What Makes A Healthy Mind? with Cortland Dahl & Raghu Markus – Mindrolling Podcast Ep. 504

It can feel to us as though we're failing personally, if we're anxious. When I think of my 18 year old self, I felt like I'm just, I'm a mess. Like, why am I like this? Like, and as though it's my personal fault that I'm depressed or I'm anxious or I might, you know, I'm struggling to just be focused and not be distracted all the time. But it's our biology, it's the world. It's completely predictable why we respond in these ways. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

Hey, everyone. Raghu back with Mind Rolling and Cortland Dahl. Cortland, namaste. Nice to see you.

Wonderful to see you. Great to be with you.

So I first met Cortland, who is. You'll have to do some corrections here, but Executive director of Mingju Rinpoche's foundation. Correct.

Which is called Tergar International. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I did a podcast with him. They were doing some kind of program that was a delight. And I thought I. I just wanted to spend a little bit more time with you. So, yeah, here we are.

Discussion.

Yeah, yeah, it was really great. But you know what? I didn't. Now that I'm doing this with you and did a little bit more homework than I might have done last time, I am like a bit blown away by what you have done. I mean, Cortland has translated some intense Tibetan text. Okay, let's start there. We're going to talk about that and of course, his involvement with Turgar and Mingjir Rinpoche and what's the other major output that you have?

Yeah, so I have sort of. My life is divided between my work with Mingyu Rinpoche and Tergar on the one hand. And then I'm also very involved with the center for Healthy Minds, which is an interdisciplinary research center at the University of Wisconsin and Madison. Huh.

Right. And that you're living near there. Right?

Yeah, Yep, yep, I live in Madison.

Right. Anyhow, I just, as I said, you know, I was going through and looking all the different things. And not just that, but eight years living in Tibetan refugee settlements in India and Nepal and never mind just being able to hang out with Mingjir Rinpoche. By the way, people, if you listen to Mind Rolling before, I've done a couple of. I was fortunate to get together with him for a couple of podcasts that are really worthwhile listening to. Actually, I did it with Krishnas, who's also a major, you know, considers. We do Consider ourselves to be students of his. So wait, we got to go back here now you're a kid, you know, and you're getting into teenagerhood. What dawned on you that there was, I always say the same thing because it's what happened to me, that there's a path to happiness?

Yeah, well, I. I'd love to say that I was just some spiritual prodigy or savants and having some amazing insights or something, but the reality is I was wound very tight. You know, I was a kind of a. A curious but pretty anxious kid. And in particular, I had a lot of social anxiety. And one of the things that used to completely throw me into a total emotional tailspin is public speaking. So it's ironic that I do so much public speaking now, but just to give you a sense of how intense it was when I was in high school, I believe I got so wound up being on stage. This was like a choir thing or something. At high school, I. I literally fainted. I, like, passed out cold, face down. And not only that, my mom, like, ran down the aisle and leapt onto the stage. It's fortunate that I was unconscious for that happening because it would have been way worse. Yeah, exactly. As a high school student, that's not, you know, let's just say my. My coolness factor did not exactly go up that week. So I was. Yeah, so I was wound really tight. Yeah, I kind of. As a kid and I got to college and the kind of low grade social anxiety of my high school years kind of went through the roof and I was. It was just not. I was just not in a good place. I was really overwhelmed by meeting new friends and starting over at a new school and all the stuff, just all the stresses of being in college. But that turned out to be a real blessing in disguise because it got me looking, you know, it got me curious about what I could do to work with my mind and emotions. And as luck would have it, I've always been a reader, kind of a voracious reader. So I stumbled upon some books on meditation at the time. And I've always been kind of fanatic about whatever I do. So that. That just got me started in a lifelong journey. And yeah, I knew, I would say within a year with actually probably within six months of meditating regularly, that I had discovered something that was going to define my life. And many ways it has. I had no idea where it would lead, but it really. Meditation has been at the center of my life ever since.

Wow. It wasn't a big dose of acid, right?

Well, there was a little bit of that mixed in somewhere along the way too, but. But probably that. There was a lot of things. Probably more the anxiety than anything else. But I had.

I had the combo. I had the anxiety, depression, teenager, hood. I was saved by music, actually. Particularly my big story is, is as a kid being somehow ushered into a club where John Coltrane was playing with his quartet in Montreal, where I'm from. And I absolutely had my first. What? Well, it wasn't my first, but I didn't realize it at the time. Out of body experience. I mean, you know, I just was gone. And so between him and Dylan, I. I kind of. Okay, I got a assuage. I'm not the only one that's completely, you know, anxiety ridden and you know, then a little bit of psychedelic. And then I met Ram Dass. So, you know, that was my combo.

What a journey. Yeah. Coltrane and Ram Dass and a little bit of acid mixed in and something's going to happen.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So how did you meet Rinpoche? That, that's personally, you know, that my favorite thing is people's stories of being with. With these kind of beings.

Well, let's see. So I started meditating. That's, you know, this is the early 90s, you know, 93 or something that, you know, those. That time in college when I started meditating and I. From there I. I got interested in psychology and science at the same time. So I was. I was working in a lab. We were studying intelligence, actually. And so at that time I thought I would. I would go into grad school and study psychology. But my father, and probably what was for sure the best gift I've ever received, gave me the means to just backpack after college. And I went to Asia. I had already done a study abroad trip to Asia, so I'd already traveled there a little bit. And I went at the beginning, kind of almost like a tourist, just kind of running around and seeing all the sites and at a certain point got very bored of that and decided I just wanted to really practice and meditate. So I was doing a lot of yoga, a lot of meditation, just going different places. I'd stay for two or three weeks and just, you know, practice. And I was very. I was probably the most solitary backpacker in history. I wasn't meeting. I had like, no interest in, like, the social part of it. I was very much on my own.

