The Power Of Awareness: The Key To Unlocking Compassion With Monk Yun Rou - Replay

We're recording this right at the start of June, and last September I succumbed to a very serious illness and my wife found me expired on the floor. She brought me— not she, but the paramedics brought me back, and I had a rough time for a long time and was in the hospital for a long time. And during some of that I was unconscious, and that unconscious period I had a very interesting vision which talk about a little bit in one of my recent books. And I was shown the sort of the future of humanity, but also a lot of other galactic things of interest. I zoomed around with a curator as a guide. Don't ask me who that was. I'd love to tell you it was Lao Tzu or Buddha, but I actually have no idea who it was or what it was. But what I came away from that realizing is that I'm a bad monk. And when I woke up, I really was obsessed with the song Amazing Grace, fixating on the wretch in the song. And the reason that I felt such a wretch upon waking from a 4 or 5 day journey in la-la land is that I came to the conclusion that the monk that I would like to tell you I am, is the guy who climbs 1,000 steps and gets to just near the pinnacle of the mountain, 8 steps away from waking up, enlightenment, and all that. And some old sage comes out and says, oh, 1,000 steps, must be very tired. Good job. Say, listen, you only got 8 more, and then you're where you've been trying to get to for the last 50 years. But those 8 are really bad. They are going to be the most grotesque experience, and I would say of your life, but frankly, it's beyond imagination how much you will suffer, how much you will suffer physically, mentally, spiritually. You cannot even conceive it. But if and when you make those 8 steps, you will be the awakened person you want to be. And if I were the monk, that I had always hoped, I would say, bring it on, baby, show me, let's go, I'll dance right up those steps. But having gone through those 8 steps in real life, I woke up realizing that if anybody gave me the choice, I would say, hey, you know, I'm good here. I like this, the view from 1,000 steps. If you gave me 25 more years of practice, maybe I get 80 years old or something, I'll be You know, I'm good with that. I don't need to zoom up there. I'll just hang here. And so that made me feel, upon awakening, that realization of my own weakness and failure, in terms of the resolve that I would like to imagine I would have, was extraordinarily humbling and erased whatever remnants of ego the rest of life battering me around hadn't already done. So I guess that's the answer to your question. I'm a wretch.

I'm thinking to myself, being a substantially less than enlightened being myself, but certainly wanting greater enlightenment. But as I was listening to you speak about, about what you've learned through your struggle physically and the humility that it taught you, isn't that some form of enlightenment all by itself, if not—

So I can't claim to be an enlightened person. Number one, Taoism doesn't really— it's kind of a Buddhist term. We have a much more specific kind of description of what it means to open your consciousness to all that is. But it's not— It's not completely dissimilar. There are a lot of— I'm a Taoist monk, but there are a lot of bits of pieces and bridges of crossover and intertwining of fabric between Buddhism and Taoism, particularly in certain later lineages. So anyway, it would be far from my place or even for me to really know how much I have woken up. I can say that I'm more awake than I was. Mm-hmm. I can say that I walk around a pretty much 24/7 awareness all the time of the interconnectedness of things. And I see it in a way that has changed the way I interact with the world and which has changed the way people interact with me from before the suffering and challenges of the last couple of years of very difficult illness. But number one, I wouldn't be so bold as to use that term. And number two, I think probably there's a continuum. I'd like to think that I will become more sensitive and more aware as I— for as long as I have left. So all I was trying to get at was that it was a very shocking experience to find out just how much I really didn't have the balls for those last 8 steps. You know, that's all.

Yeah, I mean, it just stirs up a lot for me just to hear that because We seem perpetually— and this is not where I expected us to start, but as you and I had said before we even hit the record button. And by the way, for those of you who are listening, which I hope you can, you'll get some of the flavor of attitude, irony, sarcasm that I think sometimes is tough to discern if you don't have a physical image of somebody's face or their body language, the nonverbals. as, as it's being said. You can always go on YouTube and, and watch because I think to see, to see the, uh, both the similarity in our haircuts, which, which you and I talked about before.

I know what you're talking about.

Yeah, but, but just the, the attitude that— and, and the body language, I think, conveys a lot as well because, um, I think it's— that's also, you know, we are— we're, we're, uh, we're more than than talking heads. We're more than a voice. Yeah, a lot, a lot more than meets the eye even. Certainly, I listening to you was just thinking about how we strive and how we're taught from the time we're young, or at least it seems like we're taught or we're programmed or something into striving in life. And it often feels like it's a carrot that's always just out of reach. So when I hear you, you talk about those last 8 steps And the courage it would take to endure whatever is unimaginably difficult to attain those last 8 steps to make it to some higher state of consciousness or realization or heavenly place or position. I just wonder if that's not somehow baked into our suffering, that the constant and never-ending striving For something other than the bliss of this moment or the perfection of this moment, as imperfect as the moment is on whatever level. I mean, we're living in a strange time. We're all— but we're always living in a strange time. There's always suffering, there's always hunger, there's always death and murder and other things that people call evil and whatnot. I'm just— I just wonder whether this whole concept of striving for that, those last 8 steps, isn't somehow rooted, you know, is the form of suffering itself. itself? Am I being— is this sacrilegious what I'm asking you?

