PNTV: Why Meditate? by Matthieu Ricard (#188)

Foreign. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book, why Meditate? By Matthew Ricard. Philosopher's Note. Read this one on Kindle. Why meditate? Matthew Ricard. First, who is Matthew Ricard? He is by some accounts the happiest guy on the planet. He's a amazing human being. Former biochemist. I think that's what he got his PhD in. Deep Buddhist practitioner, meditator. The Dalai Lama connected him with Richie Davidson. Richie Davidson is the neuroscientist who we have to thank for so much of the research we now do on neuroscience and how our thoughts and behaviors and meditations change our very brains. Anyway, Richie Davidson studied Matthew Ricard. He was one of the first guys brought into his lab and looked at his brain and saw how different it was from non meditators. Extraordinary. And then he proceeded over the years and decades since to bring this science to life. So that's Matthew. Amazing guy. Here are five big ideas on why we should meditate. And also we're going to spend a lot of time on how. Why, how? First idea. The ultimate reason to meditate, Ricard tells us, is to transform ourselves so we can be of service to the world. The fact is, if we want to make a difference in the world or in our families, in our communities and work environment and broader world, we need to, as Gandhi said, be the change we want to see. There are few more powerful ways to become that change then actually there probably is no more powerful way than to control our minds. And there are few more powerful ways to get more control of our minds than to practice meditation. So that's our ultimate reason to meditate. The second big idea, getting into the how and the practical tips of it. Water buckets. So Ricard and all the great teachers who talk about meditation tell us slow and steady is much better than going nuts. Consistency over intensity. Think of a garden. We just planted a little garden. So this is fresh in my mind. Think of a garden. Now imagine if you decided that you were going to water your garden once a month. Once a month you were going to bring a huge, just trash can full of water. You, you're going to pour it on top of your garden. Everything's going to die in between waterings and they're going to drown when you finally do water it. Much, much wiser to give that garden a little bit of water every day. A little bit of water every day. A little bit of water every day. The Buddha says drop by drop, a water pot is filled with Water one becomes good or evil in the same way. Draw drop by drop by drop. We become good or we become evil moment by moment to moment. Now, in my old days, what I wanted to do is fill up that water pot with a fire hydrant all at once. I wanted to change everything right now. But what happens when you try to do that is you wind up spraying that water pot, which is a beautiful, fragile little vase. You spray it across the room and you nearly break. Takes a certain level of maturity and discipline to slow down, realize that whoever you are was created over an extended period of time. And whoever you want to become is going to be created over an extended period of time. And then drop by drop by drop, become a little bit better day in and day out, moment by moment by moment. So think of that. You've got your garden water. It consistently, meditate consistently. It's much, much better to show up for even as little as 10, 12, 15 minutes, 20 minutes a day, every single day. Even a minute a day, every single day is better than the hour once a month. Not going to help. We need to groove the patterns. If you want to change your brain, you need to do it consistently. So think of water buckets. Next one is Moody Sauce. Moody Sauce. Ricard, like everyone comes back to the idea that what you feel like has nothing to do with what you do. It doesn't matter whether you feel like meditating, do it. You decided, hopefully you made 100% commitment. You're engaging in some of the other ideas that we have in terms of how to build habits effectively from habits 101 and other practices. And then how you feel is not what determines what you do. And the irony is, Maharishi taught us that you should never judge your meditation because the meditation that you think is the worst one, where you couldn't get your mind to settle down, you kept on flitting from thought to thought to thought to thought may have actually been your best meditation. Because imagine your day if you hadn't at least tried to take that one or five or 10 or 20 minutes to calm yourself down, you may not have felt particularly good and that it was a good meditation, right? But that might have been the difference between you having an okay day or a horrible day simply by letting some of this bubble up and be addressed in your meditation. So don't judge your meditation and don't decide what you're going to do based on how you feel. We come back to this theme again and again and again because it's huge. If you want to develop Your character. You need to remove your feelings as the determinant variable in what you do. We talked about this with Eric Greiten's resilience, right? What do we have? We had identity, and then we had actions, and then we had feelings. That's the way we want to go. Unfortunately, too often we let this direction be what dictates us. How do I feel? Okay, well, then I'll do this because I don't really feel like it. So I'll just stay in bed and. And then this is just who I am. A depressed person. Right. What we want to do is start with the identity. Who are you committed to being? Are you really committed to this ultimate reason of being as vibrantly alive a human