This is the ten percent happier back ass. I'm Dyin Harris today. A compelling buddhist question: does self hatred or self love for that matter? Make any sense if the self is an illusion of every chewing over that and media issues with Matthew Brand Silver Phd, whose clinical social worker and a very experienced teacher of meditation retreats, We also going to cover how and why to view your anger with scepticism, the relationship between self love and personal ethics, what to do, if you think you're a good person but have no interest in changing your behavior, how to handle a nagging sense of moral, unjustified ability, Visa VIII, your life, the way you live it

and how Matthew has arrived at a place of relative peace with his own mortality. A bit more about that. Before we do have in here as I from teaching retreats at places like Spirit Rock he's worked at an organization called mindful, schools which teaches teachers had to teach meditation and as a social worker, he has worked with both adults and adolescence with pretty severe mental health. Diagnose. he's an conditions he's an utterly fascinating guy, and I got a lot out of this conversation. We will get started with Matthew, Bren Silver read after this. Hey? So here is a word. You dont often associate with taxis and easy, but attack that they use that all the time, because Tax act makes it easy to get started easy to file your taxes and easy to switch another word, they use a lot guarantee taxes guarantees, your max refund and with their one

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he needs it right now, son basket as offering ninety dollars off and a free gift. When you ordered go to some basket: Thou com, slash happier and end your promo code, happier at check out that Son basket duck com slashed happier and enter promo code happier, Matthew rents over welcome to the shop thanks for having me. God have you so, as I understand it, you have an interest in concepts such as self love and its opposite self hatred, and I'm just curious. How do you think about self love or self hatred within the context of a tradition

where it is argued that the self is an illusion in the first place, yeah well, sometimes I think about the terminology. There may be a better alternative. Tis teachings on could not self. It might be that the phrase is something like not owners or something like this, and there is a lot of confusion that seems to happen, and so rather than thinking of a kind of tension between the teachings on the illusory nature of south the empty nature of self and self love. I strew it more as a kind of spectrum of the density of self and find one end of the spectrum at the far end is self hatred and its kind

flip side of grandiose city and arrogance in that kind of melodrama of all of that, and that's where the sense of self is very thick They did and very solid and oppressive and away and The movement towards not self alike includes a movement towards self love, which is actually a much more fluid flexible way of relating to the south. And for me, Self love is actually an expression of a certain end of non clinging. It's not like the summit. Height ideas about my greatness, or something like that. That's just another expression of that kind of more dense mode of sound self love is more akin to a deep understanding of one set off in a deep forgiveness for oneself in a deep appreciation, acceptance

of our own limitations, and so the movement from self hatred into self love actually gets us closer to understanding the end, Venus of Self the south that is hate. It is much more difficult to forget than the self that is loved yourself. Hatred is a kind of preoccupation and exception and the self that is loved. Is it so easy to forget, because it's not bound up with a certain kind of vigilance and defence nurse, and so this moves us in the direction of flight to use language.

the Zen tradition, forgetting the self that famous line from token so I'll see if I can recapitulate a little bit it at an end. The old fat check me love is not the same thing as not sell for not ownership ass hell for emptiness himself, but it is a step in that direction in, loving yourself in your conception of love here, isn't kissing the mirror or standing there. Hugging yourself telling yourself how great you are you're better than anybody else. Self love in this sort of more capacious understanding of the word love. Yet you toward seeing that the self is not as real as you thought. In the first place,

yeah, that's great! That's what I meant in a way. Maybe we could think of it as a kind of spectrum of how deeply we are accepting the rising of the phenomena that comprises self. You know, and at that far end of arrogance or self. Harshness. There is an incredible amount of friction and and credible amount of resistance as we move towards self love were really and clenching the hand of grass Bang and it is closer to something like the acceptance of what we perceive when we look in words, and we continue along that same spectrum- to approve she ate them more subtle aspects of the sand However, I am not one of my teachers, students and young talked about by the