Actually,

I mean no offense. And

no, no, it affords me a good opportunity to qualify the metaphor that I gave you, which is designed for a Western audience. We don't have— I said that in, in honest self-deprecation, breast-baring, I suppose. But, but really, There isn't such an idea in Daoism. And this is— I always get into a little trouble when I have short interviews like this because there's so much to say about the richness of the Daoist tradition. There are sects and interpretations of Daoist laws and Daoist practices which involve a lot of self-abnegation, self-cultivation. And there is a word, ku, in Chinese, bitter. It's applied to kung fu training, but Taoist practice in general, that there's a lot of motivation and self-discipline and many other things that are required to achieve certain kinds of awakenings in certain sects. But there's also another— when I say more popular, I mean more widely associated with Taoism, which is a sort of go with the flow. It's the tai chi tu, the yin and yang symbol on the back of surfers' trucks. You don't fight the ocean. It refers to— well, that symbol is very rich and it refers to a lot of things probably beyond us right now. But what we could say is that there is a concept called wei wei, or living an effortless life. But it's— so the description of climbing mountains or stairs to exhaustion is not— it would be more like, you know, you climb a few, you look around, you know, maybe you go back down one because you saw a pretty girl or you saw a beautiful mountain view. Maybe you take a few more steps and have a pork bun. You know, not all Daoists are vegetarians. I am, but— Some aren't. And then you climb a few more. The idea, of course, is that you have— follow this increasingly honed and sharp, ever-sharper sensitivity to the workings of the world. And if you get good at that, then you don't really ever have the feeling of exhausted striving. Right. And so you're floating down the river, as opposed to either vigorously and fruitlessly swimming hard against the river, or vigorously and unnecessarily swimming as hard as you can in the direction that the river is already taking you. So to To just float. And Alan Watts has written many things, wonderful things for the West about this. It is much more an accurate portrayal of what I used in my self-abnegation about the last 8 steps. It wasn't, as we look at it in a richer and deeper way, it wasn't intended to imply exhausted striving. I was just using—

You made that really clear. I so appreciate you just did that as well.

Awesome.

And, uh, it, it couldn't have turned out any better, frankly, that you— that that was our lead-in, because I wanted to ask you about, about the, you know, the reference to Alan Watts, that you've been compared to Alan Watts, which is we both know is a wonderful thing to be in— and compare is the wrong word, but just spoken of in that regard. I wanted to read a quote to you, an Alan Watts quote that actually comes from our brand new book, Change Proof, which interestingly enough, the very start of this book is a story from the beach. It's a story from Jones Beach, which is— was home turf for me growing up as a kid in Queens, New York, that little suburb of Manhattan, and not having a beach anywhere nearby. We used to take the bus out to Jones Beach, and it was thousands, hundreds of thousands of people that would come out there on a Saturday, Sunday. And the beginning of this book is all about somebody getting caught up in a rip current. And I was— not only was I, you know, a kid that went out there, but eventually became a lifeguard at Jones Beach at Field 4, where they had the boardwalk and the restaurant and all these wonderful things. And so the book starts where it's describing the current and this, what we call, what lifeguards often refer to as the suck. and how people respond when they're caught in that, in that rip current. So part 1 of Change Proof is choose change before it chooses you. And the quote is, the only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. Alan Watts. So I would love for you and I to talk about change today. Now, when we think about that as you said, the, the opportunity to become more sensitive and then ultimately be guided to, to move, to move in, in ways that are in harmony, um, with, with the world around us. I think that's what Alan Watts is getting at. What do you make of that quote? And, um, and, and can you, can you start us off by giving your, your sort of philosophy of, of, um, of how we I

spent a lot of time in the water. I was a very avid scuba diver for many decades of my life. Eventually my health— I can't stand it anymore, but I have some fantastic memories. I was a competitive swimmer early in my life. What I remember of rip currents is, um, you let them drag you out a good bit until they become weaker, and then you swim across them and get out of them, and then you go back at your leisure to the beach, so long as there are no great white sharks or anything. Um, I— the question— I, I, I'm gonna beg your, your indulgence because I want to use the change question to address The thing that I feel most compelled to share in the various ways that I do that these days, teaching in person and in workshops and online and so on, in my books. I have a very strong feeling about the subject of change. There's a Taoist concept of balance and harmony, and the way of looking at the world that things go to an extreme and then they need to be corrected back to a harmonious place. That correction can sometimes require Overcorrection. If you think of a pendulum, if it swings all the way, and what you really want is it to come to dead center, unfortunately, sometimes you're going to have to swing all the way in the other direction for that equilibration to occur. That process is a feature of the way Tao, nature, evolution, God— choose your poison— but that's how it works. And your efforts are only— your own efforts are only important insofar as you do not strive against that process of reequilibration. So the biggest mistake you can make is raise both middle fingers and stubbornly say, no, I'm going to hang out on this extreme, even though you may need to go all the way to the other end and come back. The pendulum is only one way of looking at this. There are others. So I have been aware for a long time, many decades before I became a monk. I guess I had the genetics of a seeker. You can imagine what a joy I was to my parents. Yeah. And to my professors in my various academic pursuits over the years.

That annoyingly curious child.

Yes. And a stubbornness about not wasting time on stuff that I instinctively knew didn't matter.

Yeah.

And going all in for things that I thought really did, even if other people disagreed. So a lot of the ridicule that I received growing up from my teachers and my fellow students, a lot of those people, just the rebalancing of things, are the ones coming to me now for counsel and advice about how to deal with this or that. Yes. Um, so what is required because of the great lack of balance that the manic murder monkeys we call people, uh, have created on planet Earth is something so potent that it could be expressed as a genetic evolutionary revolution. That means we have to change who we are so profoundly that it would be like coming off all fours and standing up for the first time, becoming bipedal and looking out at the savanna, at the veldt, and seeing everything with new eyes. It would be the same as suddenly having a thumb and being able to pick stuff up and manipulate the environment in a way that an animal probably more intelligent than us, uh, like a whale cannot do. I say more intelligent than us because I have come eye to eye, maybe 20 inches away from the eye of a blue whale. And I have looked at that pizza pan-sized eye and seen galaxies in there. Hmm. And understood that we are not only all connected, but that we are far from the smartest game on the planet. That's, that's an old experience, but it stayed with me forever. Anyway, this kind of spiritual evolution/revolution, which would necessitate seeing who and what we are completely differently, how we treat the rest of the sentient world, including trees and everything that is alive. Mushrooms. Not that kind of mushrooms, but that too. We can talk about that in a minute. That kind of shift, where we see who we are, we see our correct place in the universe, and we shift completely into a new model of the way we treat ourselves and each other and all other sentient beings. That is necessary. In one way or the other, either we will nuke ourselves there or the Earth will punish us to the point with pandemics and other things to force us there. One way or another, that evolution must take place. It is required for the cosmic balance. And again, you know, there's— I take a lot of grief sometimes about referring to the way we behave as a cancer on the face of the earth. I don't say that human beings are a cancer. I say that human beings behave like a cancer, and that there's a lot of really good analogies there about the way we destroy and outcompete other things and attack each other and all healthy things and all that. I don't want to dwell on that, but it is important to recognize just how destructive and off the path we are. And none of this, by the way, is to suggest that there are not plenty of compassionate, wonderful people working hard towards this goal in the, in the world, because I believe there, there are. But my job is not to be a politician or an electrical engineer or code writer or something. My job is to keep Da Dao Wu Xing, that is to say, my lens dialed out as wide as possible to see everything, just this little speck of a blue planet and all the shenanigans that we do in perspective, and to have talks like these. And it's more important even than the ritual things that I do as a monk, Or the physical or mental practices that I engage. And how that shift is going to happen— Dr. Andrew Weil talks about it coming from everybody taking psilocybin or LSD or something. And maybe that could work. It's as good a plan as I've got in mind right now. But anyway, however it's going to happen, it must.