You weren't going to Kulu Valley and smoking Charis with the sauce.

I wasn't. I was, I was on My own, with a big pile of books. In fact, I think I had more books in my backpack than clothing or anything else. It was just carrying, lugging a bunch of books and reading and meditating. So let's see. I went. You know, that was a turning point for me because I went back after that period of traveling. I went to Naropa University and did a master's degree in Buddhist Studies. And that's where I first connected with the Tibetan tradition. I met Dzogchen Punla Rinpoche and Kempo Tsoptam Gyamsa Rinpoche, two great Tibetan masters. And I had been really, I would say, turned off, to be totally honest, by the Tibetan tradition. I was always drawn to, like, the more Zen simplicity than all of the, you know, the imagery and everything I saw in the Tibetan at the Tibetan world. But they were just so impressive as people. I just couldn't. I mean, it was probably like when you met Ram Dass. It's just like, I don't know what's going on with these people, but there was something different in a really, really inspiring way about being with them and being around them, that it opened me up to that tradition. And I thought, okay, there's clearly something I don't understand here, so I'll lean in, lean in a bit and see what there is to learn. So from there, I finished that master's degree, and again, I thought I would go into more academic work, do a PhD and I went over to Asia. I went back to Asia, and I thought I would learn Tibetan for a year, and then I would go back to grad school again. And I ended up, as you mentioned earlier, I ended up staying for. For eight years, living in Kathmandu and, you know, living in Tibetan refugee settlements. And that's where I met Mingy Rpoche. And there's a whole story to that. But I met him in about 2000. So, you know, now 23 years ago, when I was living. Living in Kathmandu and really learning Tibetan at the time and doing retreat, which was. Has always been my main passion, is just deep practice.

Okay, what's the story? You met Rinpoche Mingju, by the way? Everybody, just. Just to give some kind of context, a number of years ago, this is someone who's young. I mean, Minja, what is it, mid, mid-40s at this point?

Yeah, he's probably 40. I think he's 46, maybe right now.

Yeah. And. But he comes from a lineage of extra family, the most extraordinary family, all of them. I mean, the father, Tulku Ergyen Rinpoche was one of the great meditation masters of the last century. There's a wonderful book. Every time Mingjir comes up and we talk about it, I always say, you've got to get this book. He wrote an autobiography, Tulku Urgen, called Blazing Splendor. Splendor. That's it.

But it is. It's an amazing book. It's like. It's just old stories of old Tibet, and it's just amazing.

Yeah, it's extraordinary. Anyhow, he had three sons. One, Two. No, four sons. One who just passed, I think, last year.

Yes.

Choking. Nima, Tsokni and Mingji. And they're all extraordinary teachers. I mean, they are so elemental to the Zeitgeist of the transference of Tibetan knowledge into a context that we Westerners can. Can understand. I'm gonna. Hopefully we'll get enough time to talk about a little bit of something. I've been reading of Tsokni, who did a book with a good friend, Daniel Goleman, who you may know Danny, probably.

Yep, yep.

I know because of Richie. Yeah. And so he took off about six, seven years ago. Six, seven years ago. Out of his monastery. He was the head of a couple of monasteries, and he didn't tell anybody except his father. And he just, boom, took off in India without. With a few shekels, rupees, rather, and. And went through several years of extraordinary where he was not the honored abbot of a. Of a monastery, he was just a regular. He turned himself into a sadhu, begging for his food and so on. So. And extraordinary. And he did die, and, you know, he had an NDE because of a terrible dysentery that he got. Anyhow, this is an. Just something. He's somebody really special. And I just. There's the context for your story.

