How to Break Free from Suffering: A Guide to Finding Inner Peace - Transcript
Dr. Mark Hyman
Coming up on this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show.
Yung Pueblo
But the reality is that at the mental level, at the atomic level, at the physical level, at the cosmic level, at the most minute levels possible, everything is constantly, constantly changing. And if we don't embrace that truth, then it's gonna hurt.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone via my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at this scale. And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, you. If you're looking for data about your biology, check out function health for real time lab insights. If you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, check out my membership community, Hyman Hive. And if you're looking for curated and trusted supplements and health products for your routine, visit my website, supplement store, for a summary of my favorite and tested products.
Hi. I'm doctor Mark Hyman, a practicing physician and proponent of systems medicine, a framework to help you understand the why or the root cause of your symptoms. Welcome to The Dr. Hyman Show. Every week, I bring on interesting guests to discuss the latest topics in the field of functional medicine and do a deep dive on how these topics pertain to your health. In today's episode, I have some interesting discussions with other experts in the field.
So let's just jump right in.
Yung Pueblo
A lot of the suffering that we encounter in our minds is because we reject impermanence. We reject change, and that creates so much mental tension, so much mental struggle because we you know, there are things that we really like in life, and we want them to stay the same. We want the people that we like to be there. We want the situations to remain, in a way that continue feeding that sort of calmness and pleasantness of life. But the reality is that at the mental level, at the atomic level, at the physical level, at the cosmic level, at the most minute levels possible, everything is constantly, constantly changing.
And if we don't embrace that truth, that sort of natural flow of nature that's just constantly moving forward, then it's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt a lot. Because no matter how hard we try, we just can't keep things the same. We may be able to elongate things sometimes, but, ultimately, whatever arises will pass away. And that doesn't need to be a truth that strikes fear in you.
And that's something that I've been sort of working on in my own life and writing about is that a lot of times our relationship with change is one that's based on fear. But Yeah. It can actually be, you know, that relationship can be evolved into one that's quite inspiring. Where I I know that I'm not always gonna be here. I know that this situation won't be here.
So let me bring presence into this situation. Let me bring my attention here. Let me really try my best to connect with the people who are around me, who are crossing my path in this moment because Mhmm. It's just special. Like, we're not always gonna have this.
So, like, what that has done, it's morphed my relationship with my wife, morphed my relationship with my mom and dad. And these moments that we do share, we're able to connect. It's like, wow. Like, they're so precious. And Mhmm.
I'm more so grateful to change because if you think about it fundamentally, if the universe wasn't constantly changing, if everything was static, you and I would not be here. Nothing would exist. There would be no one would be here. So because of change, you and I can exist. We can learn.
We can love. We can grow. We can, you know, really flourish and evolve. So change is difficult, but it also gives us an incredible opportunity.
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's true. But it's it's a tough one for people because, people get comfortable with the way things are and
Yung Pueblo
Totally.
Dr. Robert Thurman
They live
Dr. Mark Hyman
in the fear of what's not here or what's what's gonna change. And I, you know, I can tell you at 63, I just turned 63, and impermanence definitely has a lot more relevance for
Yung Pueblo
me now. I bet. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And whether I live another 10 years or 50 or 80 years, maybe I'm hoping I'm dying at a 180. We'll see how that goes. Maybe you got a 100 and 20 years.
Yung Pueblo
Do it for the rest of us, man. Yeah. I feel like it's a good goal.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Maybe I got another 120 years left. We'll see. Yeah. But I I I I think, you know, regardless, there's an end. And I think the preciousness of every interaction, of every moment, of every person is is is really a beautiful meditation because it brings you into the present moment.
Of course, if you feel like crap, if you're not well, if, you know so there's a there's a saying that, you know, a healthy man wants many things, a sick man wants one thing. Right?
Yung Pueblo
I think
Dr. Mark Hyman
so there there is for sure that, and I think I I I personally have have become much more clued into the the preciousness of everything, like, in every moment, in every every sunset, of every experience I'm having. And, you know, David David, White, who's a poet, who I love, talks about be being in friendship with all things, which is realizing that you're in relationship with everything. The Native Americans have a have a prayer called, which means, like, to all my relations, to all the living and breathing things, to the rocks, everything. Literally, you're in relationship with everything all the time. And I think we get pulled out of that when we're so attached to our own sort of individual self, our own ego, our own sense of separateness, which is really an illusion.
And so I think, you know, I'm curious about how you kinda come to share with people this sort of illusion of separateness that
Yung Pueblo
It's you know, it kinda what you're saying now reminds me of something you said a little earlier. And there's that very common quote that's attributed to a number of people, but, you know, it's we don't see things as we are. We we don't see things as they are. We see them as we are. And what I try to do with some of my writing is, like, expand on that.
Right? When we're interacting with reality, what is our perception doing? Our perception is actually seeing reality through our emotional history. It's seeing reality, and not just through that emotional history that we carry from our past, but it's combined with whatever is our current emotion. So we're seeing reality through these really thick lenses.
And that sort of enhances that attachment that we have towards basically tying whatever we're seeing in the present towards to something that happened in the past. And if anything in the present is sort of slightly reminding us of something positive or negative from the past, then immediately our emotions will just flow in these old directions and we'll be repeating the past over and over again. So that creates a situation where I may be meeting someone and I won't be able to fully appreciate them because I'll just be seeing them through my own gunk. Through the all the old sort of, conditioning that I've been carrying in my mind. And you won't be able to see that sort of unity or the potential love or the the depth of a connection that could really be there because you're just, looking at them through the unhealed parts of yourself.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. I mean, some of the things, you know, that I think happen in this sort of framework of personal development, self self help, and growth are are are is this phenomenon called spiritual bypass
Dr. Robert Thurman
Sure.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Where where people can, you know, do all the yoga and meditation, all these practices, but they really haven't dealt with their fundamental framework and beliefs and their conditioning, whether it's their epigenetics and inheriting trauma from past generations and just being a human on the planet.
Dr. Robert Thurman
You know?
Dr. Mark Hyman
Let's face it. It's been a hard thing over the last few 100000 years, and that's that's literally wired into our DNA, whether it's our own trauma from our own, personal stories. And I Mhmm. I've sort of really have had a lot of recent sort of relationship with, you know, the world I came into with my mother and father being in a very conflictual relationship, my father not wanting me, my wanting an abortion. I mean, my mother being alone and depressed, you know, during her pregnancy and me being born into this environment and what that did just to my epigenetics and Mhmm.
Mhmm. You know, activating my sympathetic nervous system as a is a place of in the world is a place of danger and having to just deal with that. And and each of us have our own story. And so how do we sort of deal with the traumas and then whether they're they're big traumas like abuse or micro traumas of just, you know, growing up in a dysfunctional family or a relationship.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Right.
Dr. Mark Hyman
How do we how do we take the things that you've learned as part of your self discovery and discovery of how to be in relationship to yourself and relationship to others and and sort of heal that without doing the spiritual bypass?
Yung Pueblo
Yeah. I think that's that's a great question. I I find that, this really sort of brings in what we were talking about in regards to impermanence because we want to allow impermanence to influence our understanding of our our own identity. So, we should allow ourselves to learn about our past, to see the way, you know, our relationship with our parents and whatnot affects the way that we show up in life today and allow these things to inform us. But the moment that our trauma becomes our identity, then it makes for a very rigid healing situation.