Waggling Shan of the sense of I am this and, as we pass through, what these realms of self acceptance of self love. We begin to fold the elements of I ness into awareness and those to become empty, and then that realisation that kind of emptiness of the south like this actually leads us back into a deeper kind of come I and tenderness for oneself, and so the insight into the emptiness of this self actually dramatize it opinion the congealing of south, it dramatize is the pain of the predicament of being human, and so it then came kind of feed back into a deeper appreciation of

the intensity of the human condition and the drama of being someone and its attendant pan lid. if I can ground this in something very concrete just to help people get a toehold here, and maybe this work- or maybe it won't I'll talk a little bit about how this has worked. For me, given that my understanding is limited might be a generous with describe it, but I would say that I don't know damn right may be false modesty is too much sell things. Are there you go. You didn't say that, but it was an impasse. In the ok, then, for me, one of the biggest plot twists in my meditation practice were, is adding in high dosage matter or friendliness or loving kindness,

practice. I realized. After doing it a long retreat long nine day, retreat of nothing but loving, kindness practice where you're repeating these phrases may be happy may be healthy, while envisioning various being including yourself, I realized in the course of doing that that my mindfulness practice where I was supposedly viewing everything that came up in my mind, with some non judgmental, remove actually had a subtle and hitherto unseen averse, if flick in it, and that actually, when I suffused the mine with this art of sort of, I M using the word artificial, but it's that maybe that's unfair, because you're just uncovering, which already there, but when I suffused them

with warmth, and I was seeing whatever came up in my mind with really accepting it that felt to me like what I might describe as self love. It wasn't an acceptance in terms of resignation. It wasn't like great. I just saw some like a spasm of bigotry. Go Dan, it's more like, oh of well, that's the result of Reno endless causes and conditions the culture in which I grew up the conditions. In this moment. I don't need to myself up for it and then the next step, after seeing whatever comes up in my mind as a function of the causes and conditions as the organism as Jack Cornfield likes to say as the organism just trying to protect itself. However unskilfully the next step was to see that it also is not personal. There is nobody here

I know how monkey lists of Dan inside my mind deliberately creating and tossing out these thoughts. You can't find it it's a mysterious process with no apparent conductor, and so that to me is how I went from what I would call self love of the of viewing, whatever comes of my mind, with some warmth, to actually viewing the real self love is to see that there is no self that all because you're not placing any responsibility for all of the inner chaos and cacophony, and what I just said a lot of words. There was planning on doing that, but I did does any of that, make any sense, yeah good words, good words yeah. I do think that speaks What I'm intimating in this that the insight into not self brings with it a whole raft of self forgiveness- and I, like the word, sometimes innocence the kind of innocence.

Of our being, and that comes out of really seeing dependent origination really seeing multi cause all nature of our being of our thoughts of our feelings that what feels? oh intimately, like me, originates very much outside of anything, I could call me, and that creates a certain kind of, forgiveness and an understanding, and also a courage to do more self exploration, because it means that the ego is no longer at stake in the process of CN the hallmark of Vigo is certain kind of defensiveness and that short circuits, the kind of while the reckless investigatory nature of the meditative endeavour, and as we come to see a certain kind of innocence,

the forgiveness that you describe the centre. Listen s of our own being the poignancy of our condition begins to bear down on us with more and more weight and the possibilities for love for self love for loving others. These possibilities multiply, but hatred becomes less and less tenable, and so that sense of year that there is nothing that I might discover about myself? That would make self hatred more tenable there's nothing. I could actually see that would make a better case for self hatred now. It's me see, a lot of habits. I may see my greed, my aversion, I may see delusion, but none of that actually become, an argument for

more self harshness. We ve talked about self love for quite a bit in this conversation adopts itself hatred, but how would you define love, Will you stop me dead in my tracks there with them even though I use the word very casually I don't know it's almost become a trained, a place holder for everything, lady, in the universe, which is very poor, definitional discipline, but some people dont, like that word its a hallmark, is sure something or it's too closely us seated in some narrow way, with romantic relationship for something like this, but For me, it is a bit of a place, hold

for this general softening of the heart- and it includes loving kindness, then and compassion, but it's not limited to those word that comes up for me is poignancy, just the poignancy of the human condition. I feel that so acutely in this phase of at this moment in time. You know with assertive, accumulating points of grief in this country. I felt that so it usually with covered as their unfolded with George Floyd, with the under current of a certain kind of authoritarian strain and american politics and culture, and so much really to grieve, and it's too much without love. It's just too much.