Yeah. Thank you. So, yeah, it's true. So Miggy Rpochet is. I'm far from the most. From being the most unbiased person, but he's. Yeah, he's a. One of the great living masters of the Tibetan tradition. And so he's, as you said, he's, you know, and he's in his mid-40s now. When I met him, this is around 2000. So he was quite young. We were both quite. Almost the same age. So we were both in our early 20s. At the time, I was living in Kathmandu. In fact, I had just moved there. I had studied Tibetan in Darjeeling, India, for a while, and then I moved to Kathmandu, largely because another teacher who I had met and was studying with another great, great master named Chatur Rinpoche, who is one of the kind of the towering figures of last century. And so I went there basically to be around him and to spend time with him. But he was in his 90s, in his mid-90s. He ended up passing away a few years ago, well over a hundred. And so he wasn't very actively teaching. And when I met Mingyi Rinpoche was like meeting a young Chalpa Rinpoche. I mean, it was like meeting just, you know, just one of these great living meditation masters. And the circumstances of our meeting were quite, I would say, quite unexpected. And so I. I had moved there and I was living on next to nothing. You know, I had. I had rented a room on this little dusty dirt road, and I was sleeping on a blue foam mat in a sleeping bag, and I had a desk that I bought for $5, you know, and it was just, you know, living like literally on next to nothing. And the place I stayed didn't have any hot water. And it can get quite cold in the, in the winter, there's no heat and it's, you know, so it, it can get a little cold. And there was a Hyatt hotel that had just opened this, you know, in the area where I was living. And for, I think like 20 or $30 US dollars, you could get a membership to their, like, gym and their spa. So basically I would go there and I would take a hot shower because it was like the only place where I could go and decompress. And so as luck would have it, one day I was there and I had never heard of Mingy Rinpoche. I had literally had never even heard the name Mingy Rinpoche. He was not really teaching, and I mean, he'd maybe taught a few times, but he wasn't certainly a well known teacher at that time. But his brother, Sokni Rinpoche, who you just mentioned, was pretty well known and he had been teaching and had a following in the West. And I had met him, hadn't met him, but I had. I had been to a night a teaching he gave one time. So I had been in the room with him and seen him. So I was actually, it's so strange to say, like a place you meet your, you know, your main teacher. I was in the steam bath at the Hyatt Hotel, and I'm just sitting there by myself, nobody else is there. And suddenly two Tibetan guys walk in and I had no way of knowing they were even lamas or monks or anything. Because they were just wearing towels, right? They were just two Tibetan guys who walked in. And I kind of recognized Tsokni Rinpoche. He looked familiar, even though I'd only met him or seen him once. But the other Mingy Rinpoche, at that time, I didn't recognize him at all. And so I was trying to figure out who they were. And I didn't want to just come out and say, hey, are you Tsokni Rinpoche? So I said something like, I think I maybe asked him his name. And he gave me. Tibetans all have, like 50 different names. So he gave me some other name. Not. He didn't say Topony. Rinpoche said something else, like it was Girme Dorje or something. He said. And then I said, okay, that's not helpful. And then I said, you know, what is your lineage? Like, what's your lineage of Tibetan Buddhism? And then he said, Druk Bakagyu. And I realized, actually, I don't know Dzokni and Rinpoche's lineage at the time. So that didn't help either, even though he told me. And then. So I couldn't quite get a handle on if it was him or not. And then he asked me some questions. He said, oh, what are you doing? And I said, oh, I'm studying at Shikunima Rinpoche's monastery nearby, which, again, is one of the other brothers that you knew. So this is basically their half brother. And then he looked at me. He kind of. He did the sign of like, ooh, you know, Tsuchiken Ema Rinpoche is a little. Maybe not all there, a little crazy or something, really. Yeah, he actually said that. And he was like. He was smiling and joking. And I thought, okay, only a little brother could say that, you know, about a very high esteem dilemma. I mean, nobody other than a brother would. Would talk about Chukinima Rinpoche. So then I realized it must be Zokane Rinpoche. But still, I had no idea who Miggy Rinpoche was. And he didn't say much. He was very quiet. He kind of. I mean, Dzokny Rinpoche is very gregarious and outgoing. So he was talking that whole time and had a whole, you know, long conversation with him, and he kind of laughing and joking. So that went on and they left, and I didn't. I didn't connect at all. I didn't. I didn't have any. Some heart opening moment or anything like that. That first encounter. So fast forward, like Three or four months later, somebody had put up a newsletter on the wall of this monastery. And I was, as I said, I was studying. They had a kind of a Buddhist studies courses you could take at this monastery. And there's a bulletin board, and I still remember the hallway and where it was. And on that bulletin board somebody put up a newsletter. And in the newsletter it had a picture of Mingyu Rinpoche and it had, you know, a page of a bio of him, and it talked about how he had done years and years of retreat. You know, in his early years, he did a. By the time he was 20 years old, he had already done almost 10 years of retreat. So just amazing upbringing and just an extraordinary life he had, even though he was in his early 20s. Just those early. Those 20 years were quite extraordinary. And I just immediately felt, I want to study with this teacher. This is exactly who I've been looking for. And I can't believe I was in the room with him and I didn't realize it. And on the spot I just started making these aspirations like, may I study with him in this life. May I have the good fortune to meet him again. And. And I just kind of in my mind went on and on, and I felt like this. This kind of moment of devotion, I guess you could say. And the very next day I. I went back to that same place, the Hyatt again, and, you know, to. To go and to warm up a bit in the cold winter. And Mingy Rinpoche was there sitting on the bench in the locker room of the Hyatt Hotel alone. And. And it was just. Yeah, I mean, it was. To me, it was just astounding to walk in. And I had been going there regularly, of course, had not seen him in that time. And as far as I know, I've never known him to go there before or other than that, those two times, I've never known him to spend time there because he has a monastery on the other side of the God is.

Real, as they say, song.

Yeah, exactly. It was just. For me, I was just floored to run into him. Right. And. Yeah, and so I've. Yeah, I've been studying closely with him and working with him in some ways ever since.

By the way, everybody, one thing I did not mention about. I mean, this is not somebody who came in free. Oh, and none of us come in free. I mean, there's rare examples of that, of Siddhas, you know, don't have that thing going on no more, us and them. But he came in and he was dealing with anxiety, which maybe that attracted you because of your own experience in that way. And. And his father helped him through meditation to really. And. And. And perspective, not just meditation and perspective that he's been sharing ever since then with his students. So. Yeah.

Yeah, that definitely attracted me. I mean, he talks openly about his. I mean, as you said, he. He had anxiety and panic attacks from the time he was a young kid, and he talks very openly about it. And that's not common in Tibetan culture to. To speak so openly, especially for a high lama, as he is with a huge international following. And I know for me and many, many other people, you know, it just opens the door to. To just being human. And he teaches a lot about meditation and the path of awakening, kind of using his own examples of how he worked with his own mind and emotions, which is profoundly helpful in human.

Yeah. Can you share just a couple of anecdotes of being with him and in the way that truth was presented to you for your own transformational process?