being as you can be for yourself, for your family, for your community, for the world? Okay, what does that version of you look like? The best version of you. Then what does that version of you do? And then how does that version of you feel? Not the other way around. It's a huge idea. Pay attention to your moods and notice when they're dictating too much of your behavior. Next big idea. Sparks and pickpockets. So he describes mindfulness like this. As we practice meditation and we cultivate our mindfulness, which is really our ability to see what's happening. We can observe how we're showing up in the world. If you're not mindful, you're just a big bundle of stimulus response. You're just going through the world, reacting to everything. But when you have more mindfulness, you can step out of the flow of your day to day activities and see what's happening with more clarity. Now, when you can bring more awareness to something, you can change that something. Your thoughts or behaviors or whatever. He says, think of it like this. Imagine if you're walking in a crowd and you know that this one individual is a pickpocket. Now if you know that that individual is a pickpocket, you're going to pay a little bit of attention, right? And make sure that your, whatever, wallet or whatever, you have a purse is secure, right? You're aware, you're mindful that this particular person offers a little threat to your well being. Okay? That mindfulness is helpful. And it's the same thing with our emotions. When we notice that we have this little pickpocket in our mind, this little voice in our head that can sometimes rob us of joy and pleasure, we can notice that we can keep attention on the little percolations. The little sparks is another way he describes it. So too often when we're not mindful, we allow our anger or frustration or whatever to flare up into a wildfire. And he tells us, through meditation, we can notice the sparks. We can notice the little sparks that are arising and put those out before they become massive wildfires that burn up our lives. Huge idea. Mindfulness, pickpockets, sparks. That's our fourth big idea. The fifth one is another gardening metaphor. So bring us back to the garden with these H2O buckets. You're not dumping a whole trash can of water on your garden once a month. You're showing up consistently. And by the same token, you're not going out to your garden and pulling them up, pulling up your flowers or pulling up your kale or pulling up your herbs or whatever you have out in your garden, right? You pull on it, you kill it. Well, it's the same thing with our progress. If we are trying too hard and we're trying to get from where we are to where we want to be, instantaneously pulling up the plants and trying to go faster than what we can really go as our natural evolution is moving us, we're going to struggle, we're going to suffer. So again, we want to show up diligently, patiently, persistently, and do what needs to get done day by day by day. One of my practices on that isn't meditation. It's more physical training. But when I read Spartan up end of last year, which we did a note on, he talked about burpees. Burpees, where you basically do a squat, you. You move into a plank position, you do a pushup, and then you come back up to a squat and you jump up, right? He said, you do 30 burpees a day, you're never going to get sick again. I'm like, that's awesome. I literally read that busted out 30 burpees. And I did that for a week or two weeks or something like that. And I hadn't done burpees ever really, other than a few workouts years before. And I started to feel a little bit in my shoulder, so I backed off on that. I gave it a week or two until I felt all better. And then I decided to do one burpee, one burpee. And then the next day, I decided to do one burpee plus another burpee, two burpees. Then the day after that, I did one more, three burpees. This morning, I did 68 burpees. And it's been an amazing thing to practice this, to practice deliberately patience and to see that when we're willing to show up and do what needs to get done, then we can do a little bit more. And we can do a little bit more. We can do a little bit more. So it's been a really fun physical experiment for me and obviously the psychological and habit building experiment as well. Approach your habit building, whether it's meditation or physical training or whatever, with that same attitude where we don't need to do it all at once, fire hydrant style. We know that great results occur over time. Compound effect. Remember that penny that we doubled in our look at Darin Hardy's compound effect? Give someone a penny, double it every day for 31 days, or give someone $5 million. $5 million sounds pretty good, but if you go 31 days, that doubling penny is $10 million. It's the same thing with our lives. We're going to show up. As Darren Hardy says, consistent, smart choices applied over time equals huge results. That's how we want to approach meditation. It's how we want to approach everything in our lives. So there you go. Don't pull your plants. Remember, sparks and pickpockets. Mindfulness. Be aware of what's arising. Another reason to meditate, to have that perspective and then to stop allowing that to blow up. Don't let your moods dictate what's going on. The equation is not how do I feel, therefore I'll do this, it's who do I want to be? I will do this. And then the feelings will follow. Talked about the buckets. And then the ultimate reason. Transform yourself so you can make a difference in the world. Hope you enjoyed and I look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another awesome day. See you.