I— I don't know if you've ever have spent time with ayahuasca, either in with people who are being facilitated through ayahuasca journeys, or you yourself have participated. And you don't have to answer that question if you feel uncomfortable in any way. I will say I've spent a fair amount of time in the last several years being a facilitator at retreats where ayahuasca was being taken, and then ultimately becoming joining that community as well. So facilitating and then at other times being facilitated. When I say facilitating, I mean I'm there to speak about change and resilience and the things that I've been fortunate to just to experience in my own life, the concept of dealing with, mostly dealing with change through pivoting and and reinvention strategy and things like that. But the elements of those retreats that were about the medicine, I was there being guided by shaman. And what I would say is that the things that we are carrying as a species, and not having seen thousands of people move through medicine ceremony, but certainly hundreds now. What's uniformly true is that we are all— that we all have a great deal of shadow, a lot of trauma in our lives, and haven't processed a lot of that. Don't even know where to begin, frankly, to process it because we're not taught it. We're mostly moving past it even as it's happening as a way to survive. So I'm, you know, in seeing that and seeing the relief and the release that's possible for people, I'm always that much more realistic, not even optimistic, realistic that the evolution of the species is moving towards something that is more harmonious than less, despite in just even recent days and weeks murderous behavior, just the sickest of whatever, you know, what human beings are capable of, war and everything else. But my question really is for you about whether you have observed there being a root— if there's a root cause of the suffering, of the misery of most people, not all, but most, what would you say that is? And I'll share my own answer to that, but I really want to hear from you about this.

So I think the state we're in now can be traced back to a series of very grievous mistakes. that we made in our own history. And we made them largely unwittingly. And we made them thinking that we were not making mistakes, but that we were making great strides. It may be that we could call coming from the Neolithic into agriculture the first big mistake. Suddenly, we, in one fell swoop, messed everything up. gets worse, but that was a big first step. We went from free and easy wandering, as my friend Professor Livia Cohn refers to the early state of human beings, which was not, as more and more science comes out on this, um, you know, lives that were short, brutish, and nasty, as is famously said. But, you know, we were living to our 80s without our skeletons showing any sign of disease or anything. Was there, um, the possibility that a tiger would, you know, jump out and eat us? Yes. Um, far less likely than we would get hit by a bus, um, or, or a drunk driver, but yes, sure. Um, was there a possibility that we would be hungry in the winter because it was a lean rainy season? There was a drought and not enough grove for us to put away things. For winter? Yes. So did we have the possibility of starving? Yes. But once we began to limit our diet by— instead of eating, you know, 400 different things, eating, you know, 3 or 4 or 5 things that we could easily grow— once we began to put limits on what was my patch of dirt, not Adam's patch of dirt, once we had— this us and them thing going on, mine and yours, we started to create this gigantic problem, which eventually evolved into sort of tribal stuff on a scale that we could never have foreseen. So agriculture, you know, I think might be— Maybe not the very first, but let's say a good early starting place in tracking these troubles. Tracking the time of troubles and when it began. And then there was industrialization, and then, you know, then there was the digital thing. And now life is so miserable for so many people, particularly so many young people, that the prospects of this virtual reality, whether it's just wasting their lives, you know, sitting in front of a screen, or mistaking relationships for key clacks. That is just sending us towards what I was shown in my vision, which is this artificial future for humanity against which I strongly reject. I was told by my guide that it didn't really matter how I felt about it. It wasn't about me. I got the message. Nonetheless, I would be lying if I said I was delighted to see it. So is there a counterargument to all this? My brother, a physician and a scientist, always challenges me saying, look, this is exactly what we're doing, what we're supposed to be doing. And we're going to evolve into AI. And that is our entire purpose, is to facilitate the generation of strong AI. And then human beings are as irrelevant as the dodo or megalodon that got eaten in the news today by great white sharks millions of years ago, you know. Mm-hmm. And is that a legitimate intellectual point of view? I'm not enough of a computer scientist to say. As a spiritual person, I find it disturbing, and that may say as much about my limitations as anything else.