Yeah, I'd be happy to. You know, when I met him. So I. As I said, I met him around the year 2000. I started meditating in the early 1990s, and I was pretty, you know, intensive about it. I was doing retreats, even though I had no idea what I was doing. I was trying to do my own solitary meditation retreats. In fact, where I am right now, I'm at. My family, for generations, has had a cabin up in northern Minnesota in the Boundary Waters. I think my great, great grandfather bought an island in the Great depression for like $400 or something like that. So we've. We've had this really special remote place, and, you know, so I started doing retreats up here where I'm now, and it's just a very special place. And I had no idea what I was doing, but I was very. I was drawn to this idea of kind of deep meditation practice. And when I met Rinpoche, I. You know, it wasn't as though I was, you know, I had a sort of a false confidence. You know, I. I kind of felt like I knew what I was doing. I was reading all these books, but I didn't really have a teacher. And I had met some teachers, but I wasn't studying, you know, directly under their guidance other than just going to a few retreats here and there. But I still remember the very first time I received teachings from him. It was as though he just cleared away all the cobwebs in my mind, all the. The misunderstanding and Misconceptions about meditation and the spiritual path that I didn't even know I had. And I think a lot of it was seeing how much I was wrestling with my mind and had an adversarial relationship with my own inner experience. And there was a revelation to me that all of these things I was resisting and fighting, like, just having too many thoughts or even something simple like, you know, meditating or being in retreat and getting really sleepy, but fighting that experience, or certainly my own emotions, like the anxiety that, you know, I had early on in my practice. And he had this way of just showing that the practice is not in the absence of those experience or just trying overcoming them, but really by embracing them and exploring them, that you come to experience, you know, these. These. The nature of mind, or these. This kind of the spaciousness and openness of our being is within those experiences. Not when we can finally get rid of all of our inner demons. It's. It's by kind of leaning into all of that. And that was just a revelation to me. And the practical side of that, of just step by step, how do you actually begin to shift experience so we're not just constantly in this tug of war with our mind, emotions, and with the world. And part of it was his teaching. He has a unique gift. You know, different teachers have their own different styles, and, you know, they're kind of. Each have their own special sauce, so to speak. And his, I would say, is he's a master of the path of really just. It's so clear. Here's the step to take. Here's what you need to do right now. Here's that step to take. And then also, I think confidence of this sense of it's here, it's right here. You just need to look, you just need to know how to open up to it. And it's right here waiting for you. Not this. Like, there's just this endless process that maybe after 20 lifetimes, you'll figure it out, but, like, no, it's right here. It's right now. And here's. Here's how you can just take a simple step to see it for yourself. So that, to me, I feel like, was so profound. The other thing I would say, and I've seen this, you know, I've been very fortunate to spend time with him, not just receiving teachings and being on retreats, but behind the scenes, you know, working with him, you know, for years now. And it's just extraordinary that he is just the most even person. I mean, just if you ever, ever Watched a video or been to a retreat with him, and you see him, he's funny, he's light, but has this, you know, kind of profound simplicity of his teachings. And he's literally like that 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Like, seeing that, that person on the stage is. That's how he always is. And he's just seeing the world through the lens of Buddha nature and just seeing that in small ways, in large ways, you know, when nobody's looking, that that's how he is. And it's just so inspiring to be around somebody like that who's just been so steeped in the tradition that it's just who they are all the time. So, yeah, it's been a great gift to, to get to know him and spend time with him.

Fortunate. Yes. Good karmas. I met again through a podcast, Zoichi Rinpoche. Do you know him, Zoe Rinpoche?

No. No, I don't.

Oh, he's phenomenal. He's just one, A very jovial monk who has, you know, this great perspective on not taking yourself too seriously. And his, his mantra is, don't struggle against the struggle. You'll be fine, you know?

Yeah.

Now, okay, so you're, you learned Tibetan in order and became a translator. I mean, you know, I'm, we do stuff with Bob Thurman, who I'm sure you know Bob, and, you know, he tells me when I first met him. Yeah, no, in a month or two. Some crazy thing. He learned Tibetan, you know, I mean, how long did it take you?

I, I'm the opposite of that. I, I know people who are savants with languages, and for me, it was pure brute force. Um, so it's, you know, it's funny because I, I, I, I've have spent a lot of time translating these ancient texts, and I, I never had any aspiration to do that. I feel like my life has been a series of accidents. And, I don't know, for whatever reason, I'm just not one of these people who have, who's had a lot of, you know, oh, this is what I'm going to do with my life, and this is what I want to do. It's, it's, it's. I think a lot of my path has just been opening open, staying open to whatever's in front of me in that moment and just trusting. And it's led all these really weird, unexpected places, so learning Tibetan and translating was one of them. As I said, I had no interest or no aspiration to do that when I Went to Naropa. They this. So it was this master's degree in Buddhist studies that I mentioned earlier, earlier in the discussion. They had a few different paths within the degree program. One of them was a language path. The other one, I think was a contemplative studies where you could learn about other contemplative traditions besides Buddhism. And I kind of thought, well, you know, Tibetan language, that sounds kind of cool. Like, I've never really learned languages. I wasn't a language person. You know, I kind of like failed out of Spanish in high school. You know, I was not, I was not at all like a link. I was the opposite of a language savant. But it more sounded cool. I thought, oh, I'll learn Tibetan. I don't know, that sounds kind of funky. I'll try that. So I, I did that. I took, I took, you know, two years of just, you know, kind of college level Tibetan and frankly, I didn't learn that much. I learned grammar, I would say, well, in those years, not because any fault of the training, but there's only so much you can learn, you know, from a few hours a week, you know, taking classes and not being immersed. And then when I went over there, when I went after I finished that degree and I went over to Asia, to India and Nepal, then I thought I would study Tibet deeper. Not again because I was going to be a translator, but because to do PhD level academic work in Buddhist studies, you basically need to learn these languages. And so I thought I would study further my, my study. So I went there and, you know, I wish I was Bob Thurman and picked it up in a month. But I, I learned, I, I met some people and actually the first thing I did, which I would say was a, you know, a rare moment of intelligence on my behalf, a lot of trial and error. But one thing I actually did that was relatively smart is I talked to people who had been there a long time and I saw that there was a few people who, who seemed to be very fluent in Tibetan and were translating or, or at least had just gotten fluent. And there was a lot of other people who had been there for years and weren't and really had learned a little Tibetan, but had never gotten to the point where they were fluent. And I asked the people that really had become fluent what they did. And the common theme, not surprisingly, was that they had completely immersed themselves in the Tibetan world, whereas a lot of the other people, they were hanging out with, other, you know, kind of expats who had come from Europe or From the, you know, US or Canada or whatever. And. And, you know, that was fine, but they just weren't learning Tibetan that fast because they were hanging. They just weren't immersed. And so I. I just got fanatic about it. I mean, I was. I was kind of famous in the area in a not good way, because I literally was, like, walking around, like, with note cards, like flashcards, memorizing Tibetan words constantly, like, all time. Like, I. I picked up a Tibetan book, like a really well known Tibetan text that's available in English called the Jewel Ornament of Liberation. It's kind of one of these classical Tibetan texts, but I had the Tibetan, and I literally took the first word and memorized it and then just started memorizing every single word in the text until there were no words left, basically until I. I just knew every word. And as you might imagine, that was not quick or easy, but I was.

