baggage and it's so difficult for someone to penetrate.
50:38
And it's what we're talking about with this meditation centers too.
50:40
There's some Tibetan centers near my house, well, within an hour of my house that I have friends that are suffering right now.
50:48
And if...
50:49
they would never go there because they don't know what it is.
50:52
It's so out there that these are all these weird Tibetan terms.
50:55
You're doing mantras and all this stuff that just is not palatable to a Western mind.
51:01
So I think it's a big problem.
51:03
in some sense, I guess I am conflicted.
51:06
Something like IFS, think people can have these really interesting experiences that I think they can get very quickly that they might never get from a Buddhist school because
51:17
they just won't go there.
51:18
So yeah, I mean, I agree with you in terms of like the attribution piece.
51:21
They probably should show the Buddhist tradition a little more love.
51:24
So much of this stuff is influencing it.
51:26
ah But I understand too, like the marketing piece of we, think that where therapy, the Western therapy world and Buddhist world are really aligned is it's reducing suffering.
51:36
That's the whole point of Buddhism.
51:38
It's the whole point of therapy.
51:40
Buddhism is really unique in terms of religions.
51:43
They're not really trying to evangelize and convert people.
51:46
just, it's fascinating.
51:47
They just don't.
51:48
And I think it's the same with therapists.
51:50
We're not trying to convince somebody of something.
51:53
You're just trying to, hey, how can I, this person's suffering.
51:55
What can we do to help them?
51:57
Yeah.
51:59
Yeah.
51:59
Thank you.
52:00
That's, that's helpful.
52:01
Maybe can you, describe a little bit how you see the parts work and IFS being helpful for people.
52:07
And perhaps one thing that I often forget is on the other side of the suffering, right?
52:13
There's also, how do we cultivate joy and I guess compassion or loving kindness, those, those type of practices.
52:22
Yeah.
52:23
So I guess I heard two questions.
52:26
more of the compassion.
52:26
No, it's okay.
52:27
The compassion of the IFS.
52:28
Do you want to start maybe with compassion and we'll come back to the IFS?
52:33
So yeah, part of what I write about in the book on the compassion section is the Dalai Lama has this line that basically if we want to be selfish, we should practice intelligent
52:43
selfishness.
52:44
And to be intelligently selfish means when we are compassionate, again, we feel better.
52:49
it feels better to be compassionate.
52:52
So I think that this whole idea that selfishness and even rigid individualism makes us happy, I don't see any evidence for that at all.
53:00
And I think the Western world would agree now because there's so much research on the importance of relationships and people who use first-person pronouns more in their writing
53:08
and we're prone to anxiety and depression.
53:10
So this, think it's one of the real problems in the West, we just fixate on the sense of self so much, we're so selfish.
53:17
with this narcissistic influencer culture, it's really disturbing, honestly, how far it's gotten.
53:24
So I mentioned, Matthew Ricard in the book, who was a French, I don't know if you've heard of him.
53:29
He's a French, um, yeah, he was a PhD.
53:32
He was like a brilliant, I think was like molecular biology and France.
53:36
And his, came from a really interesting family.
53:38
His father was a philosopher and he basically had this really promising career ahead of him, but he abandoned it all and became a Tibetan Buddhist monk.
53:46
just did that full-time and all he does is he's a monk and he does philanthropy and So he because he has a science background He was involved in some of the the early research on
53:55
advanced meditators because he kind of bridged those two worlds So I believe it was at University of Madison, Wisconsin with Richard Davidson.
54:03
Yeah, who I think is like the man in that world So I think it was with him that they they put all these sensors on his head and they they tried to study was going on in the brain
54:13
And it was with him and some of these advanced meditators, they literally thought the machines were broken because they had never seen anything like it.
54:20
And he just was, was having these gamma gamma brainwaves that are off the charts.
54:26
And if I believe it's the pre the medium prefrontal cortex, there's a part that's more associated with happiness was abnormally large.
54:32
And they were really astounded with what they measured.
54:34
So they deemed him the happiest man alive and he objected to it because he's very humble.
54:40
Um, and obviously it's more like the happiest man that has been studied and from that one methodology, but, the point was that he kind of is the opposite of everything that we do
54:50
in our culture.
54:51
And he does these compassion meditations every day, but the evidence is when he's just focusing on compassion meditation and generating love from people, it makes you feel
55:00
really good.
55:01
And so it's, we feel like this, this sense, I think in the West, we confuse empathy with compassion.
55:07
So we think if somebody's compassionate.
55:10
It's gonna be so hard and some other Teresa and you're living in poverty and I don't want to do that But it's the opposite if you are doing it in the right way where you're
55:18
generating love and kindness these it's positive affect so you're it's basically a In the Buddhist tradition, they call them the four immeasurables so that it's immeasurable.
55:27
There's no end to it It doesn't matter what situation you're in.
55:30
You can always generate these loving feelings, but it feels good It's good for you.
55:35
It's it's really good for the brain.