turned towards apathy or numbness or just rage and trying to troll all of the causes and conditions, and so for me, love even the turn in words to my breathing, to my body, to the kind of intensity of being human. To do that, love just seems rack. Less, and so there is a certain kind of convergence In my mind around the insight side of practice and no love side, you can certainly do loving kindness practice as its own discreet path, a beautiful path, as you scribe doing nine days of just that. But in some ways, some other you now forms of love seem indispensable. Just in the process of investigation of true Lee encountering the human condition

then, as a manifest moment by moment- and it's not a very discursive kind of love, it's a kind of softening add to their poignancy at the human condition and that to me feels like oh yeah, that sort of underlie so many different aspects of practice as artist abalone tracks. Although I guess that's a hallmark of a good question, be getting back to the definition. You said something like I think of it. As I can phrase for all, that's good in the universe and I'm thinking. Well. Maybe that is a fair definition. Maybe love is it I've been increasingly thinking of it. As you know, anything north of neutral, you can be a common sense. Friendliness that you can have for your Borri Sturgis were sharing the same oxygen supply, I hope you're doing all right all the way up to you know the string music kicks in and junk use as holding

boombox over his head, that you know, and I love scene in a movie or whatever, and everything in between how you feel about your parents, how you feel about your kid, how you feel about your cats and dogs mrs civility generosity, compassion, empathy, all of those with the scientists, call pro social behaviour. Why can't love just be all of that? Thank you for not rejecting, may lose definition and british yeah. Maybe I can be all of it. That's how I think of it. That's how I think of loving kindness as it benefits ass in the rhythms of one's life and those are all sight. All Lord sometimes dramatic expressions of a certain kind of care and love and appreciation for the existential condition of ours.

hours as individuals and society as a civilization the more closely we lock the more reason we have to love and the more deeply wheel the less ground there is the less tenable hatred is, and so I'm an aversion type. So if I was gonna say for I'm going to suffer around resisting something I dont like that's my favorite way to suffer, and so Bluff is important for that personality. Constellation you know and so on In my own experiences of anger of aversion, potent or quite set all there, The kind of reminder that comes up in my mind, because I tried to train in this in their reminder of like oh yeah, that a version that cannot end well

and it is never the last word- the hatred, the kinda divisiveness. It is nevertheless I swear. It always leave something out, and so there is a certain kind of trust that if I follow this thread deeper into causality, there will be less and less reason for hatred. More and more reason for love for forgiveness, for understanding and so in the anger, the aversion there may sometimes be a seed of wisdom, but there is always delusion coexisting with it so there may be a seed of understanding of anger. You know Ruth King said anger is, can be an

is she a Tory but not transformative, and what I take to understand from that is that it can signal something important, there's a seed of wisdom in it, but it cannot be the vehicle we ride forever. her on and for me, as an aversion type. I do try to remember in the rising of anger and the rising of aversion, like oh there's, delusion here too Whatever clarity, there may be, no clarity, there might be a seed of clarity but for sure, there's, delusion present and the certainty of that mines state needs to be under caught by a certain kind of scepticism, and so just to say to myself. I need to look more deeply here. I know there is confusion here. I know the dollar,

I would not have the same response to this situation that I'm having right now. I know oh there's more to be seen, and so we just follow that cause or thread and been my experience. Just arrive at a deeper sense of love. So if somebody in your life has really piss you off and you truly set with it, in an investigatory way you can get under the hatred, and anger to love your site, I dare not in my life, I'm just senor. Listen, no yeah! can do this. We can do this, it may take some time we may have to sort of innovation. in one way or another, and it's about training. It is about training. Our

because in the mind state of aversion, it such a certain kind of mine, staid and it myths, no ambiguity, and so we can't remember much in those moments, but I have tried to train with varying success, but I have tried it. Train to remember. There is more to be seen. There is more to be seen and you can kind of sense, when you're making your case against the person, yet whether that's number of one's family or any body in making the case. One is always, leaving out certain premises in the argument. You can kind of sense the mind sort of shuffling through like a slap Lawyer, a kind of like shuffling through trying to hide some little bit of evidence. As we make our case for the justifiable

any of our aversion and you, Sir, to be more discerning and sense that light I'm leaving something out. I serve jumped over from this premise too. That premise and I left something out, but if I include that it weakens the case for my anger, it weakens the justification. And so we just have to be rigorously honest when we see our mind cobbling together its case in that way to pause, look more deeply and we have many experiences Just seeing that kind of folly of our aversion in the rear view mirror sometimes only in the rearview mirror but in the rearview mirror it so apparent like, oh

I really left that big piece of data out from that case you know, and it leads us into something like care understanding that doesn't mean that we forget that incident entirely. There may be important actually to honour, what's been seen and somebody else's behaviour or something like this. but we are rife at a place of a deeper love than where we started coming up after the break. Matthew explains why you should not take your shortcomings, some might even say your ugliness personally. And we talk about the relationship between self love and the buddhist concept of sealer or ethical conduct. That's right after this this by casting sponsored by better help online therapy. We talk about better help. A lot on this show, and this month were discussing some