It's interesting. The one thing that if we were to pull back the lens or open the aperture as wide as possible, for me anyway, I would say it's evolution that is ultimately what is to be revered, honored, that evolution is is something that we have some effect on, I suppose. For sure, I think we do, but no control over necessarily. At the same time, I don't see us controlling it, but everything is evolving to a state that is required and therefore I think, to, to be revered, to be honored, to be respected. So to judge it as, as something is good or bad or right or wrong, I think, is, um, is challenging because we can't see— we don't see the whole picture. We never see the entire picture. And if we're even somehow able to take in the enormity, like you say, of potentially our species not even existing in the same way that it does, It wouldn't be so surprising given where we began, where it all began, or where we can trace it back to. So it's, I think from just the standpoint of this tiny little bit of human experience, people are listening to a podcast right now. You and I are engaged in a conversation on a podcast. Our speck of the whole entirety of it is just infinitesimally small. And even this The thing that we can envision, which is this, like you say, this little piece of dirt spinning through infinite space, it's just the tiniest speck in something so far greater and so infinite we can't even conceive it. In that space of just our own experience, what is enjoyment? Yeah. What is— what brings peace? What brings serenity? Because I don't know that we can grasp anything more than that. I love the James Taylor song, this old song, Secret of Life. And I shared this with our kids years ago, that the secret of life is just enjoying the passage of time. That's the lyric. Try not to try too hard. It's just a lovely ride. I mean, it's on some level, super— it's beautiful, it's profound, and it just feels right. And so with that, my answer to the question, what's causing the greatest amount of suffering, might even seem self-serving because it is the thing that I study. It's the research I've done both for this book, Change Proof, but also just it's what I'm fascinated by, which is we're in a perpetual state of fear interrupted by moments of love, by the opposite of fear, which I would call love. And that fear is of what we don't— of what's unknown, what's uncertain. And I'm just wondering if there's been something in your practice, something that you've learned, something that you've been vigilantly and diligently practicing to deal with the unknown and uncertainty? Because that's, to me, I think what is so rooted to our fear and why we are— why the aperture of our heart—

My son, who is an evolutionary biologist, would roll his eyes and gnash his teeth at my simplistic characterizations of evolution, which is a far more nuanced process than most people outside of academics realize. It's a very deep field of study. I do think that there is some legitimacy to equating the word Dao to evolution.

Hmm.

I've heard people talk about this. And it doesn't make me kick and squirm. I'm okay with it because people need to bring their own lens to things and re-express things in words that are comfortable and understandable to them. You don't have to be a Taoist monk to have any of these sensitivities or sensibilities at all. You can discover deeper things. You can be Carlo Rovelli and discover them from studying physics and astrophysics and particle physics. Great thinkers in a lot of different disciplines, not only some great monk thinkers, but many others have come to the same place on the mountain. They just took a path up the backside or the left side or the right side and so on. What, what I will say is that although there have been many species that have come and gone, many species which have written their— themselves out of existence by some feature or other of their interaction with the environment. So, for example, dinosaurs might have eaten their way out of existence had the asteroid not destroyed them. Um, you know, there was just a certain consequence of their proliferation which might have changed forests and introduced opportunities for mammals to rise, and indeed some of that happened. It was all accelerated by, by, um, you know, an asteroid. But my point is that human beings are not the only ones who disturb their own environment and sometimes kick it out of balance in a way that leads to their own extinction. I guess a more important point is that evolution is full, full of species that are not here anymore. That in fact, extinction is the rule, not the exception. There are a million times and my boy would give me an exact number, but there's a million times as many creatures that have gone extinct as ones that are still here. And so what we're talking about is how we feel about this process, which is what you ask when you ask about suffering. There is a little element that we have not discussed so far. That is the kingpin upon which all of this rotates or balances, and that is choice. So I think it would be a powerful argument, might not be 100% true because we don't know about the consciousness of species that have come and gone. But knowing that we have a choice in the decisions we make about our own future and the future of all sentient beings on this planet. Knowing that we can, if we choose, act with humility, frugality, and compassion puts our responsibility as a species and as individuals in a whole new place, and that we have the capacity not only to destroy but to create in ways that other species have not had. This changes the game profoundly. And is this itself a feature of evolution? Is that idea that the whole point was to get to us and that we are in turn to get to something that is so intelligent that it appreciates the nature of the universe itself, the L-verse, the multiverse? I am sadly, but admittedly, not equipped to say. I can speculate, and I can find great succor in the idea that on some other universes and many other realities, the Carolina parakeet is still here, and the— And the mastodon is still here, and even maybe T-Rex is still here. No asteroid hit, so there are no people, but reptiles flowered into something amazing. I take that's part of that wuxing, that's part of zooming out to the widest view. And although that's kind of my work to think about those things, On a more prosaic daily level, just for most people to understand that in all these things we do— and you asked me about practice— and in all these things we do, the choice flows from awareness. And cultivating that awareness can be done through a variety of things, from Qigong to meditation to Tai Chi. Other internal arts, but they don't have to be Taoist things. They can be playing the piano or practicing archery or many other things that in my young life before I became a monk, I used— I was thinking about this earlier today. I don't know what brought it up. But I used to achieve these things with diving. I think that's what it was. I was listening to something on NPR from a guy who Spends a bit of water, and I was thinking how much serenity I found and how my brain waves just changed the minute that the water closed over me, and all I heard was you know what that did to my brain right away to focus to have that quiet and that floating sensation was for me a very kind of ADD and unfocused kid. Just pure magic. And I know it helped me through a lot of things. And then later in my life, motorcycle riding. These are things that I have not written too much about. They're not in my recent memoir or anything, but they're a subject maybe for another time, another book. But I don't want to be—

So you didn't write Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance then?

I wish I'd written it.

Me too.

I think it was a good book. Good book. I'm in the middle of writing my own version of that book right now, so it's funny you should mention it. It's a road trip book. It's kind of zen, and it's kind of that book meets Kerouac. But these are other things. So this is my long-winded way of saying that I don't believe That although I am partial to the practices that I've embraced in my maturity, that I don't really think that they're the only way to get somewhere with all this.

I'd love to get your, your own philosophy of resilience. We are— I say we because it's not me alone, it's a team of us that are often studying and researching resilience. The, the— I I'd love to find if there's either something in the Tao or in the Tao Te Ching about resilience that you could share with us, or something in your personal philosophy of resilience, given that you've had physical challenges in the last little while and have been working through those things and hopefully creating harmony in your body, your mind, and your spirit. I'd love to— Now, how you define resilience?