Just understanding what it meant as well. Right.

Yeah, I would take the word. What I was doing is I would write down the word in Tibetan on a little note card, and then I would write a sentence that had the word in it, like, underneath. So I kind of had the context. And then I would look up, of course, the meaning of the word in a Tibetan dictionary, like a Tibetan English dictionary. And then I was just. I was memorizing those. And it was probably an extremely inefficient way to learn the language. So. But I did that, and I. Yeah, and I was just hanging out. I wasn't. I mean, I'm not a social person by nature, so I was. I was not hanging out. You know, I didn't make many friends, and I. The people I knew were Tibetan, and I was hanging out with Tibetans, and. Yeah, so I learned Tibetan. And again, even then, I was not thinking about translating. But I had met Chato Rinpoche, this other really amazing master, and he didn't speak any English. He didn't have other, other non Tibetans around him. So to learn from him, I had to learn Tibetan. To get to receive any meditation instructions, I had to learn to speak Tibetan. So I met him, and then I just studied my butt off. And I think it was about seven months of really hardcore study before I could really understand teachings, Dharma teachings. And then I went back to him and started, you know, learning, receiving teachings, and, you know, started doing retreat and practicing under his guidance.

Amazing, man.

Wow.

So then you went and trans. I mean, you've translated a number of books, but this one caught my eye. Distinguishing phenomena from their intrinsic nature. Holy Jesus.

That's a mouthful. Yeah, yeah.

But in it is this story, which let me preface it a little bit. I did a podcast the other day over the last couple of days with somebody who. It was a reflection on his Holiness Dalai Lama and Greta Thunberg around what's going on with climate and environment. Incredible book, actually. Anyhow, I was saying to her, I gotta say, I am, you know, I'm probably archipelago in that. For instance, I saw an article, this is just a few days ago, in the New York Times about a. A group of whales, I think, off Australia, that formed a heart.

Oh, I saw that. That was amazing.

And came into shore to die, but formed a heart first. And I said to her, I. I couldn't. As soon as I saw what it was, I just shined it on. I couldn't. I couldn't open to the suffering. It was just. And I said, I'm certainly archetypical. She ended up doing a. A beautiful meditation about the, you know, eco anxiety, basically, and how to work through it and more make friends with it. And anyhow, in this book that you translated, I don't know if you want to tell the story, but it's Asanga and the story with Maitreya Buddha, right?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, yeah, same thing. Except somebody let me tell. Do you want to quickly tell the story?

Yeah, yeah, I'd be happy to. So. So Asanga is one of the towering figures of the. The Buddhist philosophical tradition. You know, it's basically a Sangha and Nirbharjana, you know, are kind of revered as like the two greatest thinkers of the Buddhist tradition. And the Sangha in particular. I mean, of course they're both realized, you know, thought to be realized, you know, awakened Buddhas. But Asanga in particular is kind of the yogi, you know, it represents sort of like the yogic side of the tradition. And this text that you mentioned, there's five texts that come from a Sangha and his interactions with Maitreya, like the kind of iconic future Buddha, Maitreya. And so I worked with, you know, with some friends and colleagues on translating these texts. So as the story goes, the Asanga was a meditator and just went and was meditating in the caves and doing kind of very devotional practices and is said basically to. There's a whole long story, Mel. I'll kind of say the abbreviated version, but basically he's. He's meditating and meditating on Maitreya, you know, doing kind of a devotional practice, but he's not getting Anywhere you, You know, it's just like it feels like he's, you know, banging his head on a wall and he's meditating, but there's just no sense of connecting with Maitreya. And so he keeps practicing and keeps practicing. And kind of the root of the story is that Maitreya was there all along, and he just. His mind was not pure enough to see Maitreya. And kind of the deeper meaning, I think you could say, is about our Buddha nature. You know, it's that we're not seeing our Buddha nature. And his Buddha nature was there all along, and he was only seeing the impurities, you know, the. The seeming impurities of his mind and was not tapping into that Buddha nature. So the way the story is told is, you know, he's meditating and meditating and not seeing Maitreya. And then finally, you know, kind of grows despondent and, you know, tries, sort of leaves his practice behind a number of times and kind of goes back and back and forth and back and forth. And finally it has this sort of breakthrough moment. And again, there's all sorts of trials and tribulation in the middle of this. But it's said that finally sees Maitreya face to face and kind of can't believe it. And at the first, he only sees an old dog. This is kind of like the iconic or the kind of the famous part of the story. He comes across this sort of old dog that's, like, wounded and rotting and kind of maggots, and he's overcome with compassion and. And he just sees, of course, this old dog, nothing to do with Maitreya or anything, but he's overcome with compassion and he's. He wants to help the dog, but then he realizes, oh, I can't help the dog because it's infected with these ma. It's infested with maggots. But also, I don't want to hurt the maggots. They, too, are living creatures. So I don't want to, like, take them off and kill the maggots. So. So he. It's. He. He really. He. He sees that the only way he's going to be able to do that is to take them off with his tongue, which, of course, you can only.

