(#245) Melvin McLeod: With a Single Breath

[MUSIC] You're listening to The Wisdom Podcast. [MUSIC] Wisdom is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable organization. We are committed to providing valuable content that nourishes the mind and spirit. And we rely on the support of listeners like you to continue our mission. Your contribution enables us to produce more episodes, expand our reach, and further our mission of spreading the teachings of the Dharma to all who seek it. To donate, simply visit our website at WisdomExperience.org and click on the Donate button. The key element is insight. That the most significant cause of that dissatisfaction with life that we all experience, is that we do not accurately understand who we are and what this life is that we experience. And that causes us to feel alienated, alone, at constantly struggle. That causes us to suffer in many ways. The good news though, is that if we develop insight into what reality really is and who we really are as human beings, then we discover that this reality, this world, and this being I have are basically good. Malcolm McLeod is author of the new book with a single breath, The Complete Path of Mindfulness. He is the former editor in chief and now editor at large of Lines War and co-founder of Mindful Magazine. He has committed both to the deep study and practice of Buddhist Dharma and to spreading the benefits of meditation, wisdom, and compassion by teaching mindfulness as a complete and transformative path of life. In addition to with a single breath, he is also the author of the best Buddhist writing series. Three books of teachings by Tick Not Han, and Mindful Politics and 21st Century Buddhist in Conversation, both published by Wisdom. We hope you enjoy the episode. So Melvin, thank you so much for joining us today on Wisdom Dharma Chats. It's so great to have you here. Well, it's my pleasure. I'm a great admirer of Wisdom publications in your work, so it's an honor to be here. We do do similar sort of work, so it's nice to be connecting in this different way and to talk a little bit about your new book with a single breath, The Complete Path of Mindfulness. But before we jump into that, I wanted to hear a little bit about your journey. So on these podcasts, I can ask the type of questions. I wouldn't really just ask if we were catching up at a business meeting. And I was looking at the bio in the book and a couple of things called my interest, right? And the first thing was that in college, you studied a little bit of Eastern religions or was looked into that curious about various substances. And you sort of came to the understanding that reality was not what you thought it was. And I was wondering if we could just go back in time a little bit and sort of like capture that moment. What was it that changed for you at that time? Well, this is your basic baby boomer story. Mine is hardly unique, but it is true. I mean, I went to college in 1969. And it is true that taking drugs, and I have to say particularly psychedelic drugs, showed me and a lot of people that reality as we normally experience it is not nearly as fixed or as certain or as real as we normally think it is. So that was a slightly cryptic reference and attempt to be slightly humorous. But at the same time, I think it was not important that for many of us who had led very conventional lives religiously or philosophically, those experiences of seeing that conventional reality was in a way a kind of construct that can change depending on what's going on in one's mind was indeed a pivotal experience. And I think led a lot of us to seek more profound answers than just taking a drug about the nature of this reality that we're experiencing. Yeah, it's the type of experience that might say this is worth looking into. And the idea that reality is and reality isn't as real as you think it is. This is quite an interesting idea. I guess the next thing that I noticed in your bio there was that you know, you picked up a Buddhist book and you had some sort of response to that that there seemed to be this deep connection. What was that book first of all? And what was this deep connection you're talking? How did that come about? Sure, I just want to note that the book that we're discussing makes almost no reference to Buddhism. And indeed it is an attempt to present some basic powerful truths that Buddhism presents, but that are not exclusively Buddhist in a more universally accessible context. So I'm happy to talk about my own personal experiences, just noting that my practice of Buddhism led me then to this take or understanding of the mind from this movement. So I was working in my first ever job as a journalist as a police reporter at the now defunct Montreal star, standard, gruddy, old-fashioned newsroom, full of drunks. They made out of a drunken when they were working, but there were a lot of drunks. And my mother was ill and I happened to pick up a book which I thought might somehow be relevant to her situation, mine, the Tibetan book of the dead, the rather archaic Evans Wentz translation. And I was sitting in front of a bank of police radios in this newsroom and I started to read the first page of Evans Wentz's introduction to the Tibetan book of the dead. And it sounds kind of trippy, but I guess that's where we've gone so far in this conversation. That kind of the whole atmosphere around me, my mind anyway, kind of became vibrant crystalline. And somehow I perceived a truth that I think is still true to this day, that Buddhism, wherever this thing was that this book was about, was never going to try to manipulate me by telling me what it thought I wanted to hear, that it was only ever going to tell me the truth. And somehow from reading that first half a page of Evans Wentz's introduction, and we know he was hardly