So many things come to mind. I have to sort through them for a moment. There is a Daoist view that in the first half of our lives, our purpose is to propagate, that our purpose is to continue the forward movement of Dao by having kids, raising them. And then more commonly in Daoist circles, you hear the adage that, you know, for the first 50 years you accumulate stuff, all those books, and which is about 10% of what it was 5 years ago, money, influence, power, everything else that goes along with some kind of material presence and success. And then the second 50 years, you spend getting rid of all that until— you go off into seclusion and focus on the last bit of connecting with the divine. So that is a Taoist model. Without getting down that rabbit hole too far, let me just say that the many sects that I referenced earlier, I don't remember if we had the mic on for that or not, but there are other areas and other models for personal development, but that's a common one in Taoism. And so in that one, you know, resilience can be seen as having the first and the second part. First part is by extending your legacy, you create some resilience in the things that you appreciate. If you're as lucky a person as I am to have a kid who, you know, seems to connect with these ideas, then that's a great joy, but not everybody has that. But in any case, you have fulfilled the requirement, let's say, in some parts of the Taoist canon for that. And then the second, the idea that mind and body are expressed as they were in Descartesian times. We are looking for an even more non-dual So if I were writing about these things, when I write about these things, I write about them, the body-mind, one word.

Hmm.

So resilience, I've been termed a medical miracle because in my certain condition that I have, pretty much everybody else is dead or they're in very, very dire condition where they're having all kinds of holes in their head and putting terrible drugs and all that. And it isn't clear entirely to people I work with to stay alive how it is that I am still alive. So resilience is— I've had to think about this a great deal personally lately. And there is something at our core which we can cultivate. And there is a whole slew of Taoist texts on the subject of the little embryo inside and keeping the little homunculus alive and very esoteric things that are not appropriate here. But having a practice that cultivates awareness of one single thing, Which I want to say in this connection is the key. And the one single thing is this newsflash that nobody really wants to hear. And the newsflash is, it's not about you.

Yes.

So, so much of the self-help literature which I try not to read and try not to contribute to because I feel— not that I judge it as not being worthwhile, but that I worry. And I'm not referring to your— what I'm sure is an excellent book, which I plan to read. But just as a category, I would say that books that read with messages that support narcissistic ideas of what one's life should be, entitlement, uh, you know, you deserve this and that. These, these, these messages and words are, are very loathsome to me because they enhance our disconnection one from the other. And they represent a world, they reinforce a world which all the weapons of mass distraction that appear in our media are constantly reinforcing a view of who and what we are that does not serve us. It serves various and sundry other interested parties, whether you want to call them your corporate masters or government or— I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist. Let me just say that there's a whole system of living which is not only in the West now. We exported it to Asia. So now it's everywhere. It's, it's material, it's capitalist, it's dog-eat-dog and all that zero-sum stuff. That is not the way. And no matter how many podcasts are out there about that, or how many books are written about that, or how many workshops are taught about that, that will not lead to the aforementioned evolutionary shift, in my opinion.

Is the way the way of center? Is that too simplistic to say that? And if that's even modestly true, what does that mean to you?

So let me liken the word that you used to another— what has become kind of a dirty word, honestly, to me. Shouldn't be. It isn't a dirty word, but in context to the things that I've just mentioned, it seems to have become a little sullied. And that word is mindfulness.

Yes.

So the word mindfulness, which is used widely in Buddhist circles and Jon Kabat-Zinn and many other people who have pioneered this idea, it's very important actually. Because the very first step in any kind of spiritual pursuit, no matter what your motivation for pursuing anything that you would think you would call spiritual, the very first thing— and my very dear and recently departed friend Mitchell Kanter, Doshin Kanter, who was a Zen monk, and a long-term, decades of friendship. He had this wonderful saying. He said, everything is happening exactly on schedule. And he also said that if we want any kind of spiritual awakening at all, the very first thing we must do is notice that something is going on. Something is going on. And this is such a seemingly trite and simplistic thing to say. And yet, if you go out into the forest and you just stop, or if you take a little boat and row out from the beach and just sit there and rock a little bit and you look around, even at night, the things you will smell and see in the sky and feel in the movement of water. And if you're in the forest, the things you will hear and smell and feel underfoot, if you just stop and pay attention, be, in Kabat-Zinn's terms, mindful of what's going on— he didn't invent that idea, of course. That's a Buddhist idea. But if you can be mindful, awareness that something is going on, which is not you. You are part of it, of course, because you're the one doing the perceiving. But it's more than you. And it just is going on. And it speaks exactly to your theme, your book, your podcast, which is of course that it's change.

Yes.

Right?

Exactly.

It's change that is going on.

Right.

So if, if you want to test that hypothesis, you say, all right, let's take you not to the sea and not to the forest, but into the deepest, furthest outreaches of space where the temperature is, you know, 0 degrees Kelvin, and we are as far as we could be from the origin point of the Big Bang. We are as far as matter and energy have gone from that essential initial point, and we are now at the place where nothing is moving because it's so cold that even atoms, even subatomic particles, are not moving. If you take away heat and you take away motion, you take away change. And when you take away change, you take away time. Because time is only something that we attribute— our senses connect with the fact that we can see things changing. If they don't change, you have no idea. Whether you've just been sitting there for a year or 1,000 years.

Right?

So in that circumstance, nothing is going on and you have nothing to notice. Right? So that's just a thought experiment to validate the point.

I think people had that experience during the pandemic. I'm making a

bit

of a joke.

That's funny. Yeah. Not quite 0 degrees Kelvin, but okay, I take your point. Yeah.

Yeah. And for a lot of people, that, that, that is a bit of a black hole of time that didn't— that stood still or, or can't— it just— yeah, it's, it's unaccounted for on some level. So the way— is the way harmony? Is this the— that play, as you said, the, the pendulum is such a great way to describe it for me to hear it that way, to have you sort of reaffirm that, um, the description of, of these extremes. And then there's this place where we, we are not, not unchanging. I mean, it's interesting because of the— when the pendulum, just to keep to that description, to that example, when the pendulum stops moving, it sits in a place of center of, I would say, harmony. I'm not a big fan of balance. I just kind of push back on this, at least on the concept that people are seeking a balance because it seems like the hardest work in the world to balance anything. And I was a lawyer for 18 years, so the fact that the scales of justice, this idea of balance is somehow You know, that the balance is connected to justice has always been an issue for me. But to find a harmony, that to me is a worthwhile pursuit. And that feels attainable, even if only in moments, but something that the human experience can—

So number one, if I'd known the attorney stuff, I would have worn a wig.