This stigmas around mental health. Regular listeners will know that all of us humans have emotions and we need tools to help us regulate them, not avoid them. Just like we take care of our bodies by eating you Tricia's Lee, we can do the same for our minds by going to therapy. I can personally say that there be is a tool that is help me many many times in my day to day life better help is the Miser online therapy that offers video phone and even live chat sessions with your therapy. So you don't have to see anybody on camera. If you dont want to its much more affordable than in person therapy and you can be matched with a therapist in under forty eight hours, give it a try and see white over two million people have used better help. Online therapy is pie, cast a sponsored by better help and ten percent happier listeners get ten percent off their first month at better help. Dot com, slash happier,

remember when you're living room was just the living room or when your guest room wasn't also an office and a yoga studio with asked a lot of our lately so give your home a vacation and book a vacation home with verbal verbal has millions private homes to choose from so whether you are looking for a beach house, that's just a beach house or a cabin. That's just a cabin! We ve got you cupboard, download the verbal out and find the perfect occasion home. That's just a vacation home, I just wanna! double click to use of corporate speak there on what you said about the rearview mirror and what you said before that about how it may take some time. I dont only people the impression- and I know that you do either, but please correct me that this is you know, easy or rapid. You know he's at the getting underneath the aversion of hatred in certain cases that could take years, if not like two times my wrong

No! You are not wrong, and this is what the very humbling aspects of practice that to see the depth of the kind of routes of these habits, its humbling, its humbling and this is a part of why there is a kind of a jewel training. In this. We are training in the same way, an athlete trains, their body and the accumulation of skills of strains is often gradual. There may be some moves that we can make in the moment once that suffering has arisen, but so much of the fruit of our practice is actually a function,

of this gradual training of not getting back so deep into the karmic corner, where our reactivity just feel so overpowering and when we do get back into the corner, and it just feel like we are going to suffer. There is not one degree of freedom in this. in those moments. My aspiration is. This is humbling for sure may not be humiliating. Yeah may not be humiliated. May it for sure it's humbling its necessary that humbling quality of practices is quite important by humility, is deaf, then humiliation and the humiliation is really a function of the drama of self. In that moment

So may I take this pain, this habit less. Personally, is not a commentary on the deepest blade of my began and in that pain backed into that corner. When nothing works when all of my mind, this move is do not work, We were at an important place, actually any does usually devolving, to frustration, herself, hatred, human creation but its action. We are moments where we can again come back to love that the heart is being like softened by the intensity of our habits, and in that certain kind of surrender it.

Actually consolidates our motivation to practice and its softens, rather than hardens our heart. It can do that even in that kind of sense of abject of feed that choice, but there is a kind of opportunity for very deep cuts

of compassion for ourselves and then it over flows from the bones of her own heart to others. I think you ve just brought us where I was hoping to go. We are talking about finders incorrectly. You know that how our relationship with our self can impact the way we are with other people, and I got me to the question I was hoping to ask you, which is what is the connection between the were now several paragraphs removed from our discussion of self love again in the broadest kind of conception of self love? What is the connection between this self love that, as you are describing it and our ethical stand

the visa fee, the world or what the Buddhists my call sealer ass. I am a which is well I'll. Let you define what that is. So there are a number of of connections. My mind is moving in different directions, so one piece of it might be that the movement out of the kind of more congealed modes of self out of arrogance, out of self hatred, into a kind of deeper acceptance of cell phone. You're standing, the emptiness of self. This is a movement away from defensiveness and, as I was saying, we could think of one of the hallmarks of ego is defensiveness. It means that we,

stand guard at the gates of self kind of patrolling visitors, vips, intruders, everything, yeah, and that is a very fragile way of living. That means that, at any time, any person anywhere can do something destructive. to my own inner environment and. The move away from some of that defensiveness into a certain kind of acceptance, love deeper understanding that is actually very

important as we evolve. Ethically, we are being called, I feel, to evolve ethically and the Buddhist path makes very clear that we ought not do all of this the rules of training. The guidelines that led us away from suffering, rather than towards the buddhist tradition, articulate what we ought not do a, but it is more were quiet about the positive duties. We have two other people. What we ought to do, what we owe to others and those are very eager, weekly, provocative questions I find, and this kind of sin

step as we see as we look at the country at the world, as we have a deeper appreciation of history of the future of existential risk of climb do. You know of all of this, there's a sense of being called to grow to evolve at the Cle as individuals as a species that are our well being the well being of the civilization. Probably at some point will depend deeply on a certain kind of ethical evolution and gesture of love, and what I find is that I want to think of myself as a good person, but I don't really want to change my behaviour. That is a bit of a joke.