Imagine that one got me, because I've seen this in India, and I'm sure you have as well.

Yeah, exactly. You can. You can kind of imagine. It's like, you know, he's like, closing his eyes, and he's slowly kind of, you know, putting his face near this this kind of, you know, sick dog. And. And then finally, you know, right as he's. His tongue's about to reach the dog, he doesn't. And he kind of hits the dirt and he looks up and then suddenly Maitreya is there before him. And as the story goes, it's like basically that that was like the last impurity of his karma that he purified in that moment of great compassion that kind of broke through. And he sees Maitreya face to face. And again, I think you could see at a more metaphorical level that he finally came face to face with his own Buddha nature. The Buddha, the nature of his own mind. And then that it goes on. And as the story goes, that Maitreya essentially took him to the. The pure, pure Buddha realms and teaches him and gives him all these teachings. And these great texts, including the one that you mentioned, is, were the. Were basically the teachings that he received directly from Maitreya and wrote down. And they became these masterpieces of Buddhist literature, of philosophical literature. And so that. Yeah, those were some of the first books that I translated with, with some. Some colleagues.

But to me, the. The biggest point of. Of the story and why I. I wanted you to share it is about the transformation happened through Compassionate Action Service, basically.

Yes, exactly.

And doesn't that speak volumes? And then I look at myself not even be able to look at the. At those whales, you know, and then I read this. This all happened within the last few days. So I was just like, you know, I was having to do the Jack Kornfield exercise. It's okay. We're just human, you know, not to beat myself to death in any way about. Not even be able to open into the spaciousness of the moment around this, which is happening and it's happening in extraordinary ways day to day for us. That. That really speaks to us, you know, compassionate action needs to happen. And what is his holiness? He coined something with Dan Harris, I think. Dan Harris, you know, the guy does one. The 7% happier, 10% happier, 7% and wise selfishness.

Wise selfishness, Yeah. I was actually there with. With Dan Harris and the team when. When that happened, when we. Yeah, there was a collaboration that we did for the center for healthy minds with 10% happier and this course with. With Richie Davidson and Dan Harris and the Dalai Lama. And I thought that term wise selfishness, it was such a. Yeah. Such an interesting way to look at.

It, but yeah, it's seems so right on. Right, Cortland. I mean, you know, if what motivates you, I mean, we are all motivated by self interest is one thing. Compassionate action is another thing. I think we all have that within us. May. Maybe there's some of us on this planet that are maybe not quite there yet, shall we say, that are taking these horrible actions these days. But, yeah, absolutely. Whatever propels one to even think at the moment. In my, in my experience and in my mind, at the moment that you reach out to somebody, just the action, like Asanga did, just to look, be aware and want to do something about it and then create an action around it, you stop thinking about yourself. That's wise selfishness. Right? Because.

Yeah, yeah.

What are we doing all day long? I'm doing a book with Duncan Tressel and another, A good friend podcaster actually got us at Love Serve, remember, into podcasting. He had been doing it for years. He's an amazing guy. And we're doing something called from the Movie of Me to the Movie of We. And using ourselves as examples about how the conditioning and the habitual patterns created and reinforced the separation and so on and so forth. And fortunately, we have Ram Dass and a couple of things we did with him. And the big, you know, the big transformation is about compassionate action that allows one to really make that jump out of that me, me, all day long, 247 thing. So, yeah, so this, that's what the story speaks to me.

Yeah, it's. I, I totally.

Of course, you got to be a sangha, I'm sorry to say, to be able to even think you're gonna go, never mind licking the damn things off, you have to be a sangha.

But it's true. I mean, if you look at the story as just, you know, the narrative the Buddhist tradition tells to itself and, and what it's saying, it's quite interesting because it's, it's not only that moment of great compassion and the action that he's actually. It's not just him sitting in a cave feeling compassionate, like he's out on a road literally helping a dying, wounded, dying dog. I mean, he's the most kind of, you know, in your face kind of experience, but it's also the backdrop of that is him meditating for. For years in a cave. And it's. The story is not saying, you know, he meditated for 10 years in a cave and had this moment of awakening. He's saying he meditated for 10 years in a cave and then went out and did something. And that final moment, it was that final moment. It's not saying that, that all those years in the cave were not important. And there, of course, led him to that moment. But it's just interesting that that's the story, the tradition's telling, that it's culminating in really profound, meaningful action in the world motivated by compassion. And you can see that with great masters, you know, the Dalai Lama, of course, is the greatest example of this. And you know, even Mingyurinpoche, you know, of course, all this retreat. But they are profoundly engaged with the world and engaged with the suffering of the world and just tirelessly working, you know, like. Like it's nobody's business, you know, really just out there on the front lines helping however they can. It's quite extraordinary.