Because if we're like, oh, this is how I am because of this moment, and I'm always gonna be like this or this is how I I constantly see myself, then it's gonna slow down your evolution. So in some ways, I think we can do our best to understand ourselves, but then we also have to let it go. Because it's like, okay, I'm a change and growing being. So let me let me flow with, nature and allow myself to develop new interests, new likes, you know, let go of old parts of myself that don't really serve me anymore, and start letting my idea of who I am just continue blossoming. And in terms of spiritual bypassing, I think it's it's tough because the human mind can only, process so much information at once.
That's the reality of it. It's that we can't process everything at once. And I think, we get a little confused by the fact that the technological world of today is so fast, and information is constantly coming our way. It's we're constantly being inundated, and it's exhausting. You know, there's there's you know, you don't quite realize how much you take in and how much energy that burns because you're processing all of that.
So at one, you know, one of our challenges is to be able to develop our awareness and expand our awareness, but also in a sustainable manner. Because there are times where, you know, you're going through a hard time and, you know, staying connected to every single part of everything that's happening in the world. It that may not actually serve you. And then other times, you know, you wanna be active. You wanna be out there.
You wanna stay very informed. But those may be, you know, 1 year of your life versus another year of your life. And understanding that we have very different capacities. Like, you know, there may be people out there who can not only, you know, have a beautiful business, but then they're also part of all these different organizations. And they're out there actively trying to change the world.
And they're Yeah. You know, doing all these amazing things. And that's fantastic. You're helping all of us. Great.
But then there are other people who have experienced so much trauma that all they can do is heal themselves. Mhmm. But that's also beautiful. You're actually serving us by just focusing on healing yourself. Because if you heal yourself and you increase your ability to love yourself well, then that means you're gonna be less likely to harm yourself and other people.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's true. And I think I think, you know, one of the most helpful sort of frameworks I've ever learned about my own mind is that every every emotion, every time I'm triggered, every, belief I have is is just my own interpretation of reality that Yeah. That I project I project my worldview onto the world.
And and so when I when I step back and go, okay. This is just, like, one version of reality. This is not necessarily the truth with a capital t. Then I then I can get free from believing on these stupid thoughts. You know, my my friend Daniel Amen talks about, ants, automatic negative thoughts.
Right? And he says, don't believe every stupid thought you have. And I think a lot of us are so embedded with our thoughts. And that's the beauty of meditation is it sort of creates this slowing down so you can kinda watch your arising and your coming and going of thoughts and realize that you're not your thoughts. You're not your emotions.
You're not your beliefs. You're not your body. You're not any of these things. And and so and I I shared this on the podcast before, and I almost died about 6 years ago. And I really had you know, I was in bed for 6 months and just unable to function and lost £30 and was was in really just this almost vegetative state.
And I and I wasn't anything. I wasn't my mind. I wasn't my body. I couldn't answer an email. I couldn't do anything.
And I just lay there, and I just got to be in the experience of this sort of place, which actually was very happy and blissful. Yeah. Even despite the fact that my body was in agonizing pain, I was I sort of surrendered into this kind of peacefulness. And it's hard to explain, but I realized that at the moment, I everything changed for me, and I I I the the ideas that I'd had sort of conceptually became more experiential. And it was a very powerful moment to kinda start to sort of reorient my life to be more in integrity.
And I think sort of the next topic I wanna talk about was integrity and and honesty. And I think you talked about this concept in your book lighter, radical honesty.
Yung Pueblo
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
What's radical honesty, and and why why is it so important to have that? And what does that look like for each of us?
Yung Pueblo
Yeah. Radical honesty is just so critical, so valuable, especially as the first step. And, even before I started meditating, I found that, you know, I had no technique. I had no process. I didn't know how to, really engage with my emotions.
But I knew what the problem was. And the problem was that I had gotten to that rock bottom moment by continuously lying to myself. I did not want to admit to myself that I did not feel good. And when I realized and I finally admit that, I was like, I'm not okay. Like, I don't feel good.
I have way too much anxiety, way too much sadness. And that first acceptance of me just being like, okay. This this is true. And now I can more so move forward. But I started realizing that I need to repeat that over and over again whenever I feel tension instead of trying to, you know, roll up another joint or just go find some way to just run away from myself.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Let
Yung Pueblo
me just sit with this discomfort. Let me feel whatever's there as opposed to trying to, like, scrub it away or, ignore it in some manner. And radical honesty, it's a term that's been out there for a long time. But the way that I use the term is is honesty between you and yourself. It's not about you and other people.
Like, this is just about you and yourself and whatever is coming up, inside of you. And I think that being able to develop that radical honesty, it's a critical part of self love. And when you are able to, you know, see what's inside of you and accept what's there, whether it's good or bad, then that will actually slowly start building your courage, building your inner strength. And you'll start actually seeing that, the sort of tough emotions that you're having, they're actually not as fearful and as dangerous and as scary as you originally thought they were. Because I would run, you know, as if I was being chased by, like, a, you know, an animal or something like that.
And and once I started sitting with my anxiety, I was like, yeah. This sucks, but it's not that bad. I'm okay. Like, it's this isn't gonna take me out. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. That's so so being radically honest is hard because you have to be honest with yourself. You have to be honest with how you see yourself and your beliefs and your thoughts and almost take a third party view of yourself because you get so attached to who we are and our identity and our beliefs about ourselves, and it's just so hard to undo that. Right? So, you know, doing this work and and sort of letting go of these old stories and, you know, learning about letting go.
How do how do we put that into practice? Like, you know, letting go is is really hard. Someone struggle with it. And we often make things harder for ourselves. So why why is letting go so important?
And how do we have to keep doing this practice of letting go as part of our life?
Yung Pueblo
Well, this, this really you know, to what you were saying earlier about you realizing how you were creating your own narrative of what was happening in front of you. And one thing that, I really appreciate that, you know, the Buddha and my teacher, Ehsaengo, talks about is how wisdom is actually you being able to see things from different perspectives. So not just from your own perspective, but seeing whatever the truth may be from different angles. And being able to see your own angle, put yourself in the feet of another person, to just see the complexity of the situation as opposed to just creating some simplified self centered story. That's just this was not my fault.
This is somebody else's fault. But seeing your own you know, what what was what is the role that you played in this situation, and how may someone else have seen it? I think, that can be so informing to your ability to let go because that's probably one of the first things we need to let go of is, like, okay. I do have this one perception of what's happening in this moment, but there's more. There's more to understand.
And people are seeing this in other ways. But letting go, I think it's the crux of healing. It's quite necessary to be able to even somehow process your emotions and let them go. Because we don't realize that as soon as we're born, right, we're constantly reacting. And every reaction, it creates an imprint on the mind.
It molds the subconscious. And this doesn't stop at childhood. And I think that's one of the things that I think a lot of modern therapists kind of really hone in on those, like, first 7 or so years of life. And they're very formative, but it doesn't stop there. You know, the big events that happened to you later, you know, the heartbreaks, the loss, the, you know, the accident that you were talking about that you went through.
These created massive imprints in your mind that are still playing themselves out, that are still affecting the way that you act now. But it's you're acting now in relation to what happened before. And the letting go part is letting go of the energy of the past that you're still carrying, that you're still bringing into the present over and over again. And the beautiful part of the this modern age that we live in is that there's a lot of ways to let go. You know?