and we think of our ethical life as we kind of grow up and we find our commitments and then we just enact those coming as for the rest of our lives, but our ethical life. We could think of its evolution. I kind of wild and unpredictable and full of twists and turns and part of meditation practice in drama ties in the intensity of the human condition of witness, saying just what it's like to have an inch on her face and want to stay still just what it's like to have a pain in our back and just what it's like to have our heart ache. In dramatizing this we become more sensitive to the kind of moral fabric of the universe that, wherever there is suffering there ought to be see the way

ever there is suffering there ought to be ethical commitments and their suffering everywhere, and so we start to perceive this the poignancy of the human condition, and we are called to grow to avail of ethically and for me, I've been struck by The experience of a certain kind of moral in Co. Here it's our moral and justify ability. Like my life as I live it I perceive as less so now, but still so morally unjustifiable. The debts to which I privilege trivial pleasures and come it's in my life over

the very lives of other beings, often on the other side of the globe like that induces a certain sense of moral incoherent. That actually my life as I'm living? It is not quite justifiable and normally, when we sense that we, mediately shut down or rationalized, explain it away now. Remember when I was there haulage reading in the car library in a comfortable cushy chair and I was reading a book, Peter Unger, living high and letting die that was illustrating just The degree of inequality, well being across the globe and my privilege chain of trivial comforts in the face of

the enormity and tractable suffering of the world, and that scrambled me and my heart in a deep way and I've been living in a certain sense with those questions and with that sense of moral incoherence for a long time, and so times. I've gone on autopilot around it, sometimes Its catalyzed more clear, significant action in my life to try to think about the suffering of the world and what I owe an ties in with this whole realm of effective, altruism, which has been very meaningful to me, and that's really the question I would say of that kind of those folks I feel like it

to answer the question: what is the modern bodhisattva? What does compassion look like? in a world where we So we know a lot about suffering where we know a lot about the suffering that neglected suffering, that is tractable that can be addressed and- that to me a kind of so over so much of my buddhist practice and how I think about see there and how I think about love and how I think, bout, my dad's to others and as my own suffering has been diminished, they still suffer. money, but it's been diminished and dramatic way as there is less and less energy. That's needed to ten to one find this inner life, and so that freeze us up to. open our eyes more completely to the world and

we see suffering and- we see the absence of suffering and that I feel leads us deeper into a commitment to meet the conditions of the world. More fully, but it entails a measurement of DIS Orient patient tolerating disorientation because the eager wake mechanisms are always scrambling to regained their footing, and so, when I say so like I want to think of myself ass, a good person, and I dont want to change my behaviour that will tend to induce the sense of a certain kind of dissidents something and will feel a little disoriented and to act tolerate that in this realm of ethical evolution in our own understanding of difference of racial difference. Other forms of difference,

Tolerating disorientation feels quite important and our dire practice is indispensable in because we actually get more comfortable amidst the free fall amidst the ego, all the kind of familiar reference points not being there in the same way

and that will tend to generate a certain kind of panic and scramble to reestablish ground, but no, it's safe to fall it safe to take the backward step and fall into a certain disorientation, and so it's one of the thread of connection that occurs to me. Imagine the effective alchemists there's a group of people, perhaps the most famous, proposes this young man Wilma Castles, a philosopher I believe it Oxford or Cambridge one other thing, sir yeah yeah and he basis much of his work or they some of his work on the philosopher Peter Singer, who quite aims they talked about

with apologies to everybody involved here, might be mingling one about the sober, Peter singer, I believe talked about how you know. Spending on ourselves to live high while others die, is a bit like walking by a pond where there's a drowning child and not wanting to save the child. You didn't get your suit dirty or something like that and will has argue that you know, since we know twenty five hundred dollars will save a life, in a malaria prone country. It's very hard, if not impossible, to justify spending twenty five hundred dollars anything beyond your basic needs, given that Europe actually walking by drowning child. I think I'm restating that view correctly, and so, given that, where do you Matthew fall in your day to day life, visa ve, something like a latte, do allow yourself any measure of living high.

