AIPIS 210 - The Peaceful Warrior Returns with Dan Millman

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It's my pleasure to welcome back one of my favorite authors. He's been on the show a few times before and that is Professor Dan Millman. He is the author of the new book the Hidden School and of course the bestseller the the Way of the Peaceful Warrior, a book that changes lives. There was a movie made out of that one. It's an excellent movie. By the way, he's former Director of Gymnastics at Stanford University and he is currently a professor at Oberlin College. Dan, welcome back. Good to talk to you again.

Thank you, Jason. Actually, I was a professor at Oberlin back in the 70s, so I'm not really.

You are not Professor Ring anymore, though.

I do profess this and I do profess that. So I suppose I am.

Well, profess to us today about I'm excited. I have not read your new book. I've read several of your others. The Hidden School. The subtitle is Return of the Peaceful Warrior. So is this an update? Has the Peaceful Warrior changed? Are there some new distinctions we didn't get from the Way of the Peaceful Warrior? Tell us more.

Well, I'm glad you asked because it's sort of an odd way to write a series of books. But this is what I did. I wrote in 1980, I first wrote Way of the Peaceful Warrior, which I'm best known for. And that book looked complete. It had a beginning, middle, and I'm told quite an exciting ending. However, it was not a complete book because just before the final chapter of that book, I referred vaguely and very briefly to travels around the world, studying with various mentors and so on. And I never went into that at all. There was some profound things that happened while I was traveling. So 10 years after writing Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Jason, I wrote a book called Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior, and people at first thought it was a sequel, that it followed the original story, but it did not. It was a slice of the original story expanded into a new adventure. And 37 years after writing Way of the Peaceful Warrior, I was finally ready to write the Hidden School, which is also a slice. It begins right where Sacred Journey left off and describes travels all over the world and experiences that prepared me for that death, rebirth and awakening that I describe at the end of Way of the Peaceful Warrior. So to understand this book, the Hidden School, one does not necessarily have to read Way of the Peaceful Warrior or Sacred Journey, it stands alone. But if one understands where it fits, one would read the Hidden School and then they might be moved to jump to the last chapter of Way of the Peaceful Warrior because it flows really into that. So it's complete in itself, but it is a slice of the original story. It completes the Way of the Peaceful Warrior, that book. So that's why I wrote it 37 years later. Bit complicated, but it helps for people to understand it as a part of the initial story.

Fascinating, fascinating. Well, you know, for the listeners that don't know, give us just a super quick synopsis of the Peaceful Warrior and then let's take some context from that and talk more about the Hidden School, if you would.

Well, I'd had an intensive, really 10 year, 15 year, spiritual search and it took me various points around the world. But when I was a young college student, I was a world champion gymnast on trampoline and I did all the events in gymnastics and I thought I was pretty successful, had a girlfriend, life was going well. I was a student at UC Berkeley. And then I met this old man in a gas station. He was an old service station attendant played by Nick Nolte in the movie version of it. And he had something I didn't. I couldn't articulate what it was. A cosmic sense of humor, an ease about him, a clarity, whatever it was. I stuck around to try to find out what he had that I didn't. And that's what Way of the Peaceful Warrior is about. My lessons and learnings with Socrates, the man I called Socrates because he wouldn't tell me his real name, but he reminded me of the old Greek sage. And it reflects in a way the classic story of the mentor and student, like King Arthur and Merlin or, or Daniel San and Mr. Miyagi and the Karate Kid, or Frodo and Gandalf in the Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings. So this is a repeated theme over time, but in this case it was in modern day life and it seems to speak equally to men and women. The idea of Peaceful Warrior refers to a peaceful heart, but a warrior spirit, which we all need at times. So that's a bit of the substance and Core and what drew many people and continues to draw people to way the Peaceful Warrior. And I'm really happy I was finally able to complete that book with this third part of the trilogy, the Hidden School.

Yeah, I travel quite a bit. I've been to 81 countries now. And I don't know, sometimes I feel like my lust for travel is just like I'm searching for something, you know, and I must be missing something in my life that I keep going elsewhere to look for it kind of, you know, I do have that thought once in a while. What have your travels taught you and how does it relate to the Hidden School?

Well, first of all, we could spend the rest of the program talking about your travels. That's an amazing amount of travel to different countries around. On our small planet, most of us have experienced. When we travel someplace, it doesn't even have to be to another country, though that helps. A different culture, a different scene, a different language. It wakes us up at a subconscious level. You know, the experience. You go by a laundromat, it looks interesting, but It's a laundromat. But it's.

Some of the simplest things can be surprisingly interesting.