Oh man. Yeah.

So I'm very grateful to you for bringing me back to, to the rest of my point. I got a little distracted with the 0 degrees Kelvin, but where I was going with all that is that mindfulness is not by itself enough. It's not enough to notice that something is going on. It's not enough to notice the process of change or the passage of time, although it is required. It's the soil in which you must grow, because that's how it is. And if you don't even see that, you got zippo, right? Yeah. Noticing mindfulness is a very important step, and mindfulness practices of various sorts are a very good tool. Where I take— where I fork off from some mindfulness teachers is that I don't believe, nor do I teach, that that is sufficient. Right? It is necessary, but it is not sufficient. And without going into the whole difference between arhats and bodhisattvas and all that Buddhist stuff, which is useful actually, but not for now, your next work, after achieving some awareness is to become compassionate, humble, and frugal. Humble in the sense of understanding how little you or anyone else has any idea of what the hell's going on.

Yeah.

Frugal in the sense of awareness that we have finite resources. And that in, especially now, with far too many people on the planet and water wars and sand wars for concrete and so many other air wars and all that stuff that is already here and in some places devastating and for the rest of us coming soon, frugality is linked to compassion. Because you have to share those resources, not waste them. You have to think of people who don't have enough water when you're brushing your teeth and you leave the faucet running while you're doing that. Yeah. And water just literally goes down the drain because you can't be bothered to make a tiny turn and turn that thing off and then turn it back on when you need to just rinse your mouth with a glass or your hand and then move on. You know, there are 1,000 little things. Turn off the light when you leave a room. Your house, modest or grand, does not need to have 8,000 feet illuminated when you were sitting in the corner reading a book, right? We're so out of touch, so many of us are. And, you know, it's been my great privilege To be able to do monk work in places of dire, unimaginable poverty, to people listening, most likely listening to this, I suppose. And to have drilled into my memory not to waste any food, not to order more than you need at a restaurant just because you want to try 6 different things. And this does not make— and I hope this is clear— this is not a life of penury that I am suggesting. It does not make life poorer. It does not mean that we are not entitled to something. In fact, it means that we are entitled to something much bigger and greater and better than the third pastry we wanted to take one bite of and then send it all to the trash can. Right? It is a much more profound experience of connection, which utterly transcends such transient delights as a bite of this or a bite of that.

Yes. I think it goes back to what you said earlier, that the practice that cultivates awareness that it's not about me.

It's not About you or me, right? 4 little words.

Yep.

My goodness. How could that shooter go into a school if that was his mantra?

No, couldn't,

couldn't possibly,

couldn't,

couldn't possibly happen.

No, because there isn't that absorption of self, of

And you asked me about hallucinogens and ayahuasca and all that. There are various ways to achieve those states of mind, not only different compounds, but different practices. And I've had some experiences. Mostly in the last number of years, my health would not support some of the things that I would actually like to try to do that I haven't done. But I get there a little more arduously. But I've been doing it so long that it's not so painful anymore to stand in one place for a few hours. But when I began that practice, a few minutes was misery. So anyway, I'm not natural at such things. All that. work was. Everything, anything modest that I've achieved in this area at all has been not from native gifts, but just a lot of bitterness, cool, hard work, you

know?

Yes. Yeah.

I don't think that the practice element of many things can be under— can be overstated, that vigilance is so important, especially when it comes to the mind. At least that's my own experience of it. Maybe other people have an easier time with their thoughts than I do with mine. But it feels like the price of freedom in that— in freedom to choose, because you brought up choice, and choice is such an important thing. that freedom is— that the price of it is eternal, is vigilance forever.

Maybe your next book will be Change and Choice, right? Those 2 concepts are so inextricably intertwined that they kind of define us, I think, as human beings, even though it's tempting to think of a lot of other much more negative things defining us these days if you watch the news. But that is a very rich vein to mine, I think.

We're winding down our conversation, but I'm fascinated by what that thread is there. So let's follow that thread for just a moment more here. What's coming up for you with regard to those 2 things?

If you consider that the purpose of mindfulness is to make you aware that you have a choice, then you have taken a good step. I have like a 2-minute story. Do we have time for that?

Oh, absolutely we do.

Yeah, so I think this one helps. It's been widely repeated and it's on YouTube and all that. Years ago, I was I was in line for some tea at Starbucks. Not a big coffee drinker, but I do drink tea. And I was out to teach that day in the park, and I had forgotten to brew my own. And halfway there I went, ah, I'm going to have a dry day without some tea. And I had water with me, but I wanted the tea. And I stayed in the drive-through line, and when I got to the, to the menu board, I made my selection and I Talked to the girl who took the order, and I recognized her because every once in a while I went into that Starbucks and she had a heavy British accent. And I talked to her once or twice when I went in. She's from London. Anyway, I told her what I wanted, and then it was the next person's turn. But there was a line of cars in front of me, so I couldn't— after ordering, I couldn't move any further. And the guy behind me lays on his horn, opens his window, and yells, move up, you idiot, some such thing. And because I was a great and enlightened master guru to the stars, my first instinct was to— There we go. I was just going to get out of the car and go to his window and say it was around Christmas. I was going to send him to the dentist for a holiday visit. And I'll show you who you're honking. And I had like 3 inches between me and the bumper of the car in front of me. And so I put my hand on the door, I'm looking in the rearview— sideview mirror, and I see his face and he's kind of florid and agitated. And in that moment, I see my own face also, which looks exactly like the face of the guy I'm looking at. And this is a very sobering thing to see that I look just like him and to realize in that flash that whatever it is that got to him is now in me. He's communicated it to me.

Mm-hmm.

So I gently close the door and I don't get out. And when I get to the window, I pay for my tea and she says, would you like anything else? And I said, actually, I'd like to buy the coffee for the guy behind me. It's just, but he's an arse. Everybody heard him. And I said, yeah, I don't know. Maybe he's found out his wife has cancer. Maybe his kid ran away. Maybe he just got fired.

Right.