First sure now, latte and the effect of altruism there, XVII again see you now, I'm the visions got to me and convince may as well now lattes. But yes, plenty of indulgence, I think in some ways the question of where does it stop? What's the thresholds? It's a reasonable question, we do have the intuitive sense. I owe more could be done. I can do more, and what does that mean, and so I will try to live with that sense, of moral incoherence and its spurred action. For me, you know I do still have the equivalent of tat- is all the time and not living profoundly renunciation lie for something like this, but we know that We can do more and you and will make

skill and some of these folks and you know the movement has a very there's. Somebody called like a group of fussy. Nerd said that was so how somebody described it and that's fair enough. There is a lot of kind of rigorous analytic thinking and quantitative kind of efforts that you know, but at the heart it is love at the heart of it. His love and For some reason I was in some kind of random lottery drying. I won a session with Wilma, Cast Skull and I was on a skype with him and is as yet no serious philosopher, but just in seeing his face there on Skype, I started crying because I could sense that this is somebody who is asking the question

of what it is to be a body sat father. He would never put it in that language. I dont think, but to me. It is this is like what is the modern bodhisattva and I think that can take a lot of forms. But for me the most important piece is adapted lures the heart into deeper, commitment, maybe a little bit more renunciation of little did more commitment to caring for the welfare of others. For those you don't know what a body sapphire, Can you define it yeah where it's not even language from my tradition of insight, meditation in which I had been trained exactly, but what I take it to me in is the deep abiding, almost relentless commitment to the welfare of others and to make

Once a heart and one's practice, someone's life of benefit for all that we encounter- and it's really quite a radical Commitment and I've had opportunities to take a body. Sat fur vow or something like this and I haven't because I don't know what that would do to my life exactly and that there is a sense of I'm not quite ready to give in form can sent to that depth of commitment? You know, even though training. I feel like I'm in training and I'm trying and what's that is an expression Lord make me chased, but just not sure exactly, but it's part of flight. Okay, if word take a vow that is no joke to Taiwan's heart in that way is a kind of its perform.

If utterance its words then do something they actually do. Something my heart to our lives and when I'm really ready cause I dont know how much that might reconfigure my life when I'm ready I'll take it out? But in the meantime, let us do what we can come about by asked Matthew about equip of his that I really like he has said how your meditation practice is going is none of your business? What does that mean rousing to talk about how he has arrived at a point of general, ok minus with his own mortality. That and more red after this think of the last time you bought something too, where something to decorate your house, something for your family, your friend What if each time you made a purchase, you got a little somethin back with rapid. Ten you can racket in is DS, smart, best way to shop in save online racket in, is an

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hum slash audio this law take, or should I know you are using latte lot ended. I love letters. I love letters anyway. This latte question is a pretty profound self love conundrum, because on the one hand, I think you can make a case that a certain amount of harmless. Let's our current quote, harmless or seemingly harmless indulgence. You know is part of self love taken care of yourself so that you can be more available to take care of other people. On the other hand, I think a very enlightened view of self love would see that there's so much joy and flourishing to be had from serving other people that why, wouldn't you help yourself too much of that as possible. So this question of how high do we live while others dies? This lonely easy puzzle, it's not easy, it's not easy and

I wanna be careful about being two idealistic there's a way in which should be in the buddhist world. We can get to hard up on certain ideals, and that tends to cause the kind of a re of certain elements of our own experience. I want to be careful about maintaining fidelity to wear actually like we really do want that law tat. You know- and I dont want to minimize that- and I think the point you are making and refrained from somewhere in the effective, altruism movement. If you pass the bird in building today and you just down the door and rescued a couple people and brought people the safety that would be

among the most meaningful, or maybe the most meaningful day of your life, or certainly your eureka and. It would be a cardinal event and were actually offered that opportunity yeah. It's just that mechanisms of empathy and the Prague effects of suffering right here rather than distant that makes the example seem different, but at a moral level there really not dear friend. That said, I do believe that story is plenty of room for delighting in one's good fortune. And enjoying the kind of pleasure. Arizona offer and taken good care of oneself, the main point for me is not going unconscious around the questions and just living with that question.