Yeah. Yes. Well, it wakes us up if it's a different environment than we're normal, normally associated with. And yet there is this belief, especially among people interested in personal or spiritual growth, that if we go to the east, whether that is represented by India or Thailand, and study with a teacher of a different language and culture, that's really where their answer lies. China, Japan, the classic places. Hermann Hesse wrote the book Journeys to the east, which represents that whole idea that you must find wisdom in the East. And there is some truth to that, at least traditionally speaking, because the west is known for its expansive, extroverted kind of approach to living, typified by teachers like Tony Robbins. Unleash your power and succeed and get peak performance and that sort of thing. That's a very Western approach to life. Whereas the Eastern approach traditionally no longer today. I mean, Japan is more like New York, you know, than New York, but.

And certainly Hong Kong.

Exactly same. And I go there in the Hidden School as well, into Hong Kong. But the east represents the internalized version, the introspective letting go of possessions and the ego and status and just going inside and finding answers through meditation and other introspective practices. So that's what the east represents. So many people travel to the east thinking they're going to find real wisdom there. But, you know, wisdom is in our backyard. Wherever we go, there we are. So one doesn't need to travel to find spiritual wisdom, especially today. It's a global village today on the Internet. And there are Eastern teachers in the United States, there have been for years. And there are Western teachers. I go and I lecture to Asians in China or Japan. It's all a big mix now. So travel is not necessary. It can be broadening, as you know, but all we learned is right here.

Dan, I like what you said about how, you know, you made the comparison with Tony Robbins versus the sort of Eastern philosophies and religions. And I'd say especially Buddhism, even though you didn't say that. But I hate to put words in your mouth, but it sort of begs the question. I know there's not an answer to this, so it's rhetorical almost. But is one way more right in another way more wrong? Or are they context sensitive? You know, like, is the sort of the Tony Robbins mentality, you know, the very Western idea of expansive, have more, you know, do more, be more, have more concept. Versus Wouldn't you describe Socrates or the man you call Socrates? You know, he just said, or sort of had this ease about him that you talk about. Elaborate on that, if you would.

I'd be happy to. You know, this approach to living that I've articulated for many years, and it gets refined over time, is about living with our head in the clouds, but our feet on the ground. The term peaceful warrior is a form of balance. It's not just a warrior, it's not just a peacemaker. It is a peaceful warrior. So this idea of balance is inclusive. So it's not that the Western solution is somehow better or the Eastern solution is somehow better. We are here to combine both. We are here to spend some time in introspective practices and be aware of what's going on inside, to search for a deeper knowledge within ourselves. If we don't know ourselves, then we end up making the right decision for the wrong person, the one we thought we were. So we do need introspection in our life. And there are people who go throughout their whole life just striving for success and status and achievement, and they never really introspect. They don't know themselves that well at all. They just. It's all about success out there in the world. But there are other people because we.

Have so much of that pumped in, you know, I mean, of course there's the famous unexamined life is not worth living saying which. There's a lot of truth to that, but, you know, so much of it, like in the Western world that the stuff is just pumped in Madison Avenue and the media are just so powerful. It's unbelievable. The power that has over all of us.

Well, yes, and many Westerners have grown disillusioned with, you know, they think there's got to be more to life than news, weather in sports and accumulating possessions. So they tend to go to the other side. They swing to the opposite extreme, join an ashrama community. And for a while it feels so fulfilling. They feel relieved of burdens and weight, of all that striving and success. You know, Lily Tomlin put it well when she said, even if you win at the rat race, you're still a rat.

You're still a rat. Yeah, that's a great saying. Funny thing is though, Dan, we never hear the stories that probably you hear in the east about people going the other direction.

I'm just sick of this introspection all my life. I don't want to be a monk anymore. I want to go get a nice car. No one talks about that.

And that tends to happen equally. Many people look to the west and the successful capitalist approach, high functioning people and so on. Many people come here for university educations. And I have friends who have gone the eastern route into being white robed yogis and Buddhist meditators or Thai meditators. And they do all the introspective work, but somehow their relationships may not be too stable because they're not making much money. And there's that issue as well. So the point is not that we should move from the Western way to the Eastern or the eastern to the Western, but again, embrace both. The best in traditionally the male oriented and female orientation, the extroverted introverted. So we need to find the balance between passive or aggressive and find an assertive approach to life that involves both. Introspection time for that. Many people are doing that. They're taking some time to do some meditation when they get home from work, where they work really hard to function and achieve something in life externally. So again, it's not one or the other, it's both. It's integrating all those things.