Like, I let go through meditating. Other people let go through the, you know, the practices that their therapist may teach them. There's just a lot of different ways to go about it. And there's no, like, sort of 1 to 5 step, like, this is how you let go. But, knowing that the letting go often involves really always involves you coming back to the present moment.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think it's hard because we get we do get so attached to our worldview, and it's and and we think, you know, it sort of come apart if we if we actually let go of what happened to us or if we move on or if we don't hold on to things. But, you know, I I think we we tend to poison ourselves by this constant holding on to our ways of seeing in in whether it's in relationship or to ourselves.
And I think one of the challenge for people, and I noticed this for myself, which people may find hard to explain given that I'm successful and, you know, blah blah blah, is, you know, I I realized that I had a certain level of self worth and self love, but I really wasn't fully in it. And and it sort of undermined my ability to love others, to actually choose the things that were good for me in life, to say yes to what was good, and to say no to what didn't resonate with me. And so how do how do you kind of help guide people towards more self acceptance, more self love, more self worth? Because it's it's sort of easy to talk about, but it's hard to do.
Yung Pueblo
Yeah. It is hard to do. And it's also hard to do in relation to, like, what society has or, like, what consumerism has created, in regards to self love where it's, you know, self love in terms of just kinda pleasing yourself, just like, buying more things, giving your, you know, just, the consumerist aspect of it. Mhmm. But I think real self love, it is you basically trying actively and continuously to get to know yourself and to do whatever it is you need to do to heal yourself and free yourself.
So that self love, it's really an internal dynamic. And it is hard. It's not something that's gonna be easy. But the reason that we come back to it, the reason that I come back to it personally is, like, I I literally can't make a bigger investment. Like, it's the best investment that I could make.
You know? I could, you know, be out there working and doing all these things, but all of it will just not whatever I may produce will not be as good if I don't have a strong ability to accept myself deeply. A strong ability to, balance that with self love and understand that I should love myself deeply. But there's also things that I can you know, different directions that I can grow in that will help me become a better version of myself and just continue showing up into the world in a way that, you know, honors the emotions that I'm feeling, but it's still, you know, showing up in a way that I feel really genuinely good about.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. It it's sort of, it's sort of an internal journey first. But then, you know, the the harder part is in being in a relationship. Right? With with with our with our family, our coworkers, our partner.
You know, Ram Dass talks about how, you know, if you think you're enlightened, just go home for Thanksgiving.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Right. Right. Right.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And I think that that's the challenge for many of us is that we sort of seem to maybe construct our reality where we think we're moving in the right direction. And we may be. But then, you know, we're find ourselves in relationship acting out these old unconscious patterns. So how how can our relationships be part of our healing as opposed to creating more trauma for us, which they often do?
Yung Pueblo
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's tough because relationships are sort of like incubators for growth, whether we want them to be or not. You know? They're they really accelerate, us seeing the different parts of ourselves that are good and and the the really tough parts.
I think, whenever egos are in proximity of each other, it's only a, you know, a short limited amount of time until there's conflict. Because egos egos are rough. And when they rub up against each other, the friction is created. So we cannot help but find, you know, difficulties in the people that we love, but being able to understand that that it's not just about them. That the the initial reaction may be you pointing the finger and being like, you made me feel this way.
But when you develop self awareness and you start realizing that, actually, you know, I may have actually just gotten less hours of sleep last night, and this is why I woke up and didn't feel good. But then my mind wanted to figure out how this is your fault and put in place the blame on someone else. So Yeah. There's one common practice that my wife and I try to do is, is we do our best to let each other know where we are in our emotional spectrum. And we let, you know, let each other know, like, how do I feel right now?
Instead of it sort of snowballing into this bigger narrative, We try to cut that narrative by just being in contact with each other about how we feel in the moment pretty constantly.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And and so so you wake up in the morning and you go, hey. I'm feeling this. How are you feeling? Or how how do you do that in practice? Do you have, like, a time to check-in every day?
Or
Yung Pueblo
So the the practice is really you know, it's us, checking in first thing in the morning. It's, just letting us know, like, okay. Either I feel, like, a lot of anxiety passing through me right now or I feel heavy right now or my mood feels really short. That information not only helps the person who's feeling it acknowledge and own the fact that, okay, I I don't feel great right now. I'm not gonna try to fake it.
And it lets your partner know, okay, that, you know, let me figure out ways to support them or just give them space or, you know, whatever it is. So that we're both aware that one of us is a little short today. And it's been really funny because there was this one particular moment where, you know, my wife and I my my wife was feeling tough that day. And her and I were working in different rooms, because we were both working from home at that time. And we, you know, we hadn't talked to each other for about, like, 2, 2 and a half hours.
And then she comes in, and she's like, you know, I just spent the last, like, 3 hours trying to figure out how, you know, me not feeling good right now is your fault. And and and she was like, it was so crazy. Like, it was totally illogical. Like, had nothing to do with you. And there are these times where, you know, certainly, the tough moments of our past will play into how we feel and how we act and really the way that our character shows up.
But it's not always like that in the minutia of, like, regular everyday life, where really sometimes it is. Because, like, maybe the day before I had too much sugar. And now my mood's super low the next day. Or I didn't get enough sleep last night. And now, like, you know, I I feel tired.
And what happens when you're tired? Then you get angry. You know, you like it, being able to be aware of these things and honest with yourself and your partner or those around you who are with you. I think it actually stops a lot a lot of unnecessary arguments from happening. Because surely, sometimes your partner will say something to you that they should apologize for.
But I would say 90% of the time, it's like you just jumping through these illogical hoops trying to, like, create a problem when there really is not a problem there.
Tara Brach
If you're stuck in a pattern, that's causing suffering, RAIN, again, it's a weave of mindfulness and self compassion. And the letters, it's an acronym, are Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture. And I'll give you an example of RAIN. I'll give you a personal example. This was, you know, through the pandemic people have used RAIN a lot.
So I get people telling me, you know, RAIN has saved my life. Well, when my mother moved down here, and this was, oh, she she moved down here when she was maybe 78 or 80, She came right at a time. I was super busy. I was trying to put together all the material for a new book and so on, and I was really torn because I was feeling very guilty about not spending enough time with her. And I was also feeling anxious about getting work done and coming through on my teachings.
Now these this is a basic cluster for me. If you say, you know, what are what are your issues? You know, guilt. Like, I am very programmed to wanna come through for everybody and very you know, I get a lot of angst when I feel like I'm falling short. So that's a whole story cluster.
Mhmm. And then the other one is, you know, on the enneagram, if you're familiar, is I'm a 3, which is a performer who wants to make sure she's coming across well, and so I get anxious about not being prepared. So so I so those were those were playing out. And I remember one day, I was right here in my office, and she came in. She was living here then, and she had a New Yorker article she wanted to show me.
And I was completely focused on my on my screen writing a talk, believe it or not, on love and kindness, which is embarrassing, which we're always doing.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Get out of here. You're busy. I'm ready. Right.
Tara Brach
Right. Right. You're in my way. You know? And, and so she was very discreet.
She just put it down and started retreating, and I turned and I I saw her. And I thought, wow. I don't know how long I'll have her. You know? So after she left, I did a practice with RAIN.
And, the recognize is recognizing, okay, guilt, but also anxious. The allow is just what we were talking about earlier, Mark, which is, okay. Just let it be here. This is the reality of this moment. It's here.
Just not not try to judge it or ignore it. Okay. Anxiety, guilt. The investigate, it's not cognitive. That's an important piece.