And then you see why. How does that catalyze changes in one's own easier and that just that sense of almost a certain kind of like wonder for at the end, Lucian of our own ethical being like? How might I grow it's, not us, static thing? Where are we just follow the precepts or something? It's like a home right, my ethical, being b transformed in the same way is that other aspects of myself is transformed by practice. In our remaining time. Here I want to digress pretty radically. Maybe abruptly you bet, so with apologies. I want to ask them be unrelated questions here. Every episode somebody prepares for me, a bike as we call it up. Prep doktor preparation document, and this one was prepared by our produce

Dj Kashmir cashmere, who has recently gone on a meditation retreat with you, Matthew that he mentioned in the prep Doc a few things that you set on their retreat. There are compelling to me that I thought I would enjoy just hear you pack them a little bit. So the first was you were talking to the people on this retreat word dj was a retreat it, and I think you were talking to people about this tendency that many of us have. I have this in a big way to play with joy, Goldstein calls the practise self assessment tapes there. Where you just obsessing on. How am I do I do it all right? How my do enough are my getting a mobility realized Havana, whatever- and you said to the group, something pretty compassionate, which is how your retreat is going, is none of your business

I love, and I wonder if you could explain it and also explain whether it could apply to our daily meditation practice as well, because a lot of us a lot of people listening, will never actually do a retreat. so the habits of our mind keep us so common. possibly oriented to past and future, and then the present feels like it sandwich between those two. And we're sort of always trying to gauge the trajectory of this moment. Where is it going? Where is it going, is going towards goodness or away from goodness, is going towards what I want or away from what I want, and that is where much bound up in our biology, I feel and each moment is

kind of down payment and some future moments. And this moment the president is almost like a canary in the coal mine of the future. Yes, so we're just like really vigilant is this oak. Is everything ok like are all the parameters? Okay here and that gets recapitulated in practice right and so it's like. I take one brass one mine for breath and then I want to ask myself the question Matthew you more concentrated and houses going right,

and on treats it in the context of retreat, where there is less friction in the mind and it can really go in different directions. We get even more compulsive about asking like these. Where does this moment point yak? Is this working am I accruing whatever are meant to accrue? Am I do right is this enough, and so that kind of, Should I just My teachers, Michel Mcdonald's. At one point said, it sounds so not meditative, but she said something like you Clark in and you clock out, yeah you just do your practice and sometimes I thought of the analogy that in lifting If I were lifting waits doing wraps to improve the strength of my bicep, I would not, after doing a rap look over

my bicep and have a kind of hard to heart of how it's going, you know my getting sick longer. How is that wrap it with much more be like well at certain kind of surrender to just the practice itself? The exercise I just did that rap and we so privilege the kind of ways accessible to us in consciousness, that sort of top layer of the mind, and especially the veil, and so that is a pleasant or unpleasant, and we use that as the barometer for the entirety of our practice, and that is just another one of our weird preoccupations eight. So natural, but it's like now. Let's let us just do our practice. Letters just do it and then at some point we

We have that matter, cognitive awareness, to appreciate what has happened and what has grown, what we ve let go of what we have aunt em we can do that at a reasonable cadence. You bud it's definitely not after each brass yeah, and so let us just as gesture of so rendering and it's all right unbelievable, how intense the human condition as we like, cannot believe it just to pay attention to the breath, and just see that the ways were bombarded by sensory events. It's unbelievable, and so we Are always assessing the the trajectory of it, but it's actually not so useful at various points in people's prank.

Yes and so yeah, let it be not our business and let us just keep going with our sincerity with our awareness with our wisdom, I love that the other thing you said on this retreat per DJ arrow visa liable historian, so I'm sure dj, very reliable, but I'm always afraid when people quote me back because, unlike what did I say- and maybe I'm gonna be totally board of five by what I said in one context or another, but I'm ready Dango had him. What did I say was it receives the term mortified, because I've gotta ask about death per dj. You made some comment that work is in the neighbourhood of,

your having, after all, these years of practice, a significantly reduced fear of death without be inaccurate, restatement of what you allegedly set on this retreat, I think yeah death has become much less imposing their still fear for sure, and we don't really know how afraid we are until it's happening, but I do feel, like practice, has engendered a certain sense of completion in my life and my life has been complete and I want more absolutely do. I want to die now, absolutely not, but there is a sense of whatever else comes.

Gravy you know and that it was enough and that's a reasonable question to ask like what makes life feel like enough, and otherwise we kind of wind up just wanting. always wanting more, but even five hundred or a thousand years wouldn't feel like enough actually, and so what creates a certain sense of completion in our life in death is, has a very hallowed position in that kind of pantheon of buddhist practices and reflections and for me my own experience, family conditioning I really feel Like unawares, I've been feeling

hunches for a long time feeling like I, was dying from very yeah yeah like not in kind of anxious way by just this sense of the weight of March. How the day of my own of everyone, I love that was a very acute sense from quite early on, and I sense that probably in some ways I got into practice and got it hooked into my hard because I had the intuitive sense that I was utterly unprepared to die and to lose people able that the enormity of that with such that it was almost unimaginable, that could be absorbed in a hard, not destroy my heart and as a result

fill in some ways. We don't know why we get into practice or why we keep going exactly, but- At some level it was and is an attempt to address the truth of mortality and to prepare for that and to live in such a way that life feels hole that it feels complete. Yeah, that's what's arising in me now. What is the mechanism of practice that would allow you to feel like the rest of your life? Is gravy you're playing with the house's money?