an authentic spokesperson for Buddhism, somehow I divined and from a Buddhist point of view, I guess one would have said, it was karma, that there was something here that was totally and profoundly committed to the truth and was never going to try to take advantage of me or manipulate me by telling me things that I'll be an Andrew I wanted to hear. So there's this confidence in that there's some truth here to be uncovered, and there's a source that might help me find that, but also there seemed to be some experience in the reading of it that was, was you sort of mentioned the room feeling sharp and can you say a little bit more about that? And I'm imagining you don't think this is a specifically Buddhist experience just to touch back to the point you made about the current book. No, I actually do feel that it was an experience that represented and now we're really deep into esoteric Buddhism and going to be kind of trippy for those who actually are coming to this remindfulness, but I do believe and I believe at the time that it was remaking or reconnecting with something that I had a past connection to. And so that was the basis on which I was able to will have that experience and divine a fundamental truth about what I was reading albeit that reading one paragraph of Evans Wentz's introduction to the Tibetan book of the dead was hard to give me any actual information about it. So I guess it's fair to say that from a Buddhist point of view that this was a reawakening of a connection that I had in previous incarnations. Yeah, I'm going to take you on the next step as you go to India, right? It's just a little bit more Buddhism than I will get the mind from a self-promise. You go to India and looking for a teacher and I'm wondering, any success there? Did you decide you don't need one? Did you find one? How was India? India was India. You all hold on to it. I did the kind of standard 1960s trip through India in search of one's guru in 1980. I left a career in broadcasting and Montreal and I went to India to search for my guru and I knew that I was looking for a guru in the Kagu tradition of Buddhism. That was where I felt my connection was and I was in India for a little over here. I did a Nundro for those of your audience who will be familiar with that on instructions from the Karmapa, whom I met at RuneTech and I was planning to come home albeit that I was planning to then return to India because I had not yet found my guru for Christmas and I heard that the Karmapa had died. So I traveled across the country to go to RuneTech where I encountered Chugain-Prikaroja. I also came there to pay his respects to the 16th Karmapa and I met him, had a fascinating conversation with him about what he was doing and on returning to Canada, I had another epiphany that to my amazement, amusement, perhaps even not exactly disappointment but it was like, "Oh no! Bajuratu, all the three pea suits, the whole thing, That, indeed, Chowkyah and Trunkpa was indeed the guru whom I was looking for, and then followed that up quickly, because I had always wanted to go into a long retreat to do a year's retreat, a solter retreat under his guidance, but I knew that I had to wait until I found my guru before I could do that. Wow. So this was this, like, Walden, like, year in the woods that you were mentioning, right? Yes, a lot, but Borough was a lot thinner about it than I was. What was this retreat, was a traditional retreat, what were you doing in, for a year? Well, I guess it was fair to say that primarily I was doing, um, summits of emotional practice, mindfulness and awareness practice. And what was interesting was that there were a lot of things I was doing. I could have been finishing my Nundro, but a lot of that sort of fancy esoteric stuff didn't ring the bell for me at that point. And I, interestingly enough, and this was an interesting example of how much those of us who call ourselves Buddhist can kind of fool ourselves. Even after a number of years of considering myself a Buddhist, going to India, searching for my guru, doing most of Nundro, receiving teachings from great teachers like Kaloruma Jai, at his monastery, nonetheless, it was reading the teachings of Chugam, and practicing in that retreat that actually made me see that this whole thing was about me and my mind. And that actually had been more of a capitolar religious experience or a cultural experience or following some path that perhaps I had, karma was impoliting me along, but finally I realized, oh, really, this is just about me and my mind. You know, Drunk Barber Jai was brilliant at bringing people to this conclusion with the old spiritual materialism, not getting caught in the trip of religion, so it doesn't really surprise me. It's sort of the path of the blessed, this is like Rinpoche's blessing in a way for his students. Well, that's exactly right. And in fact, it was one of his famous talks called Buddha Dharma without credentials, where I finally understood that it wasn't about achieving anything, it wasn't about doing anything, it wasn't about any form of hierarchy or any form of credential, like I'm a serious Buddhist and I did X, Y and Z, it wasn't about any of those things. It was in fact Buddha Dharma with no credentials whatsoever. That was a turning point for me. That's right, like I'm a practitioner, here's my certificate. Doesn't really go down. Well, I punched a bunch of tickets, I looked for my guru, I went to Runtak, I didn't remember. You had the certificates. All the coupons. And then he pointed out they had no meeting whatsoever. These coupons are worthless, they don't buy anything for awakening. Actually, they could keep you trapped in samsara. Exactly right. In fact, that's spiritual materialism. Using spirituality itself as a form of attachment of the expression of the three poisons. So let's fast forward to 2009, it seems that you know, very engaged in the Dharma world, but there's an interaction with John Kabat's in that seems to be influential for you. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Absolutely, because that was a real turning point for me that led to my, this book, we will discuss as well as my commitment to the Main Street Mindfulness Movement. So John came to our office at, well, it was then the Shabbat of Sun, as now lines were, and talked about his project to present some of the basic truths and practices that Buddhism teaches, but that are not inherently Buddhist, that are not inherently capital are religious, and to present those in a common sense science-based context that could be accessible to everyone, particularly those who were not interested in some little known esoteric religion called Buddhism, or not necessarily interested in religion altogether. I saw the merit of that, and I saw the power of that. John had received, in effect, that kind of transmission, and I described this in the book, from Philip Kepler-Roshi when he came to speak at MIT. And John realized when Philip Kepler-Roshi was talking, that indeed, the kind of wisdom that he was presenting and the techniques he was describing would be of great benefit to people and to the world if they were more widely practiced, but that they could be more widely practiced because they were based on universal human capabilities and universal human aspirations that could be more widely practiced and presented outside or beyond the context of the capital B-religion of Buddhism. And that then led us, and I was one of the co-founders of Mindful Magazine, to present that view, and now that is the view that I'm presenting in this book. And to be honest, the second thing that really made me head in the direction where I currently am is the recognition that Buddhism's had its day, Buddhism is low on your heart, Buddhism had its day when there was celebrity Buddhism, all that stuff, but that really, in the end, the religion of capital B Buddhism, which I am a totally di-hearted practitioner of, in the end, is not going to have a significant widespread impact on American society or modern society in the world. And that if these basic truths of mindfulness, compassion, awareness, ethics are going to have widespread impact in the world, they're going to have to be presented in a broader and more accessible context than the Eastern religion of Buddhism. And so I believe that the so-called mainstream mindfulness movement, which in the book I described, its two founders, as John Cappitz and Tick-N-Hon, have made an extraordinary accomplishment in the first stage of its development, by getting literally millions of people to practice a basic technique of calming and focusing the mind, practicing basic mindfulness meditation. It's become widespread in the culture, it's become widely understood in the culture. People are seated at eyes, many benefits for our lives, our body and our mind. That's an extraordinary accomplishment. But if one views the mainstream mindfulness as of great historic importance, which I do, has a genuine new contemplative tradition brilliantly constructed for modern times, that in the long term, it's going to have to take this next step in its development. And I believe it is ready to take that step. And I personally believe that the next step in its historic development is to present mindfulness not simply as a helpful, useful meditation technique, but as a complete path of life that flows, that begins with the simple act of being present. Let me ask you this. As you're talking, I'm thinking, but isn't a lot of Buddhism without, like, Buddhism in India. If you go to Nalanda, if we were back in a time machine, we went to Nalanda Monastery, you know, 300 AD, and we walked around there. And then say we go to Tibet in our little time machine, but we fast forward to maybe 900 AD go to some year and walk around that monastery. Those Buddhism's are going to look very different, right, because there's so much cultural aspect to it. And so could it just be that now Buddhism is coming to a, and we don't need to get hung up on the word or religion, right? But if you're talking about a complete path, we don't have to call it Buddhism. But then it starts to feel like maybe we're doing the same thing in a different culture than they were doing in Tibet than they were doing in India. And it's to your point what Buddhism really is, is talking to something that's very natural part of being conscious beings, say. That's right. And I was just wondering what you think about that perspective, rather than this dichotomy between the religion and whatever the dichotomy is. And yeah, Buddhism has had its day, mindfulness will have its day, right? Everything is impermanent. But there's some complete system that if the masters are right, works and can be practiced. And so it seems like that's what you're really talking to and that's the next stage you're trying to move things along or have I sort of got it wrong. No that's exactly what I think we can propose. And the only difference is that albeit that Buddhism over the millennia has traditionally taught about this path and these aspects are different components of the path extremely well that actually in the end, this is just a universal human path based on the universal qualities of our minds and our hearts and what our aspirations are as human beings. And I believe that it's fair to say that if we begin with a simple practice of being present that in the end, particularly if we recognize that there are methods and a framework we can add to that, that there is an entire again human universal path that unfolds that is is not necessarily the exclusive province of anyone believe it. tradition. It sounds like the Buddha would agree with