55:37
It's good for the body
55:39
So coming to the happiness part, do think sometimes Buddhism gets a bad rap because it's suffering is that's the message.
55:46
But it's really the opposite.
55:47
It's I think Robert Thurman called it like a joy.
55:50
I forget the term in a butcher.
55:52
It's something like the joyous science of happiness.
55:54
Like it's really about being happy.
55:56
And it's just when we're not fixating on things, we're not clinging to things and we're just present with whatever is arising and generating compassion.
56:04
It's basically the most rational approach to happiness that we have.
56:08
Yeah.
56:08
man, it's bringing up lots of other questions I did.
56:11
I wanted to ask you about the IFS, but if we could just stick to this for one second.
56:15
the notion, this is very well articulated in the 12 step stuff that if we're not freely giving away or being of service to others, what we have, we can't keep it, that type of
56:28
idea.
56:28
And I think I know personally, sometimes I think if I just soften, so say I'm in an argument with my wife or I'm upset with my kid's behavior or something like that, there's
56:42
a part of me that says,
56:44
If I soften.
56:47
to be kind, to address the problem.
56:49
Somehow I'm opening myself up to harm or I'm gonna let them get away with something or they're gonna do it again or it's this sort of misperception of what will actually help me
57:00
feel better and address the thing with my child or my wife or whatever it is.
57:06
And I find it's that tension of if I practice being.
57:12
I don't know more pleasant or happier or kinder or whatever, then somehow I'm losing something or somehow I'm going to be harmed or something like that.
57:22
Does that make sense to you?
57:23
Could you fit that into some of this?
57:26
Yeah, well, first of all, you make me want to, I'm going to refresh on the AA model after we talk because it's, there's a lot of good stuff here I've forgotten about.
57:35
Yeah.
57:36
But that idea of the freely giving, there's a Buddhist metaphor of laying a candle that if I have a candle and I light your candle, nothing is taken from me.
57:45
And there's, again, there's no limit to that.
57:47
We can keep, you can light another candle.
57:49
So that's kind of this way of compassion.
57:51
If I'm really kind to somebody, there's nothing, I don't lose anything.
57:55
That being said, a few things come to mind, like where I think Westerners get it wrong, especially more in new age communities is then that means where everything is permissible
58:04
and we have no boundaries.
58:07
That's so some teachers call that idiot compassion.
58:10
It's so in, in Buddhism, it's just, they say that, wisdom and compassion, like two wings of a bird.
58:16
So you need them for balance.
58:17
So you need this discerning wisdom in this case of emptiness, but even just rational thinking with.
58:23
with empathy so they balance each other so you know if somebody is you know because you come from the addiction world you know if you're Someone you're enabling somebody.
58:33
Oh, it's okay.
58:34
It's okay.
58:34
Have another $20.
58:35
It's okay You know that's not helping them.
58:38
So sometimes people you can be compassionate you can be fierce with somebody you might send call the police on somebody But the other thing that is interesting too.
58:47
Maybe this is a bridge to the ifs piece this is where I get excited because I feel like
58:52
The IFS stuff can really mesh so well because then it's from what you're saying.
58:57
It sounds like there's a part of you that is reluctant to be compassionate, right?
59:03
So then the, where the Buddhist site, the Buddhist teachings, I think can fall flat a little bit.
59:07
They, they miss that nugget.
59:09
So it's like, well, just be compassionate.
59:10
It's, it's all good.
59:11
It's all good with IFS.
59:13
It's, I just can't help myself.
59:14
Then I'm like, Ooh, let's talk with that part.
59:16
want to hear what, does that part have to say?
59:19
And that's, it's exciting.
59:21
So we're not pushing it away.
59:22
It's like, there's something really juicy there.
59:24
And that part probably has a great reason and has just like I have, I have the same exact thing.
59:31
There's reasons I don't wanna be, I wanna be stingy.
59:33
I don't wanna give love or those parts don't go away.
59:37
So in that way, I think they mesh really nicely.
59:39
Well, let's bring empathy to that part before you're trying to force yourself to be kind to everybody.
59:45
I want let's be kind, you you start inside.
59:47
Okay, what's I want to listen to the part that doesn't want to be kind the part, you know, so that's where I think sometimes Buddhism without that approach can push away and disown
59:59
these parts of us, which I think is a big problem.
1:00:02
So that's one of the things I talk about in the book.
1:00:05
And especially when people get spiritual personas, which is like the worst of the worst.
1:00:11
And anything that's not spiritual is disowned.
1:00:14
doesn't go away, it just gets acted out unconsciously.
1:00:19
Yeah, that's a great distinction.
1:00:22
I never heard it described that way, where the IFS turn perhaps turns towards the parts as opposed to trying to train them out of their needs or something like that.
1:00:34
At least that's I think kind of how you're describing it, right?
1:00:36
the other tradition I draw from is voice dialogue.
1:00:39
I don't know if you're as familiar.
1:00:40
I want to give voice dialogue some love because they have a very similar model, but it predates IFS.