It's cognitive only. You might identify what you are believing. And for me, I was believing, well, I am letting her down but I am also going to could fail and, you know, but it's mostly somatic. With investigate, you are investigating how am I experiencing this directly in my body. And for me I could feel the excuse me I could feel the clutching, you know, in my chest and just the tightness and breathing with it, letting it be there, and really sensing what that part of me, that anxious guilty place needed And what it really needed was to be reminded of my goodness, that I was a loving being and that, you know, the truth would flow through in teaching.
It wasn't gonna take a whole lot of selfing to do it. And so that was the nurturing. The nurturing was to put I I like to put my hand on my heart, and I often teach it with nurturing, the self compassion, just to say, it's okay, sweetheart. You know? Just trust your goodness.
And there is a piece with RAIN where I call it after the RAIN where you just sense the presence that is emerging. And after that kind of presence and compassion I could just feel I was resting in a much larger, more peaceful, more spacious, more tender place. And I practiced this a lot, Mark, for a few months when my mom this is still the early days of her being here and I found that I started really showing up more. Like we could have our salads in the evening, these giant salads, and I'd just be present, and we'd go for our walks by the river. And she died not she died maybe 3 years later.
And,
Yung Pueblo
you
Tara Brach
know, deep grief, of course, but not regrets. And and I realized that RAIN had saved my life moments with my mother. You know? It had really given me that. And so it's just an example of how I had been caught in the stories and the feelings.
And by interrupting with RAIN, which is just mindfulness and compassion, it really shifted my inner patterning.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. That's beautiful. I mean, it's a beautiful way of framing, a way of investigating and thinking about any feelings we're having or any emotions or any thoughts we're having. It's like it's just like a deliberate, clear practice. You know, recognize Allow.
Allow and investigate and nurture. They're really simple ideas, but they they're really powerful. I'm kind of moved by the the thinking about applying that to things that I have challenges with. So I think that it's great.
Tara Brach
One one of the things about it that's helpful to people is that when we're triggered, we have very little access to a prefrontal cortex. We forget how to get back home again, you know. And so this gives a pretty easy to remember sequence. It's not inviolable. You know, if once you go deeper into the practice you'll find that, you know, it's not so logically, you know, A B C D.
But it doesn't matter. There is still a way in which those elements are crucial. Now if there's trauma, you know, if the triggering is traumatic, you actually have to start with the nurturing. You have to start by creating more safety before you before you dive in and try to feel the feelings. And that's an important thing for people to know.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Wow. Yeah. So sometimes the order is different of how you engage with that practice. Right? Sometimes the dark and the shadows is where the light actually starts to come in, and and I know you've suffered a number of really challenging situations in your life, your mother's alcoholism, miscarriage, genetic issues that you have that, you know, you struggle with.
I've certainly had issues, you know, of health crises, and family issues, and relationship stuff, and, you know, and just life itself. And and, you know, some people can be really, in some ways, poisoned by those experiences and turn dark and bitter and angry and hurt and isolated, and yet many people find a different way out of those experiences into a very different way of being. So, for you, how your hardship shaped you and how those difficulties led you to find your way towards mindfulness?
Tara Brach
Well, first, I want to agree with you that suffering does have a potential to wake us up. And, well, maybe just to give you an example of how I got turned towards mindfulness, when I was in college, I was probably peaking in angst. I wasn't alone. I had many others angsting, but depression, anxiety, and it really kind of the hub of it was just a lot of self hatred. And I remember at one point being on a camping trip with a friend who said, you know, I'm learning to be my own best friend and how far I was from that.
So it just kind of opened up my eyes to, oh, my gosh, you know, I hate my body. I feel like I'm failing in my relationships with others. I'm compulsively overeating. I'm not producing, you know, just every front. So that was, that was a real pit of suffering.
And interestingly, at the same time, I was very much a social activist. So I was out there, you know, and on the weekends, we'd have rallies and there was a lot of agitation there, but I started doing a yoga class. So weekends, I was agitated and then Tuesday nights, you know, and it was yoga and meditation. And I remember one night, Mark, where I was it was right after class. I was walking home and, it was spring and fragrance of the fruit trees.
And I stopped and realized that my body and my mind were in the same place at the same time.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Wow. What a discovery.
Tara Brach
Amazing. And with that, just such a such a feeling of peace and belonging to the world. And and what really hit me then was, you know, if we wanna change our world, it really has to come from a consciousness that is feeling love and connectedness, not agitation and shaking a fist to bad enemy others.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Right.
Tara Brach
So it was those two things together. You know, the the sense of this is really who I can be and also being at war with myself that, I made a kind of 180 degree I was on my way to law school, and I ended up in an ashram for 10 years.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Wow. Wow. Wow.
Tara Brach
Yeah. It was a it was a big shift.
Dr. Mark Hyman
That's it. The, you know, law school to Ashram. That's like you couldn't get further apart. I don't think
Tara Brach
I know. I keep, like, I keep take double taking on it. But yeah. Yeah. That's what happened.
And in a way, I understand it now because I'm still really very dedicated to social change. And I know we have to keep on waking up our hearts in order to have it come from from love, not from anger and hatred.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. I mean, you know, you sort of touched on a little bit about the self worth issue. And I think, you know, I think people have different degrees of self worth or lack of self worth. And often, they're not even aware of and I think this is true for me, not even aware of where the lack of self worth lives. And I've always thought of myself as someone who's fairly, fairly confident in my in myself and my abilities, that I love myself, that I feel like I have high levels of self worth.
But there was a lot of areas where I really wasn't showing up that way. And I it really was hard for me to see it. And I think, you call this the trance of unworthiness. You know, you were caught in this trance of unworthiness. There was something always something wrong with life, with you.
How did how did you first sort of wake into the idea that you could let go of that story and really accept yourself?
Tara Brach
Well, for a lot of us, it's like what you said, it doesn't necessarily appear to us. And the reason I call it a trance is because most people, if I ask them I do this at workshops. You know, how many of you judge yourself? And, like, 98% of the hands will go up. But what people don't realize is that there's often this undercurrent of comparing ourselves to some idealized standard of who we should be or how we should feel or what we should be how we should be behaving in this moment.
It's like this inner monitor. Like, right now as we're doing this, there's there's a background inner monitor that in some way is evaluating. So how is it going? You know, that kind of a thing. And often we are not aware that there is a gap between how we want ourselves to be and how we are showing up.
We are just not aware of it. And it can affect everything because, you know, we are social beings and we want to be accepted and loved. And if we feel we are falling short, it's profoundly threatening. And so we are not aware that there is that kind of fear and self doubt. And it impacts, you know, how close we can feel with others, and it impacts how much risk we can take, you know, at work or our willingness to be creative or just our ability to relax in the moment if we think we are in some way in the red and we have to make up for it.
So it's a trance. And the cool thing is that when we shine a light on it and even get that there's this trance going on, there is something in us that has a yearning to be free from it, and it starts activating healing. So just seeing the trance is the beginning of freeing from it.
Dr. Robert Thurman
So in
Dr. Mark Hyman
a way, some way, you're saying that the people don't recognize that they are engaged in this battle with themselves against themselves, that they judge themselves, that they criticize themselves, that they see themselves in ways that are less than, and that they're measuring themselves against some standard of themselves that is just a fantasy. And that that disconnect that disparity is what causes suffering for people and that they're not even aware that they're doing it.