you actually. Like that was what the Buddha was trying to do. And actually it seems like when you picked up that Evan Wentz book and talked about this thing was just going to tell you the truth or it was just not going to try and deceive you. It seems like you're talking, I'm sort of joining these dots. Maybe it's a dotted line to join these dots, but I'm seeing it, which is fascinating for me. Well, here I'll be very provocative for your audience. And I kind of propose this in the book and perhaps not totally seriously, but perhaps. So we do know and we've kind of danced around it just now in this conversation that there are people who say, oh, this whole mindfulness thing is just, you know, it's a covert Buddhism. It's a bait and switch. And okay, we want to present it in the American society as a seconder thing. And therefore it doesn't, you know, run into problems of church and state. But that really end its Buddhism. And I again would argue that because, I mean, there are things that are inherently Buddhist that are not secular, that are religious, particularly in Mahayana Buddhist, but that the fundamental teachings of the Buddha in the form of the four noble truths, things like the three Marxist existence, even the Noble A full path are themselves universal human truths, capabilities and techniques that can be used. And I would argue that rather than mindfulness being a bait and switch, the original bait and switch was by the Buddha himself. Because in what other context could he ever have presented the realization that he had and the methods that he had to help people achieve the same realization in the context of ancient India except as religion. So I would argue that perhaps in the end he had no choice, but to present the things that he had discovered and the things that he was offering as religion. But in fact, that they are not themselves inherently religious. Interesting. I think there's something deep there. Few things coming up for me. Seems like the Buddha might agree with you, right, that he did the bait and switch in a way. And maybe it wasn't him. Maybe it was his followers after him. Maybe he's just like, I'm just talking about reality. I'm just talking about the human condition. He's not calling it Buddhism. Maybe it was the bait and switch came later. But then also, maybe what's at stake here is, is there a ser theology or not? So the truth of freedom from suffering is the claim. And whatever the secular word is, secular X, right, as opposed to Buddhism. This is maybe where they disagree. So if there's a promise of the freedom from suffering, you're getting very close to religious territory and away because there's a ser theology here. And so then to say that, oh, this is, this could be a natural condition. It could be a natural condition that there is the possibility for the freedom of suffering. Does that make a religion or not? It probably doesn't matter. Right. I mean, I guess my definition of religion is kind of sociological. It's like, if it talks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's a duck. And, you know, mindfulness doesn't have to. Because it can be presented. I mean, I hope what my book shows is that it is possible to present some very deep truths and some very powerful techniques, which are generally a specialty of Buddhism. But not exclusive, however, but simply by presenting truth as truth and by presenting things that work as things that work. And they don't need to make any reference to any particular philosophical system of religion. For example, if we were to say, okay, you know, I want to lead a happy, meaningful and beneficial life. Yeah. But, you know, I don't. And I suffer in all kinds of ways. I'm unhappy. And I doubt the value of my life. And I hope I'm in benefit to others. But I know that in lots of situations, I don't. Yeah. But that could be our starting point. What is our current experience of life? It's not what we really want as human beings. It's not what we long for the deepest level. Then if we examine what is the cause of that unhappiness, we may find that, and I again argue this in the book, that even on the path I've described, the key element is insight that the most significant cause of that dissatisfaction with life that we all experience is that we do not accurately understand who we are and what this life is that we experience. We make all kinds of serious cognitive errors in how we look at this life. And that causes us to feel alienated, alone, constantly struggle. The good news, though, is that if we understand where those errors are taking place, if we develop insight into what reality really is and who we really are as human beings, then we discover that this reality, this world, and this being I have are basically good. And that gives us a path forward to the kind of happy, meaningful, joyous, beneficial life to be long for. And finally, it turns out if there can be specific practices we can do, ways we can live that give us a path towards that kind of happiness. Well, of course, in Buddhism, guess what, I've just restated the four noble truths. No, absolutely. But at the same time, did we have to make any reference to capital F, capital N, capital T? I think I was just describing how it's possible to look at our lives. Totally, totally. And that makes a lot of sense. And it's about insights, right? You make the point that what's here is about insights and Einstein had insights, right? But that doesn't make the speed of light or the way gravitation and space and time work together, Einsteinian, right? But Einstein had that insight, he shared that insight and we all benefit from it. It's more like that, right? And so if someone was to start claiming that Einstein owns this knowledge now and made a religion out of it, that's problematic, of course. But, you know, referencing back, you