1:00:46
for some, I don't know why they, I think they went a different approach than IFS where IFS has gone the path of uh formalizing and trying to get an evidence-based criteria, training
1:00:57
people in voice dialogue didn't do that.
1:01:00
And they are much more, um, I actually talked with the founder of voice dialogue and she, she was said that they wanted to be open source.
1:01:07
So she's 88 now.
1:01:08
but they have this very similar methodology of parts and talking different parts.
1:01:12
They, their approach, I favor a little bit, actually.
1:01:15
I I'm not like a master of IFS.
1:01:18
So I, I'm sure there's a lot of good, I don't know.
1:01:19
but in that sense, it's very, it's very similar to the Buddhist idea because it's like, uh, the Schwartz book, there are no bad parts.
1:01:28
is very similar to that tantric Buddhist idea where these are just energies.
1:01:33
They're not bad or good.
1:01:35
You could try to push them away and go to war with yourself, which I don't think is a great approach.
1:01:41
Or you realize these parts that seem selfish and aggressive and all these other things, there's some wisdom there.
1:01:47
But it's more bringing awareness to it.
1:01:48
start to, in the Buddhist sense, it's more that they kind of awaken.
1:01:52
So it's from a more constricted, isolated, I'm this sense of self or I'm this part and I'm different than everything.
1:01:58
But when it's met with compassion, it starts to open up a little bit more.
1:02:02
Cool, yeah, I'd never heard a voice dialogue before.
1:02:05
I'm check that out.
1:02:07
Yeah.
1:02:07
book, think it's called, I don't know if I have it near me.
1:02:10
After I do it's um Embracing Ourselves, I think is their main one.
1:02:14
But yeah, it's very similar, I think in IFS, yeah, again, it's a little more formalized.
1:02:18
think their work is a little bit more flexible, which I like.
1:02:22
But I like both of them a lot.
1:02:24
That's cool.
1:02:25
Okay.
1:02:27
I maybe now's an okay time to end.
1:02:29
I gotta get ready for one o'clock, yeah, any kind of, again, I could keep picking your brain about this stuff.
1:02:37
Anything sort of we haven't mentioned that you think fits well into this conversation or maybe a little bit more about your book and your work that you wanna speak about.
1:02:49
think we went over a lot.
1:02:50
So I was just grateful.
1:02:51
I didn't realize how knowledgeable you were about all this stuff.
1:02:54
So it was nice to chat about it.
1:02:56
Yeah, so the book is early on.
1:02:59
So I've never written a book before.
1:03:01
So we'll see how it pans out.
1:03:02
I'm trying to, I'm mostly done with it.
1:03:04
I'm trying to finish it in the next couple of months.
1:03:06
And then I'll have the grueling process of seeing if I can actually get it published.
1:03:10
So we'll see how that goes.
1:03:11
Yeah, I mean, on my website, my personal website is just billbalanger.com.
1:03:16
people are welcome to go there and sign up on my newsletter and I have some guided meditations.
1:03:20
I'm still building all that out.
1:03:23
But yeah, no, I think we went over a lot today.
1:03:25
Yeah.
1:03:26
Well, yeah.
1:03:27
Thank you so much for your insights and clarity.
1:03:30
And I understand so much of this stuff intuitively while and also I've practiced for a long time.
1:03:37
I have a very hard time articulating it.
1:03:39
And it was so nice to hear you articulate so much of it so well.
1:03:43
So I look forward to that book.
1:03:45
If I sign up to the newsletter, will I be notified of when the book is ready?
1:03:49
Yeah, God knows when that will be.
1:03:53
yeah, my website is still, like we mentioned before, I've done more corporate work.
1:03:58
I'm in a period of trying to leave the corporate world more as I uh very burned out from it.
1:04:04
I'm in the process of the book is that and doing all the different meditation stuff, which has been more on the end of personal life.
1:04:10
So yeah, I'm kind of in the midst of that transition.
1:04:13
Awesome.
1:04:14
Well, I also have ADHD and meditation.
1:04:18
I have taken medication over the years.
1:04:21
but the meditation by far is there's nothing been even close to as helpful as that.
1:04:25
So anyone out there listening who has ADHD is a reminder to practice, you know, see if you can go practice some meditation.
1:04:36
okay, Bill, well, I,
1:04:37
Ken, thank you so much.
1:04:39
Your work is very inspiring and insightful and we desperately need it.
1:04:44
So thank you for that and thank you for your time.
1:04:46
Yeah, thank you for having me.
1:04:48
Thanks for listening to this episode of the State of Mind podcast.
1:04:51
Before you go, pick one idea from today's episode and practice with it this week.
1:04:58
Remember, live with courage, clarity, and compassion.
1:05:03
practice inner strength and develop within.
1:05:06
If you enjoyed this, please follow us, subscribe, give us a fancy five star review in the app.
1:05:16
Share this with someone who you think might find it helpful.
1:05:19
Once again, thank you for listening.
1:05:21
I wish you all the very best.
1:05:23
Take it easy.
1:05:24
Peace out.