Integrative approach. Yeah, very good. And you see that happening in medicine, thankfully, it's about time. You know, I don't know why, but when you said integrating, I thought of medicine as a sort of perfect example where we finally see that happening, that integrative medicine, which is fantastic. So we have this accelerating pace of change. The world is moving faster than ever. This goes to what we were talking about. Right. I mean, do you talk about this in the Hidden School and how people can better deal with change and so forth?

Absolutely. In fact, in the original book, Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Socrates gave me a business card, somewhat tongue in cheek. It said, specializing a proprietor. Socrates, you know, Peaceful Warrior, Inc. Specializing in paradox, humor and change. And in the movie version, there's a little scene about those three words, too. But in the Hidden School, there's some really, truly new material, not just from me, but I've never seen it or read it anywhere. And it's about using paradox as a key. Understanding paradox helps us to understand the two worlds in which we live, the conventional and transcendent world. We spend most of the time in the conventional world, but all religion and spiritual practice is about transcending, and different truths operate at those levels. So questions like, does free will exist, or is it an illusion? Does time exist or is that an illusion? Are we separate selves or are we all one? Is death reality or is death an illusion? So I address those questions through the Kiev Paradox in the process of an exciting story. As you know, my Peaceful Warrior series is an adventure story where the Peaceful Warrior was and the Hidden School, certainly, as it takes me from the Mojave Desert, where I'm searching for this journal, to Hong Kong to China, and finally to Japan. So we visit the east and the west and resolve some of these major questions of life while enjoying, I hope, an exciting quest.

Do we have time to tackle a couple of them here? Pick whichever ones you want. Maybe let's tackle one at least.

Be happy to. Well, why don't we look at the question of whether we are separate selves or whether we are all one. We've all heard those sayings. The word paradox really refers to two opposite or contradictory statements that are both true. How can that be? Well, Dickens, Charles Dickens opened his book the Tale of Two Cities with the words, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, and other pairs of opposites. And we could argue today it's the best of times. We could also argue it's the worst of times in a debate. So paradox, the key to understanding how the opposites can both be true. Let's take an example. If I were to say a spider is a bloodthirsty, vicious, merciless killer, you might agree, if I were to add the words from the viewpoint of an insect caught in its web, from your viewpoint or mine, 99.9% of spiders on the planet are relatively harmless to human beings. So is a spider a Fragile, timid, harmless little web spinner or a merciless killer. Both are true, depending on our point of view, perspective. And the point is when we understand these different truths at the conventional and transcendental level, let's take separate selves. Clearly from a conventional level, daily life, everyday life, we are separate selves. If I bump my knee and it hurts, it doesn't hurt you, unless you're highly empathic, let's say, because we have separate nervous systems. If I have a thought or feeling, you don't necessarily have the same one. So we can clearly say that we are separate individuated beings responsible for our own lives and choices and so on and so forth. But from a transcendent view, which can be grasped through some people it's five minutes of meditation, others it's 50 years. But eventually, one of the lessons meditation can teach us is that we are aware of the thoughts, we are aware of the emotions, we are the witness of it all. But we're more than that. It's possible that you and I, who seem like separate people, are actually the same awareness or consciousness shining through billions of different eyes, the same. If we grasp that not just because I'm saying it or as a belief or intellectual idea, but if we grasp that all of us on this planet are the same awareness or consciousness again manifesting in all this interesting gift wrapping, these different bodies and cultures and lives. If we grasp that, many things would change in our world. The tribalism, the turf wars, the nationalism and the separation would begin to fade away and compare competitive mind would become collaborative mind with all these other parts of ourselves. It's a radical shift. And I think that's where the solution's going to have to be if we're going to survive as a species. So that's one example.

You know what's fascinating about that, like that separateness question and the example you just shared is that I find it fascinating that a lot of this stuff that we have always thought was sort of unprovable and mystical. And maybe it was true, maybe it wasn't. Nobody really knew the answer. It's actually now science is taking this to the point of real. Well, for lack of a better word, real science, right? And that's, you know, the example you gave. You know, you bump your knee, well, there's mirror neurons, right? And so, you know, that's why you find yourself in a movie. You find yourself crying. I mean, like, why, you know, this didn't happen to me. Why am I watching this thing? And I'm welling, up with tears here because we are connected. That's not some out there concept. I mean, we really are connected. But if we are, and I think we are, it makes you wonder why people do such horrible things to people. I mean, like you look at, you know, radical Islam, for example, cutting people's heads off. I mean, this is barbarism at every level. It's, it's just unbelievable.