Well, his book is called In Love with the World, right? Am I right?

Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Great book, everybody. And we'll have that in the, in the show notes as well. So Tokni Rinpoche, so he did this why we Meditate book with Danny Goldman. I don't know if you're aware of it. Yeah, yeah, it's. It's quite great. But let's talk about, you know, in terms of, you know, I like to help us all people who listen to this podcast and be here now network with tips to be able to just apply day to day that are not some highfalutin philosophy, esoteric kind of a thing. And so I thought this would be something we could talk about. Insight. This is first of all, the insight meditation practice that Jack, Joseph and Sharon brought back from, from the East. And we all got involved with it when we were living in India with Neem Karoli Baba back in the early 70s. He didn't say to him it was just a good way to kick us out. Go to the course. He'd say it's like a fun thing. Which it wasn't. It was really hard work, you know, but provided the basis for which insight could happen in us related to inner inquiry and Buddha mind, basically, even though we weren't thinking of those terms back then. But one of the things that Soapni talks about, the key issue in the practice of insight is understanding reification. And I, of course I knew the word, but I never kind of had it in this context. You know, the tendency to make things more concrete or realer than they actually naturally are reifying is like believing a dream is real. I think this is an important concept for people. Can you get it down to our day to day in terms of making people, us all understand a little of what that really the effect of it and how to transform it?

Yeah. Oh, that's a fascinating one. You know, I think in essence, what our minds are often doing is taking a reality and experience that is fluid and open and ungraspable and trying to make it solid, trying to kind of get a handle on it, to make it something that we could. The conceptual mind can understand. And, you know, it's taking, in a way, it makes a lot of sense. I'll kind of maybe reference some of my. The sort of the scientific side of, of my life here, as well as the more Buddhist and dharmic side, because I think there's a very, a very simple reason or part of the reason why this happens, which is that we did not evolve as human beings to be happy or enlightened. We evolved to survive. Our biology and even the wiring of our brain is really good at surviving. It's not necessarily good at being happy, much less being awakened. If it was, you know, we would have. That would happen automatically for everybody. But it doesn't. And I think there's, you know, if you kind of just imagine what life has been like for most of over the course of human history, and you just imagine a distant ancestor who's, you know, might have spent their day out in a forest foraging for food and what. What basically needed to happen to ensure our survival as a species. One of the things that, that, you know, often was happening is there might be some threatening situation. Maybe there's a wild animal, say, you encounter when you're out foraging that day, and then you go back that night and what's going to happen is your mind is going to play that over and over and over again so that next time you're out there, you are never going to forget. And the moment you hear that rustling in the bushes, you are out of there, right? If you forget that, you know, and if you just imagine there's 100 people and 50 of them, you know, are really good at remembering that, and 50 of them forget it. Guess who survived? You know, the next generation. The people who passed on their genesis. They're the ones who were lying in bed ruminating about the bear that, you know, you know, almost ate them that day. But now we're not in the forest, right? We're not, you know, we're not foraging for food. We're in an office or, you know, we're in, you know, a zoom meeting or texting or listening to podcasts and the news. But that same biological wiring is getting activated. You know, and so it's this just this inner narrative which again is at one point in human History was a great survival mechanism, but now they're emotional threats, they're not existential threats, they're not physical threats or most of the time, of course for some people, some of the time that, that's true. But most of the time our biological machinery is getting activated, but it's, you know, it's, somebody said something unkind to us or we felt disrespected or we felt hurt or whatever, but it's that same fight or flight response in the body that gets mobilized. But there's nowhere to run, you know, and there's no benefit to freezing. But we, you know, are, we're responding the same way. So I think it's, I mentioned this simply because I think we, it can feel to us as though we're failing personally if we're anxious. When I think of my 18 year old self, I felt like I'm just, I'm a mess, like why am I like this? Like, and as though it's my personal fault that I'm depressed or I'm anxious or I might, you know, I'm struggling to just be focused and not be distracted all the time. But it's our biology, it's the world, it's completely predictable why we respond in these ways. The question is, what are we going to do about it? Because the good, so that's the bad news is our biology is just built that way. The good news is that our biology is also built to learn and grow and to kind of go back to this point about insight. We are insight machines. We are processing so much information all the time and we are constantly learning, like our brains, our minds are constantly taking in just vast quantities of information and without us even, hardly even noticing, we're just constantly processing this and learning and adapting. And so in the spiritual traditions, a lot of what they've learned is how to tap that potential and that, that learning insight energy machine that we all have in our, in our minds, our hearts, our bodies, our brains and just to channel that towards kind of undoing the sort of the knots and the rigidities in our mind. This is kind of the reification. It's like the narrative mind, which again can help us survive and helps us in circumstances just turn that in a new direction. So we're exploring, instead of ruminating about our stressful day, we're exploring the dynamics of our inner experience and we just start to discover things that were always there, but we just hadn't seen the narrative and the conditioning just hadn't been directed in that way. So that's the cool thing. And again, just to bring in another scientific. A really cool scientific finding. You've mentioned Richie Davidson, this scientist who I work very closely with at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. And one of the findings actually was Mingy Rinpoche was one of the subjects.

First one, right?