don't have to reference back to Einstein. We often do, but we don't need to. We can explain it in other ways, many talented physicists have explained it more properly, his ideas or insights. And that seems like an incredibly noble project and very beneficial. And even more so in this space, what you're doing, I would say that. I appreciate that. And I think it's incumbent upon us, but we're both serious, long time hardcore Buddhists, not to be showvinistic about it, to say, oh, impermanence, that's a Buddhist truth. Well, it's not. It's just a truth. And it's not inherently Buddhist. And so, I think it's important for us not to think that, I mean, Buddhism is very good at teaching certain techniques, certain philosophies of certain truths. But the truths themselves are not inherently Buddhist. Now, it is important to acknowledge that there are things, a universe of enlightened beings and Bodhisattvas and Buddhas and a whole cosmology that exists. And certain Mahayana or Vajrayana practices that clearly are capital or religious, no getting around that. But we're not talking about that. However, having said that. If the mainstream Michael's movement is as important and long-lasting as I think it is, then who knows where it's going to end up? 100, 200 years from now. I mean, Buddhism had 2600 years to develop, expand on the Buddha's initial teachings and insights, took some bad turns and continues to do it this day. But nonetheless, if one believes that even some of the more esoteric things are literally actually just true, that in the end, perhaps the mainstream mindfulness movement, over time, will develop things that we now categorize in the context of religion. I mean, one of my views is that this gets at a lot of the critiques of mindfulness, which are based on misunderstanding the practice or understanding it only partially as the concentration or focusing part, what we call in Buddhism-Shamata, without recognizing the real fruition comes in the second part of that practice, in which we take the focus mind, we develop through mindfulness meditation and apply it to looking deeply and clearly at the world. But interestingly, I think that even if one just is doing the basic practice, like fold my breath, I'm going to relax, that feels good, it's good for me. As indeed it is, as it turns out, any form of calming or focusing the mind inherently and automatically leads to the development of some insight. As you calm your mind, you're going to start to see Riyali more 30 and more deeply. Now, of course, you can accelerate that practice by doing explicit practices, which there are a number of in my book, in order to cultivate that kind of deep insight. But the fact of the matter is that over time, from that basic ground of meditation, insight, compassion, ethics, community, who knows what kind of deeper, more exotic, more universal, more expansive truths will become obvious to the mainstream mindfulness movement. I mean, the reason that I think the mainstream mindfulness movement is of such historic importance is that it offers to people who are not interested in religion per se. The kind of deep insights and powerful techniques that have traditionally only been offered by religions, which of course I've benefited billions of people. But now, for those who for all kinds of good reasons are just the suspicious of organized religion, it is possible now that the mindfulness movement, when you see mindfulness not simply as a useful meditation technique, but as a broad and deep path of life, can offer to millions of people in the modern world the kinds of deep transformative practices they long for. They want to improve their own lives and to improve their society by doing that, not in a religious context, but in more modern evidence, science-based context that I think will open up that possibility of millions of people. And so that's why I think that in the end perhaps the mindfulness movement, particularly if it takes the next step in its development by looking at mindfulness as a complete and transformative path, could be ranked among the world's great capital, besides the world's great religions, but offering the same kind of powerful truths and techniques, but in a non-religious context. That's revolutionary. This is an interesting point. So firstly, agreed in terms of the Buddha learned meditation from other people, right? So when Buddhist teachers are teaching meditation, even just like Shama Takama by the way, we can't claim this as a Buddhist only, right? So there's sort of some humility here, point taken there. The possibilities that might open up, right? Leaving religion to return to religion. Very interesting, right? I do think that religion is making come back, actually, is what I'm seeing, but it has to be in a different form. So maybe this is one of the virtuous pathways to that. People want meaning in their life, right? People want a type of socirology. This is a pathway for that without all the other hang-ups that we're so worried about. So this is pretty cool. I wanted to dive into, you know, this word mindfulness, right? Because this is like saying, when someone says I'm doing mindfulness or meditating, it's like saying I'm doing sport, right? That's the famous line. It doesn't tell you so much, right? You started teasing out what mindfulness meditation was and you sort of made two points. It's this focus. It's also in the next one is inside. The focus is where you put your attention as I understand you explain it. And then inside is the understanding about how you're experiencing your world. Maybe you can correct me and tell us what mindfulness is, actually, on your take. Sure, about means. And I just want to step back a quick second, say in a broader sense, in the end, I hope that we can actually change the definition of mindfulness from being a meditation