Tara Brach
And that we all have been fed those standards. It's like I'm not thinking my thoughts. I'm thinking society's thoughts about how I should be. You know? And we all have been conditioned by the same culture that says, you know, produce more and look this way and act this way and, you know, everything from, you know, how skinny we should be to how, spiritual we should be.
We have these standards, and our family is the messenger. And so they imprint it in a certain kind of constellation, but it's in there.
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's so true. I mean, we we go through life thinking that our beliefs or ideas or feelings or thoughts are all original. They come from us. That they're you know, we don't realize how powerfully conditioned we are to behave and think and act in certain ways. And, and if you travel a lot, you know, you if you meet people from different cultures, especially radically different cultures, not Western cultures, you begin to see that, wow, there's a really whole set of different assumptions and beliefs and feelings and thoughts about life.
I mean, I was just in Sardinia and I was I was up in the mountains and I was with this shepherd. And and we're sitting there talking and, you know, about his life and what it's like. And and I said, so do you have any stress? Like, you know, he's he's, he's got, like, 200 goats and sheep. And he says, well, he thought about it, and he's like, he he almost it was a puzzling question for him.
You know? And he says, well, sometimes at night, when a goat kind of wanders off, that's I had to go find it. That's stressful. I'm like Oh my God. And then sometimes, like, it's, when the goats give birth, then we have to move the mothers close to the house and then they wake us up in the night and we have to go help them.
And I'm like, oh, okay. So, you know, it's like we are just in such different worlds. And he just had such a glow about him, such a sereneness. And his whole family was there helping with their home and the whole shepherding thing. And I was like, wow.
We really have different points of cultural reference about life and joy and happiness and meaning. And we've all gotten I was thinking about this today, Tara. I was thinking about how people from other cultures are quite different. So, when I mean people from different cultures, I'm like, wow, they're their frame of reference, their way of seeing the world. They, you know, that they're seeing the world through their eyes gives me a very different perspective about life.
And it's it's kind of liberating because I realize that all of my beliefs, thoughts of what I should do, my notions, beliefs, ideas about how life should be, what I should be, what I should be doing or not doing are so programmed and ingrained and and never really begun to question them or question those thoughts about them.
Dr. Robert Thurman
In education, when you go to medical school, the the you don't the doctor doesn't say, believe you're a doctor and you'll be fine, and you can practice. No way. You have to study biology, you have to study anatomy, you have to study chemistry, pharmacology, blah blah blah. So so Buddhism is like that. You have to you have to study it.
No authority can just tell you it's like so and so, and then you believe it and that's that. And, and so that's why the Four Noble Truths, the sort of main framework of Buddhism, they translate it as truth, and that's not wrong. But if you translate it as the Four Noble Facts
Dr. Mark Hyman
Facts.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Would be better. Yeah. Yeah. In other words, aspects of reality.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes.
Dr. Robert Thurman
And and the first one is, if you don't know what it is, you're gonna misunderstand where you are who you are and where you are, and you're gonna suffer. But you can learn what it is. That's the big kicker. Everyone else tells you in school, the religious people told me you can't understand anything. You just have to believe, and and you have to believe whether it makes sense to you or not.
Just believe. And I said, that I don't like that. I refuse. That's no good. And then there's a great joke on that.
Do you know the joke about that, the theologian's joke? No. Where a theologian was asking the congregation, like, define faith. Tell me, folks. What is faith?
Can you tell me? And nobody would speak, you know. So then the little Johnny in the front row was going like, I can tell. I can tell. And he didn't go to it because he's a little kid then finally nobody grown up would speak So he says well, you all should be ashamed yourself.
Little Johnny is the only one who's answering the question Okay, little Johnny you tell this good vocal here. What is fate? He says, oh, I can tell. I know what it is. You're well, what is it?
He says, faith is believing what you know ain't true. The Langdon Gilkey, the theologian at University of Chicago, told me that joke. I love it. It sounds a little bit cynical. You know?
Yeah. Anyway anyway, so the point is, you just, you can understand yourself and the world, and you can and you don't have to be Einstein. Every human being with a brain is a kind of Einstein if they develop it. You know? And that's what he said.
The human life is so fortunate, not because we animals are not former humans, they are, But because they have souls, etcetera, that is like Albert Schweitzer, but I was like was like Schweitzer on that one. Yeah. But the point is, you have the ability to understand, 1. And 2, you have to understand to be happy. And when you really understand your world, you will be happy.
So, you know, our state So we
Dr. Mark Hyman
kinda misinterpret our reality, and that's what causes the suffering.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Exactly. But and then in cons and then and then they reinforce our misinterpretation by telling us ignorance is bliss. You don't wanna know what it is because you'd be so scared of it. You know? And they misinterpret Darwin as thinking that it's red in nature, red in tooth and claw.
You know? They're gonna all destroy us if we don't have nuclear weapons or something, which is absolutely wrong. You know? And, but the point is, you know, even death that they tell us is so terrible and scary and had to threaten us with hell and things like that. Then the scientists, they tell you, oh, yeah.
We don't believe all that. We're atheists and etcetera. And then but we also think we're looking to understand this gene and this atom and this subatomic particle and that bacteria and this virus. But we know that we'll never know everything, so we still never will know. So we just always keep looking for more stuff.
But we have a preconceived idea that you can't understand everything. If if any scientist jumped up and said, Eureka, I know everything now, like Buddha did, they would have him arrested or give him a tranquilizer, you know, because they have a preconceived idea that you also you can't understand, you see. Yeah. And but then I used to ask them, well, if you can't understand everything, how do you know you can't understand? And they could never answer that one.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, I mean, to me, say, Buddhism is the science of the mind.
Dr. Robert Thurman
That's it. So that but it's also it says you your mind, you, Mark Hyman, your mind, Bob Thurman, you, whoever it is, if you really develop your mind, it is capable of understanding the world. And you, therefore, you can understand your world. Not only can you, but you experience it all the time. So you just
Dr. Mark Hyman
You started with the 4 facts or the 4 truths.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is is that You see, if you don't understand it, it will bring you suffering. And, because you will now always be dissatisfied with everything, and you will not understand what you are and who where you are.
And so you'll be afraid that different bad things will happen to you. And so you'll fight things and you'll try to impose your own control on them rather than go with them. And then that will fail and then you'll be frustrated. And even happiness, what you think of as happiness, you'll be dissatisfied with because it won't last.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.
Dr. Robert Thurman
And then you you won't be you won't get you won't be joyed well enough to make it last. You actually can think. There is happiness that lasts, but not that not the sort of ones that depend on some some, external circumstance. So so that's the first thing. Then second noble fact is that that suffering has a cause and the causes are an inability to understand it.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Understand the nature of reality. Right?
Dr. Robert Thurman
No. No. No. That's just our habit. It actually is luckily less real than our ability to understand it.
That that's the good news. But in order to do that, we have to analyze it. We have to figure it out. And therefore he was a scientist. He he figured things out, the Buddha did.
And meditation is not just shutting down your mind. It's that's wrongly taught. Meditation meditation is focusing your mind to a very much higher degree of intelligence, which we all have the capacity for and then then we will reach an experience of what reality is. And the third level of fact and the reason they're called noble is that they are factual for a noble person. They're not factual for an ignorant person.