Yeah, one of the very, very first subjects of this, like, one of the first studies that was published in a really rigorous mainstream scientific journal. And one of the things was very much on this topic of insight. There's in the brain, there's a kind of a level of activity that scientists refer to as gamma oscillations, which is basically when the brain, different parts of the brain, are operating in synchrony, kind of in harmony with one another, vibrating at the same level, so to SPE speak. And normally this happens in just a flash. There'll be like a flash of gamma activity, for example, when you figure out a problem, like if you've got a really difficult problem you're trying to solve, and then suddenly it's like, ah, that's it. In that aha moment, there'll be a flash of gamma, but it'll be a flash and then it's gone. And what they found in that early research was that Mingyu Rinpoche and other advanced meditators were able to induce moments of insight, or they were able to induce levels of gamma activity and then sustain it over time for levels that had never before been seen in humans. So it's like you can just induce that aha. I mean, what is it even like to live in an aha moment? To have that be like your baseline rather than.

Right.

A few milliseconds that you experienced 10 years ago?

Yeah.

So anyways, there's a lot to say about that, but, yeah, it's just fascinating.

And by the way, what I understood with. When Richie Davidson did that, those first experiments with meditation, and particularly with Minger, I understood what happened was they said, okay, so now think of compassion. Be. You know, then we're going to then measure, you know, all the circuitry that was going on. And. And I think they said, or he said, that usually it would take somebody, even a practiced monk, you know, there was some time involved where the. The manifestation of the state that they had asked, spoken to, which in this case was compassion, took some time. Mingja Rinpoche. Boom. They looked up, boom. The whole thing burst into the, you know, into this extraordinary display.

Yeah, there's all sorts of funny kind of stories about that. The, you know, one of the two maybe things worth mentioning One, one kind of very similar to what you just mentioned is that normally with neuroscientific research it takes a lot of, you know, what we call statistical analysis. I mean, you just get vast quantities of data and then you got to go, you know, do all sorts of complex comput and analyses. And then at the end of that you'll be able to draw out a finding of like, okay, this is what we learned from that. But it's not as though you just see it visibly like when you're looking at the scanner as it's, as it's actively happening. It's not visible to the naked eye, so to speak. But in this case it was like, it was, the findings were so dramatic that you, they could literally see it as they were watching the data come in. So much so that they actually thought the machines were broken. They were like checking the connections, you know, like in a movie, like really plugged in, right like this. Something seems to be off here. Another interesting thing too, to go back to the, you know, the point you were mentioning about compassion is that what they had these, these advanced meditators do, they were, I think almost entirely monks who had done, I think an average of like 30,000 hours of meditation practice. So these are not casual meditators by any stretch of the imagination. But they first had them do what we call nature of mind practice or the, the exact term they were using was open presence. And which is, you know, for those familiar with the tradition, it's kind of resting in the nature of mind, just resting in open, effortless awareness. And that had a signal, but not as strong as what came next, that what they then asked them to do next was another very advanced form of practice called non referential compassion. That's a very wonky term, but it's basically a form of compassion meditation. Normally when you do compassion meditation, you, you know, you might imagine somebody who's suffering and imagine feeling like wanting to help them, maybe even imagine helping helping them, or repeating phrases of compassion. But there's a sense of like I'm here feeling compassion for this person over there, or for this group of people, or even for all beings. But there's a sense of me feeling compassion for you or all of you. Non referential compassion is like open space permeated with love. You know, it's like you're resting in the groundless open space of our being, something that, you know, few of us even have access to and can touch into. And then just letting compassion and love just permeate this, this feeling of Vast openness. And that's the practice that had the strong, the strongest signal of insight was that it was really a mixture of insight and compassion and love all mixed together. And that's what has had the, you know, the really, in some ways the most powerful finding we've had in all of the research over these years.

That's so great. Of course, Neem Karoli Baba said to us one day, you know, love is more powerful than electricity. You know that, right? Oh boy. Well, Cortland, really appreciate hanging out here this time. Just flew by. We'd need quite a few more podcasts to really get into a bunch more stuff which if you're open, I will call on you from time to time for us to get together.

I'd love to. Yeah. I just looked at the clock. I'm like, wow, was that an hour?

Yeah, exactly. It's so great. So everybody out there listening Turgar and we're. What's the website? Is it turgar.org?

Yeah. There's two things that people are interested in learning more. So tergar.orgt e r g a r.org is Mingy Rinpoche's community that I'm quite involved with. And Mingy Rinpoche, who we've been talking about is the guiding teacher. And then the other side, the scientific side is the center for Healthy Minds. And we've created an app called the Healthy Minds program. If you, if people are interested more in the fusion of meditation and scientific insights, the kind of stuff we've been talking about, there's a lot of that available in the Healthy Minds program.

So just. Which is go to the app. I mean go to the app Store and just Healthy Minds.

Yep.

Yeah. Okay, so we'll have that in the show notes as well. But please do take advantage. I mean Mingju Rinpoche does online, quite a bit of online stuff and he's starting to do retreats, although they're all in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere in California. Why?

Some bit we'll do. We'll definitely go there. But there's. Yeah, as you said, there's Mingy Rpoche teaches. We have lots of online programs and online retreats and he's teaching online all the time. So it's, it's pretty easy. And in addition to the in person retreat, Celis. Yeah, there's a lot of everything online.

Yeah, definitely take advantage. I mean he is special. And get. And the book we should put a link to, you know, in Love with the World. It's that story of him escaping the dignified Abbott scene into the lowly Sadhu. I mean, it's just amazing story.

Yeah, it's a great story. Yeah.

Really?

That's a great, great, great book and great story.

Yeah. Thanks so much. Really appreciate you.

Yeah. Thank you, brother.

And everything that you're doing there, it's really wonderful work. And this is mind rolling on Behear now network go to behearnownetwork.com and there's a plethora of incredible beings from Ram Dass and Alan Watts to Krishna and Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzburg and on. So take advantage and we shall see you next week. Thank you.