technique to being a whole path of life. But then to look at it as meditation, then it has two components. And the way I think about it is that we start with what I would call natural mindfulness, which is basically our minds operate in two ways. We have the ability to experience things inside of us and outside of us. The second part of our natural mindfulness is that we then have the natural intelligence or awareness to be able to understand what we are experiencing. Now, of course, on minds are wild, our minds are untamed. They don't rest in any one place long enough to really understand its true nature. And so we need technique. And so that technique of mindfulness of calming and settling and focusing the mind then allows us to take the first part of our natural mindfulness. I'm experiencing talking to you now or I'm experiencing this desk in front of me. But then the key part, the transformative part, comes when I start to really look at what I'm experiencing, the world inside of me, the world outside of me, my thoughts, my perceptions, my feelings, my values, and then all the phenomena of the world around me. And it's interesting in effect that actually the insight part of the practice, which is really where the payoff comes. I mean, it's valuable to come and focus your mind. I mean, that feels good. It is good. It's very good. It's got all kinds of concrete benefits. But they're quite specific and they're kind of limited. They don't transform our lives. They don't give us a platform to transform society. That comes when we truly understand who we are and what this world is that we are experiencing. And what truly brings us happiness and what doesn't. And I do find that one of the problems with the mindfulness movement is a sense. Now, is that it does not talk all that explicitly about the insight part of the practice, which is really where the transformative power lies. So that's the way I see it. And then at that point, when one starts to understand the true nature of what we are experiencing and who we are as people. And again, what makes us truly happy and what doesn't, which is something, the misunderstanding of which it causes terrible suffering in this world, that then we can overcome or dissolve all the suffering that's caused by these cognitive errors and start to be able to see that the reality is good. That being connected to everything and impermanent to, I mean, I love TechnoHans use the word interbeing, I think, is so much more, there's so much more heart truth and the more philosophical interdependence or interconnection. I guess I would argue then that it's really important because so many of the critiques of mindfulness come by identifying it only as the first part of the practice. That is the concentration part. And so then, but when we look at concentration or focus, then leading to insight, we have something in the end that can transform our lives, that can transform the society, that can give us the kind of world and life that we really want. Yes, so this is an important point you're making that the without the insight, you don't get the full power of the practice. Okay, so then the question arises for me, for you, does mindfulness and meditation, are they equivalents? How do you use meditation as opposed to mindfulness? Meditation is just much more generic term. It could include your TM or all kinds of different things in that sense. I mean, in my book, and we know that this is also true in Buddhism, I divide the practice into the two parts, but it is one practice. So in the first part of, again, I don't want to call the first step mindfulness because I'd like that to have a much more expansive and deeper definition. So I call that mindfulness meditation. That's the first part of the practice, following the breath, returning to the breath or reality when one gets lost in thought, all that practice we know that so many millions of people do, and then that's followed by insight. So I mean, meditation is just from a journalistic point of view is a is a more generic term. Yeah, that makes sense because I think like in some ways meditation, if you would like to Google search, meditation is going to be a lot more searched word than mindfulness, even though mindfulness has this sort of branding of being for the mainstream. That's an interesting thing. So also, you talk about what mindfulness isn't right in the book, and you've talked a little bit about the critiques of mindfulness as well. So can you tell us a little bit, sometimes you can learn a lot by knowing what something isn't. What do you think is mistakes when people think this is mindfulness? Well, I went in a whole list of how to remember some of them, but of course, your audience knows a lot of this. I mean, one thing is that mindfulness is not just some big grab bag of new age and psychological practices. Anything can be done mindfully and mindfulness improves it, but that doesn't make everything mindfulness. Mindfulness is indeed a specific practice. So that's the first part. Can we pause there? Because I think this is crucial, right? Because you know, eating mindfully or doing whatever, needing mindfully, right? And you're making a distinction between doing something mindfully and mindfulness. Except what I'm arguing is that yoga is not mindfulness. As the eating per se is not mindfulness. Eating mindfulness probably is mindful. It's mindfulness. It's just doing it in the course of everyday life. And so really, any of the specific practices, both the formal practices of sitting in meditation, as well as doing things mindfully, are practices of mindfulness. But on the other hand, I would say yoga itself is not mindfulness. So I mean, that was a provider that I was offering for people who might not know this field. What is this two way to ask this question? What is yoga missing? Or