A person
Dr. Mark Hyman
who Can I can I go back to the second one? Because my all of my learning about was it, you know, that that the first is recognizing that we suffer, that the way we we think about reality causes to suffer. The second is that we're attached to things being a certain way and that that causes suffering. Is that is that a misunderstanding of the second
Dr. Robert Thurman
No. That's correct. But the certain way that we're attached to them is that we can't understand them.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.
Dr. Robert Thurman
They are not us. They are vast in the case of materialism, which is our mainstream view in America nowadays. It's a vast material realm that is, you know, nobody can count all the fish in the ocean, all this kind of thing. So you it's quantum knowledge is quantifiable, has to be, and you never will get to in an infinite universe, you'll never get to the full quantity ever. So so our misunderstanding of the way things are has to do with our inability to be alright within everything, you see.
And the key component is that we're ignorant, but we know we're ignorant. So therefore, we're attached to being ignorant actually. And, and if we really realize what ignorance means, then we will realize that we don't know that we we that that we can't be sure that we're gonna stay ignorant, and then we can change our mind. Follow me? So it's that first beginning point, it's a shift.
That's the big shift. We can know, and we can develop wisdom, and the wisdom can overcome that cause. It's like that's the antidote, right? But wait, then the next thing is the 3rd noble fact. And the 3rd noble fact is freedom from suffering, happiness.
And this is what nobody, I'm afraid, really teaches well who teaches Buddhism. They all stick on their suffering. And that's joining and terrorizing people. And the Buddhist themselves do that. And they say, oh, I'm so happy.
I'm allowed to suffer. That's nonsense Nobody's allowing Buddha doesn't want anybody to suffer. He's compassionate He doesn't want them to suffer. That's the whole point. The Recognition of the suffering is just a way of starting to cure it It's like when you when you're a doctor, if you go into the patient and you say, Oh, you're diabetic.
Yeah, yeah, you'll never get rid of that. Have you done the job as a doctor? I don't think so. You're just taunting people basically. Right?
That's no that's no good. If you if you, see a patient and they have a problem, sometimes you may have to say, I don't know how we can deal with this, you know, you you know, you know, get ready for it to move on to a new life. But, of course, that's a big problem and that's a big problem for materialist doctors because they're trained that all people have is their physical life. So they don't know how to help them across that frontier, you know, which is actually not that bad. Once you let go, they actually it's, you know, in French, you know, they they have an expression for orgasm.
You know what that is? And it's a little death and a pretty mole. And so that's but that's not when you're fighting to stay alive. That's when you let go, you know, and you're no longer burdened with a body that's malfunctioning. And then you think you're gonna be nothing and that, of course, is typical delusion.
Yeah. It's like it's like science supposedly goes by experiencing things to experiment, and experimental experimental data is supposed to outweigh theory. Mhmm. Dogma. Like, everything is matter, for example.
That's a that's a big dogma. But experience is supposed to outweigh that. Right? And yet they and yet which scientist discovered the nothing that a materialist is so certain they're going to when they die? Which one discovered that?
Dr. Mark Hyman
That's a great question. So if we think there's nothing after death, who proved that that's true?
Dr. Robert Thurman
Nobody. Exactly. Exactly. And and not only did nobody do it, but common sense will tell you nobody ever will. Yeah.
Because not nothing is a word for something that you don't discover, and therefore, you won't get there by dying. Yes. The law of thermodynamics, the conservation of energy goes for the mind. It's the conservation of energy of the mind. Yeah.
So but with the exact what it is, well, then that's an open question and that we can investigate. And science should be investigated, and Buddhist science investigated that 1000 of years ago and has some descriptions. But this is also the great thing. They say that no description of relative reality is the final description, the dogma, except for that. You know, that it's open, in other words.
Yeah. That it's always open for a little more refined, better analysis and helpful in this context. But all such explanations are only good in certain contexts.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes.
Dr. Robert Thurman
And your mind is doors open for further deeper understanding. So wait, then the 4th Yes. Noble fact. The 4th noble fact is the eightfold path of education. Mhmm.
And here's where typical mistraining comes from Buddhists, most Buddhists. They say training, they call it. But the word Adi Shiksha in Sanskrit or in Pali or in Tibetan, Shiksha today in Hindi is the word for the Department of Education in the Indian government. Shiksha. Shiksha means
Dr. Mark Hyman
See, Professor Thurman has a unique, privilege because he speaks all these languages.
Dr. Robert Thurman
No. I don't know what he's speaking.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Or he reads he reads Tibetan. You speak
Dr. Robert Thurman
Tibetan. Sanskrit.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Sanskrit.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Yeah. But not Hindi.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I'd But you speak Tibetan?
Dr. Robert Thurman
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh,
Dr. Mark Hyman
yeah. And so so you read the original text, so you don't have to go through a filter third party. You get to actually
Dr. Robert Thurman
Well, somewhat.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Directly to the source.
Dr. Robert Thurman
It all it all gets so rusty. I'm getting to where I can barely speak English often. You're doing okay. But but the point is the 4th noble truth, therefore, is a part a curriculum. It's a higher education in, reality, science, discovering reality, which is the job of science, wisdom, which is the goal of science, Should be, not just a quantifiable data list, but wisdom.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Ethics, you know, how to behave in a realistic manner, and m mind or meditation or how to cultivate your mind and how to manage your mind. So those are higher educations in those three things. And The 8 branches fit into these 3 higher education, but they say training. Why do they say training? I'll tell you why because in our culture, we're all totally over educated.
Yeah. We've been 4 years here, 8 years there, 4 years there in medical school. You know, totally. And we have these degrees, and we're still pissed off.
Dr. Mark Hyman
We're still suffering.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Still suffering and still frustrated. So we think and, of course, we think our education is the greatest that ever happened on the planet and lie in the universe. You know? And maybe we're the only beings in the universe we stupidly think. And then, also, we you know, they talk, you know, and then we think it's the greatest.
So since we've had this huge education, it must suck. So we're all we want to think that Buddhism is just empty your mind and then you're fine. Don't have a mind, in other words, you're just absolutely the wrong thing to do. The greatest thing we have is the human mind. It's it's a little bit divine, you know.
Yeah. And and we agree with the religions on that. And, and it's vulnerable, which is the problem with the gods is they are divine, but they're divine, but they're too they're just in their 1000 year jacuzzi, and they never do anything. So they were they're denial about the suffering, you know? But we are not because we bump into things.
We stub our toes, you know? And and so the point is, it's an education process, and but it's a higher Adi, the Adi part means higher. Adi shiksha, you know. Intense education. Yeah.
Because you're educating your whole being, your mind, and your body. Your and also and this I love that you said, you know, our body you know, in your book, you say we have to we have to do something with our body. Our body is we are responsible for our body. When we save our body, we save the world.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes.
Dr. Robert Thurman
That's just yes. Oh, that's the 4th noble truth. That's the 4th noble truth. Yeah. That is the education process.
Yeah. And it's like really a doctor with a patient. You know this and you call it functional medicine, but every doctor should do that. Mhmm. They have to educate the patient.
Yeah. The patient has gone wrong in this beautiful environment that is just suited for the human being. It's a perfect one for us if we didn't mess it up. You know, the plants are they're out there. They want they're in love with us.
Give me your carbon, they say. Oh, I love that you breed this carbon, noxious carbon, and I'm gonna give you back oxygen.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Because I love you. Yeah. And that and it's a total gangbang with the plants.
Dr. Mark Hyman
There you go.