I don't know why he did that, but it's not my problem really. Just buys coffee. She said, well, the problem is that he didn't just buy coffee. He bought breakfast for his whole office and it's $100 or something. And I said, oh. And I look in my wallet, and as is so often sadly the case, there's a lone 10 in there. So I take out my credit card and I said, you know, just do it. She said, but— I said, just do it. It's a holiday. And she said, but— I said, do it, do it before I change my mind. Come on, just do it. So I did it and I signed it and I drove away.

Yeah.

And I didn't want to encounter him again. either to have him thank me or to give me the finger, whatever else was in his mind. So I took a sort of a Byzantine route where I was going so that I would not come to face him again. And then many hours later, I got home and I find my answering machine is chock-full of messages. And back in those days, a little window and it told you how many, and if it was too many, it was a little line through it. And I listened to the messages and they are, you know, they start from the Starbucks, the Starbucks, the Starbucks, the Starbucks, and Being born a Jewish kid in New York, I figured that the credit card was no good and they're after me. But anyway, but I knew it was okay. So I listened to the messages and then it's an NBC or ABC reporter calling me and I'm thinking, what? And he said, yes, this is my cell phone. I'm here at the Starbucks. And I have no idea what this is all about. And as I'm listening to these messages, the reporter calls again. I answered the phone. It's him. I said, listen. He says, I want to come to your house. And I say, no, no, no. You're not coming to my house. Is this a call about philanthropy for the holidays? Call Bill Gates. There's nothing. I bought a guy coffee. Well, you just should buy coffee. You bought— I said, okay. All right. So I bought some bagels. There's nothing here. Go away. He said, well, what you don't understand is that when you did that, the guy behind you did the same thing. And then that was 8 o'clock this morning. It's 3 in the afternoon. It's still going on.

Wow.

I said, well, that's interesting. So he came and he convinced me to meet him at the Starbucks. And what I explained to him very simply was that there are 3 doors that we can look at all the time. Door number 1, force against force. He honks, I get out, I whack him, I go to jail, I'm waving to my family through thick glass for Christmas. Door number 2, I say, you know, you're right, I'm an idiot. Let me spit shine your windshield and clean your hubcap. With my, with my sleeve for you while I'm at it. And door number 3 is something that is defined as an option for you to do in your conflict or your choice, which is simply defined as being not door number 1 and not door number 2. That's it. Unique every time. And in this case, it was to buy him the coffee because I got my harmony back, my equilibrium back. I cruised down the road. I spent $100, but okay, it was holiday. days and whatever. And so that door number 3 idea went really viral in those days. And NBC put that story internationally, and I got all kinds of, you know, emails from people. It's such a powerful thing.

Hmm.

And it was so small. All I did was search for how to keep my chill. That's it.

Yeah, it is. Uh, well, I'm not— we're not doing a tit for tat, because if so— and I'm a competitive guy, I grew up—

Well, you win.

No, no, no, I would lose. I would absolutely lose for sure. Um, but my, my small little just can't help myself moment to say this was, um, in this, in this, this book, we, we, we talk about the pause, ask, choose, this model, um, that, that, um, isn't anything profound, but it— but on some level, its simplicity, I suppose, is similar to what you just described. I got interviewed by Psychology— by a reporter from Psychology Today a couple of weeks back after the book got, got out. and, and was actually wanting to get my thoughts on Will Smith, you know, the very, very famous actor, uh, philanthropist, all of that, you know, author, the works, and to discuss what had happened on, you know, at the Academy Awards when he got up and, and slapped, you know, his, his, uh, his friend, um, Chris Rock. And I said, yeah, I'd be happy to be interviewed on that, about that for your article. And what I said to me, what I observed there was the lack of what— it was the antithesis, the exact opposite of what you just described. And in that moment, my view was that he didn't pause, he didn't ask, and then his choice was defined, was already sort of predetermined. because it was more about his— the, the older groove in his record that was the, the response or the reaction to trauma. And, um, and we don't have the time, and it's not the point of this show to kind of dive into that. I just said that from a standpoint of, of a conversation about, about being change-proof and about developing resilience, which is why they were interviewing me, I said even someone who sits in such a seat as his. You know, the seat that any— almost anybody you could, you could ask would want to, would want to trade, would want to sit in that seat at the Oscars in the front row and be, and be a, a wealthy, famous, so highly regarded person. And he's, he's going to win the Academy Award later that night. He's going to win an Oscar that night. And then in that moment, to understand that, that as a human being, he was, he was just He was depleted to the point where he could not make— he couldn't take that breath the way you did, take that beat to then ask the questions that you asked. What is my— what is my best course of action here? What are my— what are my options? I can get out of the car, I go punch that guy. I can, as you say, uh, You know, cower to the aggression and whatever. I could choose something else. I could choose to be compassionate. I can choose to open my heart in the strangest of, you know, like oddest of circumstances that I would open my heart to someone who's being abusive. You asked those questions. You made a choice. That choice had a ripple effect that was transformative. was transformational that day and beyond, I'm sure. Will Smith had that same opportunity, but he chose the path that you were ready to choose but didn't, and he just got up and—

Door number 1.

You know?

Yeah. Door number 1, force against force.

Yeah.

So, I guess, you know, my parting thought on this is this. That in order to— people listen to this and they go, well, that's nice that the monk figured that out, but how does that help me? Because I don't know what door number 3 is, and I can't even stop myself from cocking my fist. And the answer to that, which is another conversation maybe for another day, has to do with creating space in your mentation so that you have a little bit of room to find that. And, you know, that space is created through these various practices. So,

yes,

that's at least one way to frame it.

That's— I'm so glad we're going to end there, because when I asked you about your practices earlier, whether it's practices that are spiritual or practices that don't even have to be tied to spirituality, but are more about how do you practice making right decisions? What is your process? to practice and perform right decision-making, making right choices. And I think that's ultimately what I hope that this book is— our latest book is about. I know this has been a part of your life's work. So I would love it if you would share with our audience where people can find out more about the work that you've been doing in the world, the 20— now you've written 20 books, But just the things that are most important to you now, where can people go to find out more about that?