what would we add to yoga to make it mindfulness meditation? Mindfulness. And so what do you mean by that, right? You're supposed to be doing yoga mindfully, right? So let's say we're doing yoga mindfully. What do we have to do different when you're doing yoga mindfully to make it mindfulness, for example? Well, at one level, and I suppose it is part of the practice, and you're right that I suppose a lot of people do yoga in effect, incorporating a mindfulness to you into it. But obviously, there is a certain practice of if you're doing your yoga and all of a sudden you get lost and thought or lost in goal orientation or, you know, critiques of the person next to you or whatever, you want to return to the simple direct experience of the practice itself. I would suppose, though, that if we're going to get deep into mindfulness, what really makes it mindfulness is awareness, not simply of what you were doing in experiencing, which is very important, but it is awareness of the awareness itself. The most important thing and the deepest and most transformative thing to be mindful of is the very nature of awareness itself, and which transcend of the experiencer, not necessarily just what we are experiencing. And so I think that in the wind, if I were to say, well, if I were to practice yoga mindfully, and recognizing that most yoga practitioners are trying to return to the direct experience of the practice, then I would say the special ingredient then would be, I'm going to do this while being aware of the mindfulness itself or the awareness itself that it's experiencing that. This is interesting that obviously we wouldn't think just running these mindfulness meditation. So we don't think just yoga is mindfulness meditation, but you could easily fall into that sort of thinking, right? And then the other thing you mentioned is, you know, of course, if you're doing mindfulness practice, you're not distracted by definition in a way, right? You're doing your best anyway. You're doing your best. You're trying, you know, that's part of the practice, you know, recovering from distraction, right? But you did something even further, right, which is really cool. You started talking about this awareness of the awareness, and this becomes like a very deep sort of condition for this type of mindfulness, such that even someone doing mindfulness of breathing, right? You know, they might not have that condition. So adding that condition is a very profound practice of the mindfulness of breathing. So this is very cool territory you've taken us to. Well, I want to just go back to what mindfulness is not, because I think that it's important to address a number of the popular critiques of mindfulness. And again, they're all based on simply defining mindfulness as calming and concentration. So the famous example, oh, the sniper becomes a better able to kill, because he or she can settle down their mind in the breathing. That's true. Or corporations want to use mindfulness because they have, at least more psychologically healthy employees and less absenteeism. And more importantly, that mindfulness is morally neutral and is not concerned with ethics, things like ethics and compassion or social justice. But those all come automatically as a function of the insight part of the practice. So all of those critiques of mindfulness are based on simply looking at it as, oh, I'm just going to sit here and follow my breath. But in fact, and any company that thinks they're going to end up with more compliant employees by teaching the mindfulness is going to be in for a rude surprise because mindfulness never puts people to sleep and only wakes them up. I mean, if all they're doing is following that breath, they're still going to look around and say, oh, my God, these people are on this company are evil. I mean, this insight is going to develop. Now the other part that I want to mention, I don't know that I mentioned this in the book per se. But the book itself shows this. There is a critique and some pretty serious people have made, including some pretty hard-core Buddhists, that mindfulness is make mindfulness became the catchphrase, the slur. And that it was lightweight, manipulative, wasn't serious. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the real teachers of mindfulness are very serious people and very serious and deep practitioners. Many of them Buddhist but not all. And I think what this book offers is because only half of the book was written by me and it lays out this framework of what I call these five keys of complete mindfulness. And each chapter then, after I lay the ground, presents teachings and practices by many, if not most of the leading mindfulness teachers of this time. And when I think about it, I don't think there's been, to date, a similar collection showing the wide range of the mindfulness teachers that are out there today and how much they have to offer. And so anybody who critiques mindfulness to say, "It's not serious, these people teaching are not serious." They just need to look at this book and to see the over 50 teachings and practices I include and see what great teachers that are out there in the mainstream mindfulness movie today. But the real teachers of mindfulness, I mean, I could name names, but it's a long list of fantastic people. They're just recently interviewed on my new podcast of John Cabin-Sin, Ron McGee, Diana Winson, God Dr. Robert Waldener coming up, Jack Cornfield, Daniel Goldman, these people. And it's sort of interesting that, I mean, it wasn't my original intention, but this is really the first time a selection of their wisdom by these really great teachers has been assembled in my place. And I gave it a certain framework, but. I think the first critique is more rich, actually, for an exploration, and also more important, right? People