Dr. Robert Thurman
But not if we screw them up. Not if we mess them up. No. And, the point is
Dr. Mark Hyman
So, professor, I I have a question. You know, we're we're we're recording this podcast.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Yes. Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's in the midst of the COVID 19 pandemic.
Yung Pueblo
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman
We are not doing it in person because we're socially isolating and being responsible. I know. And there are so many people suffering right now. There are so many people who've lost their jobs, who Yes. Have lost their their purpose.
It's sort of like what what, John Lennon said life what happens when you're making other plans. And we all have other plans right now, including you and me and everybody. We're all in this together, and there's just such a massive global suffering of humanity. Yes. How how do you use Buddhism as a lens to help us think differently about this moment, and what can you offer in terms of some wisdom from your learnings about how to navigate this for all of us?
Dr. Robert Thurman
Well, let's thank you for asking that. That's good, and that's a great question. And the thing is this, first of all, you know, it is a suffering, but it just it also, you know, first thing and first wisdom of Buddhism is ancient English Buddhism count your blessings. You know, if you're if you have the if you're isolated, but don't have the virus, hey, that's better than being sick. If you have the virus, but you don't have a severe case, that's better than having dying.
If you're dying in, at least, you know, you're gonna have another good life if you notice that you're dying, and you you can't help it, and you then realize you're not gonna be nothing. And also just because you believe in somebody else is gonna help you, that necessarily is not good. But if you develop a positive view and relax yourself and let go into the light, And, you know, and there's movies that teach you how to do that, like Jacob's Ladder, like like ghosts. You know, there are movies even nowadays that help you do that. And you just let go or, you know, Close Encounter of the Third Kind or, 2010, you just go into one of those special effects, Zoom.
You know, you let go of yourself. And then you'll be out of the body, you know? So in other words, no matter what, there's no worst case analysis that that is the ultimate horror. No. You you Buddhism teaches you to look for the silver lining and focus on that.
On the other hand, it doesn't teach you passively to accept the bad stuff. And therefore, you can demand that the government pay your unemployment insurance.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes.
Dr. Robert Thurman
You can demand that they they stop the bank from foreclosing on your mortgage. You could demand that they take the 100 of 1,000,000,000 that they give to the corrupt corporations, and they give it to you to grow your garden, and they start subsidizing regenerative agriculture.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes.
Dr. Robert Thurman
And they and they move 20,000,000,000 we give $20,000,000,000 of direct subsidy to the oil industry, which they use to lobby the government to buy the congressmen, like the Moscow Mitch. Yeah. And other corrupt also corrupt democratic congressmen. And the president, they buy the president. They presidents are cheap.
You give them a $1,000,000 for his campaign, and you get 1,000,000,000 of dollars of subsidy. That's a total that that's like hiring some somebody on the street.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So so it's interesting. A lot of Buddhists are political activists.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Right? Yeah. They well, some not. When they understand Buddhism as meaning, shut yourself up in your shutdown mind and just sit there and take the pain of sitting there uncomfortably.
Dr. Mark Hyman
But but the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, these are guys who are real political activists.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Well, of course they are. They're not only activists, but they are activists. To be a political, any kind of activist has to be an educational activist. Mhmm. That, you know, you don't hate the bad guys.
You wanna educate them. Sometimes people are harming you, and you have to, you know, like even with demons, you know, the Buddhists usually try not to kill the demons. They try not to. Now and then, you know, you have to have been self defense by accident, you know, it's something bomb goes off. But they try to capture them, sit them down, and get into the classroom with them.
They have these legends of interminable multi life lectures going on with the demon. And then the demons shape up. Once they realize that that's not gonna make them happy to harm people and harm other beings, that never makes you happy because that increases your isolation. If you're harmful to someone, that means you don't identify with them, and that means you're different from them. So you're divided up the world and you have stuck yourself in in isolation.
So the fact that we're all in isolation now if we are under a sensible government and with helping us to do that to stop the play because our human life is so valuable because it can give us the opportunity to understand the world. Yeah. That is only showing us actually that we normally live in isolation. People are lonely. They are they are shut down.
They watch it. They go on Facebook instead of having a friend who's their neighbor. They don't build their community. They they're they're purposely isolated by industrialization Mhmm. Because that makes them potential brainwashable consumers.
They can do, as you said, 4000 ads shown to children about some disgusting, poisonous, sugary color thing. They have to they they they get brainwashed by the tea by the media. So they don't want them to hang with their parents, and the parents who would who know about have a good doctor tell them, don't eat that stuff. Don't drink that nasty, diabetic drink.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes.
Dr. Robert Thurman
They they they so in other words, the isolation is imposed on us actually by industrial culture. Even though Gerry Mander's work, I'm sure
Yung Pueblo
you
Dr. Robert Thurman
know that book, Four Reasons Why You Threw Out the Television. Well, I don't I don't agree with him. It's the ultimate bottom line. I don't agree. But his awareness of that these things are gonna be so badly misused, which are actually good things.
Dr. Mark Hyman
But people are fearful now. Right? So people are having fear. And and how do we how do we change, our relationship without fear? Instead of it shutting us down, how can that serve?
How do we change relationship with fear as a tool to improve our lives?
Dr. Robert Thurman
A great Bodhisattva, who was once our president, told us how. The only thing to fear is fear itself. Mhmm. FDR. Yeah.
One great bodhisattva.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So what is a bodhisattva for those listening who don't know?
Dr. Robert Thurman
A bodhisattva Or a noble person is someone who genuinely cares about other people.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.
Dr. Robert Thurman
In other words, and technically the technical the the in in the Buddhist education, the technical barrier of it is beyond having a theory about I should care for other people. You begin to have you open up your natural human empathy to feel what they feel, which we all have. Everyone feels that about a newborn baby, their newborn baby. It's compassion. Yeah.
Yeah. It's with empathy, and compassion is empathy, actually. But it's not only empathy. Beyond empathy, it then is the sharing of happiness is what it is. Because it the only way to get rid of suffering is to feel happy.
So compassion wants to spread happiness. That's what it does.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So my my understanding was the bodhisattva is someone who's reached the gates of enlightenment Yeah. But rather than get there himself, turns back to help relieve the suffering of all sentient beings.
Dr. Robert Thurman
That's right. And but that's because that person it isn't just because this person is automatically nicer than someone else. It's because that person has investigated reality enough to realize that if no matter how cushy they feel, if there's 10 people around them in agony, the vibe is gonna destroy their sense of feeling happy. So we feel each other's feelings, you know. The sixties, we have this wonderful expression from the sixties, good vibrations and bad vibration.
Yeah. But that's that's in a they have those kind of expressions in more enlightened languages than ours about how you do actually feel each other's feelings. You do do that. Yeah. And of course, we can cut we cultivate that like like military people.
They cultivate, but out of, you know, sort of I'm riding on anger and hatred for the enemy, they cultivate a sense of expanding the kinship empathy to your platoon members, to your nation, to your patriotism, you know, so and only that far, and then they do it only as an opposite of the hatred for the enemy. So but they show it shows that you can shift the way the mind of a person is. And and but it's very hard for the military and it creates great suffering for the soldier because it means it to they just to do 2 opposite things at once. They have to cultivate their empathy for their fellow soldier and and citizen supposedly, but meanwhile hatred for someone else which means no empathy for them. Yes.
So they're they're they're puts them in an internal conflict right away. 100%. And then and that's p t then they come back with their PTSD, and then pretty soon they don't have empathy for anybody. And they're they're like like Rambo, you know? They're they're impossible.