I have a website, which is just monkyunrou, which is my name, Y-U-N as in Nancy, R-O-U, .com. And my classes and various things are listed there. Many other podcast interviews are linked there. My books have become, particularly during the pandemic and in its aftermath, most effective way for me to communicate that, and interviews like this, for which I— the opportunity for which I thank you. Everything is there. I did come out with a memoir. It's not the most important thing in my oeuvre. I kind of did it kicking and screaming. But if you're curious to how somebody starts out as a little boy in Manhattan and ends up a Taoist monk, you can You can read about it there. It's called The Monk of Park Avenue. Humorous, I hope. And there's a more— there's a book that's a little more expository about my beliefs and how I see the world. It's called Mad Monk Manifesto. Hmm. And then there's something about nature, which I love very much. It's my favorite of these 3, which is called Turtle Planet. in which I do an Animal Farm kind of a thing, but I'm interacting directly with nature and sharing my experiences. I kind of like that one. It was very well received. These are all within the last few years, and I have, you know, several new books in the pipeline now, so you can easily sign up for my alerts and newsletter. I do have a weekly— a monthly newsletter. It's a subscription. But it's very popular. People like it. It's a few thousand words. All that is on the website. You just click and you're in. So thanks for giving me a chance to mention that.

It's been a wonderful pleasure. I've just— as you said, maybe there's a part 2 to this. I think our audience will be clamoring to have us talk a little bit more about some of these things that we were only able to even go a few inches deep on. But I so appreciate you. I appreciate what your work has been in the world and what you're continuing to do. I wish you the greatest resilience, resiliency, mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, so that you can continue to do this work that we also so need. And with that, folks, I You know, we have show notes, so please check out the show notes. You'll get more and more information, even more links and things to click to be able to learn more about Munkhyun Roh. And I would love to get your own feedback. So as always, please leave a review. Let us know what you think. Share it with a friend if you know somebody that's in it.

Of course, will do. And again, I thank you for the honor and the opportunity.

Yes. And I thank our community as always for for everything you bring to the table for us. Please let us know your feedback. You go to adammarkel.com/podcast, leave a comment. I will personally respond to those. And again, if you have a friend, family member, somebody that would really benefit from listening to this conversation, please feel free to share that with them as well.

I will do so in my newsletter and other places. So I'll see what we can do.

Well, I just absolutely love that conversation. With Monk Hyun Roh. He is, as you heard, as you noticed, I'm sure, a very peaceful person, but yet also in touch with his normal emotions, the emotions that we all have, sometimes that include anger, that include, you know, just getting good and worked up about things, getting good and pissed off even about things. And I think it's, it's so important that we understand that just because somebody is a monk doesn't mean that they don't feel. It doesn't mean that they don't have emotions. In fact, that would be the strangest of all things. I, I believe that we would, we would somehow be looking to someone for guidance who was not able to realize the expression of their, their most basic feelings, that, that they didn't have access even To a fuller expression or the full expression of their feelings. So it just blew me away. It made me feel comfortable and warm and welcome and everything else to be in the presence of somebody who, while studying Taoist principles and is a monk and has been— was ordained a monk in 1980. So, you know, for just a minute now, he's been practicing and and vigilantly and diligently working on himself, he expressed so clearly to us that it's ultimately not about us. It's not about me. It's not about him. It's about other, others. That ultimately that is the practice that he is working on to cultivate an awareness that it's not it's not about me. Meaning, when we're saying that it's not about me, it makes us— it makes it possible for us to be compassionate toward others. It makes it possible for us to have humility in the face of so many things that we just don't understand. It enables us to be frugal. Those were the words he used. The word he used And to see frugality as not needing to be so inflated and so satiated with things in our lives, but rather to understand that there are people that have limited resources and quite a bit less than we do. And to be able to appreciate our our privilege, even though he didn't use that word, but that we all have so many things that we can feel we're privileged to have and to be not merely aware of those things, but to be grateful for them. And then to be able to make better choices in the moment because of that appreciation, that compassion. That frugality, that humility that enables us to sit in the seat of the present a little differently, the seat of awareness just a little differently than when we are all-consuming and All absorbed, self-absorbed in our own experience. It's not an easy thing to do. To, you know, he described the story of him waiting in line for his Starbucks, you know, the monk waiting for his tea, as it were. And to have a gentleman, a person behind him leaning on the horn that he ultimately had to decide how to deal with and in what manner would he deal with this aggressive behavior from someone he didn't know. And so I couldn't have been more blown away by where that story went and what he shared about it and ultimately what the ripple effect in the world was from his decision in that moment. But we all have this chance, this opportunity to pause and ask and choose. And the monk certainly shared with us today how important our choices are. And I felt, again, just so in tune with him and the fact that even our brand new book, Change Proof, is very much a book about choice. It's a book about how we pause and ask And choose, and that ultimately that process, that practice, that performing that ritual of pause, ask, and choose is ultimately a thing that leads us to make better decisions, ultimately be more resilient, ultimately be able to sit in the present moment a little bit more comfortably. Especially when the present moment is just changing always, and there's so many unknowns and so much uncertainty that is truly a part of every single moment, at least on this little spit of sand spinning through infinite space we call home, Earth. So I again love the conversation. Love the connection and, and the insights that we were able to get today from Monk Hyun Roh. And I know you will all and have already enjoyed so much of it. So please, again, as always, share what your thoughts are about it. Share it with a friend. Let us know if you have questions for myself or for the monk. And of course, if you've not yet taken your own assessment, gotten your own resilience score by establishing your own mental, emotional, physical, spiritual baseline for resilience, all you have to do is go to resiliencerank.com, resiliencerank.com. And in 3 minutes, you will literally get that baseline score as well as, as well as a whole host of resources that will help you to create greater mental resilience, emotional resilience, physical and spiritual resilience, including access to some of the resources that were referred to today in this episode. And again, so happy you've joined us here. Look forward to getting your feedback as always, and enjoy.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change-proof. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leave Leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcast. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com/becomechangeproof.