life feels complete. I think it's about exploring the many chambers of the mind and I think it's about love. I think it's about some sense of the having deeply explored the human condition, the possibilities for well being in our further. Like very Ps? That's about love, it's about. You know when I volunteered and hospice some years ago, and so few things matter at the end of one's life, but the legacy of love? It's about the only thing that matters from what

I could see, and if it wasn't there, there was nothing I could do to actually often to support it to support a better death and there was a kind of sort of haunting realization kind of like. Oh, I better level. Well, you know I better be real care, fall with how I love, because that kind of legacy is going to be what is most salient in the mind at that time of death, if unconscious, so loving, ourselves, deeply just a deep appreciation for all of our strength and goodness, and all turfway and limitations, loving others in sustained relationships of growth, and being nourished by the love of other

hours and then loving widely. You know very broadly radically, for those will never meet silly to now the boundless nest, the measure lessening of love, which I take to mean that there is nothing on the other side of it. There's nothing outside that the threshold of it like that radical and we can know these experiences in our own practice. We can now with the sense of nothing but love just mind pervaded by yet not at this kind of amalgamated state it just there is nothing but love and that leaves a kind of impression on our heart, even amidst the Inn

and city, is of daily life amidst the aversion amidst the anger and its frustration that serves as a kind of north star. That sort of radical expansive love is our birth rate. That is possible even for a very ordinary person. Like myself, that's possible to know that, and this SAM makes life feel more complete and more. Ready to. Let go for that final time, all the training in letting go of, I'm clenching the fist of grasping, as I think, Steve Armstrong use that phrase like I'm clenching that fist we ve practice that a million times just sitting or in our life and then I imagine the end,

of our life is the kind of grand surrender of control of ownership, so I dont practice with it in a very explicit way of contemplating it very actively in a rigorous technique, oriented way, but it's just everywhere in practice to its pretty rousing, send out here, I think, be give all of us, especially those of us, with suspicion its most of us who haven't tasted, what you described as a good motivating sentiment to get us to keep putting But on the cushion before I let you go. Can I get you to plug if you're comfortable, you know any resources that you put out in the world where people can learn more about you it if not maybe even content I have a website that just Matthew, brand silver dot org

my full name org, and that has recordings and links to. Dharmu seed and audio Dharuma places where there are talks that are freely available, so people are welcome to that. Of course, thank you Matthew. It's a pleasure to meet you and thanks for coming on thanks so much they tanks to Matthew Brent silver. Thank you as well to all the folks work incredibly hard to make the show a reality. They include Samuel Johns, Gabrielle, Sacrament, Dj Cashmere, Justine D became bike. Maria were tell Aunt Jane plant. We also get our audio engineering from the good folks over at ultraviolet audio. Was you on Friday for a bonus, guided meditation with Diana once I hate stand Harris from ten percent happy

you too, and in every week to hear I hope, really helpful conversations with some of the leading meditation happiness and mindfulness experts. So what if I told you that they should be ten times, maybe thirty time for making this up, but much more impact for when combined with the ten percent happier at on the you get to listen and learn to incorporate the concepts we talk about here on the show into your day We practice into your mind when you ve mastered the basics of meditation. You can dive deeper into the practice with our singles courses and challenges, the ten percent have Europe is available right now to download wherever you get your apps? What up a Matthew Hepburn? When I tell people on a meditation teacher, I get asked a lot of the same questions. Can I meditate lying down? Yes, what if I have an edge, go ahead scratch it. If I sit for long enough, can I crimson space and time time? Yes, but not space,

if your fan a ten percent happier, you could probably answer a lot of these questions yourself. But my hunches you everything you know about meditation parts, still parts your life that feel anything, but mindful it's time to change that together, we're gonna, take the insights you get from Dan Harris and double. This is twenty percent here. The show where I talk to people who, like you, are learning to level up their ability live, mindfully, you'll, get to eavesdrop on people getting real about the challenges. All of us face and you'll hear how, through meditate Those challenges are transformed. Seeing how someone else goes from stuck to unstuck can be a template for your own breakthrough. So let's get started twenty percent,

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