You know, let me, let me interject that. We also had radical Christianity, radical Judaism, people being stoned to death. The point is people haven't realized it is not a living reality for them yet they still are living as separate beings. Self interested. Hillel once said, if I am not for me, who will be? But if I'm only for me, who am I? So we have a leap to make as humanity. And yeah, so that's one of the main, you know, Einstein, we've all heard this quote, but Einstein said we cannot solve a problem at the same level of consciousness at which it was created. And unless we make that leap, unless more people wake up to the truth, not just slogans like we are all one. That's lovely. But unless they realize that, then they continue to behave in self interested ways. It's like Ayn Rand, you know, the whole philosophy of egoism. What's in it for me? Because self interest is the highest thing in the universe according to Ayn Rand. But we have to reach a place where we begin to ask, what is for the highest good of all? How can I serve? And we make that connection with other people.

But see, like in Ayn Rand, and I took her abduction objectivism course years ago and I've had, you know her, what's the guy's name on my show anyway, the head of the Ayn Rand Institute. Before they would argue that that's not sort of altruistic. Right. The good of everything else is good for you. So you could say that's selfish, right? I want society to prosper and to be good. And these, these things benefit me. That's part of the whole equation, isn't it?

Well, you know, I think it's great being selfish, but it depends whether you're talking with a small S or a large S. A good way to put it.

Yeah.

The Hindus talk about the self, and they're not talking about the separate self, they're talking about the greater self, the one that is all of us. So it depends what self you're talking about. We're getting into some deep material now that doesn't always lend itself to a brief conversation. But if we look at that and consider if it's true, that when we peel away all the layers of the onion, if it is true on some level, and many of the enlightened masters talk about this, that we are the same consciousness, awareness, if we wake up to that fact, then death is an almost laughable illusion because that awareness is never born and can never die. We're not just a leaf on the great tree, we are the tree itself. So leaves drop away. It's not a big deal. This separate identity, yours and mine, will end. We know that on a conventional level, the body decomposes, lives end. That personality exactly is not on the planet anymore. But from a transcendent view, once again, life is eternal. So it just depends on where we're coming from. And you may say, well, Dan, yeah, but that's not very self helpy, you know what? How does that self help achieve peak performance or have better relationships or make more money? Well, actually what it does is it underlies everything else. It reminds us why we're here on the planet, what we're doing here. That earth is a divine school for souls. Daily life is our class classroom. And so these are some bigger picture elements of life that I felt it was time to convey in a story in my own way. And eventually I think it may catch on. So I'm just one quiet voice expressing some of these higher truths, but integrating them with everyday life, that's the key. I'm not some Eastern guru, you know, giving these pronouncements that people have to somehow go, well, gee, that sounds impressive, but what does that have to do with me? It's more about how do we actually again integrate integrative, how we integrate our lives. And that's why I say head in the clouds, feet on the ground. Ram Dass said, you can be lost in cosmic bliss and still be responsible for remembering your postal code.

Yeah, Very, very good, very good. The last time you were on my show, Dan, you said something to me that I think of often. It's something I struggle with. We were talking about one of your books. I think it was the 12. Forgive me, I actually read it.

That's quite all right. Every day enlightened. The 12 gateways.

Right, the 12 gateways to personal freedom. Right. And right after you were on the show, I got that book and finished it and I said, dan, sum it up for us. And you summed it up with one statement. You know, that was kind of the grand key, you know, to all, which is be here now. I think that's the way you said it, by the way. You said, be here now. Do you want to talk about that for just a moment before you go? I know we've got to wrap it up.

Sure. There is.

I love that I think of that.

Often, you know, happy to do it. Jason, when you were describing it, I was wondering what did I summarize it with?

Because what did you say?

There's a story of Houston Smith talking with his friend Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World. When Aldous was in hospice, he was near death, and Houston asked him, you've traveled the world, he said, and you've studied and practiced every spiritual tradition. Is there any way you can summarize it all? And he could have said, be here now. He could have said, here and now breathe and relax, which is probably what I said to you last time. But what he said was, I can summarize it all in about six words. Everything I've learned is try to be a little kinder. And maybe that's one. If you have to put something in a nutshell or summarize it all, maybe it comes down to that in our everyday life. Maybe that's a good takeaway to as a practice practice, kindness, consideration for others. But it goes much deeper than that because there are no others. So there are different ways to phrase all this.

Very good, good stuff. Dan, thanks so much for talking about your new book. I'm really excited to dive into it. Of course, it would be better if I actually read your books before I interviewed you. So next time you're on the show, next book, I'm going to do that before you.

Well, enjoy the adventure.

Yeah, absolutely. Of course the books are on Amazon. Great reviews. You've got such a huge body of work. It's all excellent. Do you have a personal website or maybe a Twitter account or something you want to share?

Yeah. If people are curious or interested, it's.

Peacefulwarrior.Com peacefulwarrior.com Dan Millman, thanks again for joining us. It's great to have you back on the show.

My pleasure.

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