can dismiss mindfulness, make mindfulness, and that's okay. We know that's not true, right? Make versions of everything, right? And so, but this connection between mindfulness and ethics is super important, I feel. And the bridge showed very clearly in the book, the bridge is inside, it seems. So then, I feel like you're solving a problem here, right? You said, well, one of the problems with some of the mainstream mindfulness stuff is they're lighter on the inside stuff, right? If we get the inside stuff, we have the bridge to the ethical stuff. This is starting to feel like a complete path then, right? And I would argue that then the ethics. I mean, so what are ethics, but are best attempts to lead. to live our fundamental values as human beings? Which, in our heart of hearts, is based on creating as much happiness for ourselves and others as we can, and reducing suffering for ourselves and others. And so, I think that ethics then is informed by the combination of insight combined with love and compassion and empathy. And together, the allow us to create an ethical guidelines for ourselves that help us to fulfill that basic human desire to create happiness and reduce suffering. And I think actually, increasingly, I've come to believe that, you know, we all talk about in Buddhism and in the book about some of the fundamental cognitive errors we make. We look upon ourselves and all things as solid, as separate, as not interconnected, and those lead to all kinds of misunderstandings about the nature reality and cause us suffer. But actually, increasingly, I've come to feel that the most beneficial type of insight we could develop is insight into what truly brings us and others' happiness and what doesn't. Because so many of the problems in this world are caused by people feeling that things are going to give them happiness, that in fact, are going to create lots of suffering both for themselves and for others. And so, this is a confusion, right, that you think what's going to make you happy and it just brings you suffering. That's right. And, you know, and again, I'll go back to Buddhism and I can reference this in the book, the doctrine of the two benefits. What's good is good for everybody. What truly creates happiness is always win-win. Whatever I do to make myself truly happy, things like love, compassion, things that really give your life meaning and joy are going to make you happy as well and vice versa. It's only the kinds of definitions of happiness where there are win-lose. I'm going to get lots of money and you're going to have a lot less and I win and I'm happy. And the irony is that there is not even win-lose, they're lose-lose because they don't understand you're happy. There's love that. It comes to happiness. There's no win-lose. There's either win-win or lose-lose. I love it. I think that the insight into what really brings us as human beings happiness, combined with our love and compassion, then together gives us both a deeply empathetic as well as a skillful ethics. That's beautiful. I love that. We're coming to the end of that time. But what I thought maybe we could do is maybe you could share something from the book, right? You have your five keys. We've done mindfulness a bit. We've done it inside a bit. We didn't really touch so much on love and compassion. You mentioned it and then we got deep into ethics. The last one is community. Can you say a little bit about community just to close us up here? Sure. This is the only place in the whole book where I actually quote the book. Because what he said, if he didn't, he'd say it, is so relevant to this that I couldn't resist it. And of course, it's the famous story where somebody says to the Buddha, is friendship half of the spiritual path. And the Buddha is said to have said, no, it's the entire spiritual path. Now, of course, we don't know what that really happened. We certainly don't know 26 hundred years later what the Buddha said, but here's what I think he meant. that connection, human connection, friendship in the broadest and most universal sense is the whole of the spiritual path. And that connection, too, goes beyond connection with other humans, goes to other, all of their sentient beings, ultimately goes to the universe itself. I'm really grateful to Dr. Robert Waldinger, who worked book The Good Life I cannot recommend enough. He's an amazing person, he's a psychiatrist, he's a Zen teacher, and he is the director of the famous Harvard Longitude Study, the longest running study of what truly brings people human happiness. And what he says is, it's proven that what brings people happiness, what brings them good health, what brings them a long life, is relationship. And so, you know, I had an interesting conversation with Ron and McGee on my podcast a while ago. And she was basically saying, well, ethics is the whole of mindfulness. For this reason, that the whole of mindfulness takes place in relation to others. And therefore, ethics becomes our guide to our relations with others. And so, in a way, it points to the same thing that albeit that we might think that, okay, mindfulness and meditation, enlightenment, are somehow solitary activities that I do alone, that in the end, it all finds the path and life itself finally is all relations, is all friendship, is all connection. And so, that becomes both the fruition of the book, the fruition of the path. And I believe I would argue the fruition of life itself. Beautiful place to stop relations all the way down and all the way around. Thank you, Melvin. I really appreciate you making the time and coming on and sharing us. You know, this deep dive into mindfulness, insight, and ethics, and it's been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you so much Daniel. It's been a pleasure. 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