If a sheriff is gonna get them, you know, they're gonna get the sheriff. They're gonna shoot the sheriff.
Dr. Mark Hyman
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Dr. Robert Thurman
where I'm the chief
Dr. Mark Hyman
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Coming up on this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show.
Yung Pueblo
But the reality is that at the mental level, at the atomic level, at the physical level, at the cosmic level, at the most minute levels possible, everything is constantly, constantly changing. And if we don't embrace that truth, then it's gonna hurt.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone via my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at this scale. And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, you. If you're looking for data about your biology, check out function health for real time lab insights. If you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, check out my membership community, Hyman Hive. And if you're looking for curated and trusted supplements and health products for your routine, visit my website, supplement store, for a summary of my favorite and tested products.
Hi. I'm doctor Mark Hyman, a practicing physician and proponent of systems medicine, a framework to help you understand the why or the root cause of your symptoms. Welcome to The Dr. Hyman Show. Every week, I bring on interesting guests to discuss the latest topics in the field of functional medicine and do a deep dive on how these topics pertain to your health. In today's episode, I have some interesting discussions with other experts in the field.
So let's just jump right in.
Yung Pueblo
A lot of the suffering that we encounter in our minds is because we reject impermanence. We reject change, and that creates so much mental tension, so much mental struggle because we you know, there are things that we really like in life, and we want them to stay the same. We want the people that we like to be there. We want the situations to remain, in a way that continue feeding that sort of calmness and pleasantness of life. But the reality is that at the mental level, at the atomic level, at the physical level, at the cosmic level, at the most minute levels possible, everything is constantly, constantly changing.
And if we don't embrace that truth, that sort of natural flow of nature that's just constantly moving forward, then it's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt a lot. Because no matter how hard we try, we just can't keep things the same. We may be able to elongate things sometimes, but, ultimately, whatever arises will pass away. And that doesn't need to be a truth that strikes fear in you.
And that's something that I've been sort of working on in my own life and writing about is that a lot of times our relationship with change is one that's based on fear. But Yeah. It can actually be, you know, that relationship can be evolved into one that's quite inspiring. Where I I know that I'm not always gonna be here. I know that this situation won't be here.
So let me bring presence into this situation. Let me bring my attention here. Let me really try my best to connect with the people who are around me, who are crossing my path in this moment because Mhmm. It's just special. Like, we're not always gonna have this.
So, like, what that has done, it's morphed my relationship with my wife, morphed my relationship with my mom and dad. And these moments that we do share, we're able to connect. It's like, wow. Like, they're so precious. And Mhmm.
I'm more so grateful to change because if you think about it fundamentally, if the universe wasn't constantly changing, if everything was static, you and I would not be here. Nothing would exist. There would be no one would be here. So because of change, you and I can exist. We can learn.
We can love. We can grow. We can, you know, really flourish and evolve. So change is difficult, but it also gives us an incredible opportunity.
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's true. But it's it's a tough one for people because, people get comfortable with the way things are and
Yung Pueblo
Totally.
Dr. Robert Thurman
They live
Dr. Mark Hyman
in the fear of what's not here or what's what's gonna change. And I, you know, I can tell you at 63, I just turned 63, and impermanence definitely has a lot more relevance for
Yung Pueblo
me now. I bet. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And whether I live another 10 years or 50 or 80 years, maybe I'm hoping I'm dying at a 180. We'll see how that goes. Maybe you got a 100 and 20 years.
Yung Pueblo
Do it for the rest of us, man. Yeah. I feel like it's a good goal.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Maybe I got another 120 years left. We'll see. Yeah. But I I I I think, you know, regardless, there's an end. And I think the preciousness of every interaction, of every moment, of every person is is is really a beautiful meditation because it brings you into the present moment.
Of course, if you feel like crap, if you're not well, if, you know so there's a there's a saying that, you know, a healthy man wants many things, a sick man wants one thing. Right?
Yung Pueblo
I think
Dr. Mark Hyman
so there there is for sure that, and I think I I I personally have have become much more clued into the the preciousness of everything, like, in every moment, in every every sunset, of every experience I'm having. And, you know, David David, White, who's a poet, who I love, talks about be being in friendship with all things, which is realizing that you're in relationship with everything. The Native Americans have a have a prayer called, which means, like, to all my relations, to all the living and breathing things, to the rocks, everything. Literally, you're in relationship with everything all the time. And I think we get pulled out of that when we're so attached to our own sort of individual self, our own ego, our own sense of separateness, which is really an illusion.
And so I think, you know, I'm curious about how you kinda come to share with people this sort of illusion of separateness that
Yung Pueblo
It's you know, it kinda what you're saying now reminds me of something you said a little earlier. And there's that very common quote that's attributed to a number of people, but, you know, it's we don't see things as we are. We we don't see things as they are. We see them as we are. And what I try to do with some of my writing is, like, expand on that.
Right? When we're interacting with reality, what is our perception doing? Our perception is actually seeing reality through our emotional history. It's seeing reality, and not just through that emotional history that we carry from our past, but it's combined with whatever is our current emotion. So we're seeing reality through these really thick lenses.
And that sort of enhances that attachment that we have towards basically tying whatever we're seeing in the present towards to something that happened in the past. And if anything in the present is sort of slightly reminding us of something positive or negative from the past, then immediately our emotions will just flow in these old directions and we'll be repeating the past over and over again. So that creates a situation where I may be meeting someone and I won't be able to fully appreciate them because I'll just be seeing them through my own gunk. Through the all the old sort of, conditioning that I've been carrying in my mind. And you won't be able to see that sort of unity or the potential love or the the depth of a connection that could really be there because you're just, looking at them through the unhealed parts of yourself.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. I mean, some of the things, you know, that I think happen in this sort of framework of personal development, self self help, and growth are are are is this phenomenon called spiritual bypass
Dr. Robert Thurman
Sure.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Where where people can, you know, do all the yoga and meditation, all these practices, but they really haven't dealt with their fundamental framework and beliefs and their conditioning, whether it's their epigenetics and inheriting trauma from past generations and just being a human on the planet.
Dr. Robert Thurman
You know?
Dr. Mark Hyman
Let's face it. It's been a hard thing over the last few 100000 years, and that's that's literally wired into our DNA, whether it's our own trauma from our own, personal stories. And I Mhmm. I've sort of really have had a lot of recent sort of relationship with, you know, the world I came into with my mother and father being in a very conflictual relationship, my father not wanting me, my wanting an abortion. I mean, my mother being alone and depressed, you know, during her pregnancy and me being born into this environment and what that did just to my epigenetics and Mhmm.
Mhmm. You know, activating my sympathetic nervous system as a is a place of in the world is a place of danger and having to just deal with that. And and each of us have our own story. And so how do we sort of deal with the traumas and then whether they're they're big traumas like abuse or micro traumas of just, you know, growing up in a dysfunctional family or a relationship.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Right.
Dr. Mark Hyman
How do we how do we take the things that you've learned as part of your self discovery and discovery of how to be in relationship to yourself and relationship to others and and sort of heal that without doing the spiritual bypass?
Yung Pueblo
Yeah. I think that's that's a great question. I I find that, this really sort of brings in what we were talking about in regards to impermanence because we want to allow impermanence to influence our understanding of our our own identity. So, we should allow ourselves to learn about our past, to see the way, you know, our relationship with our parents and whatnot affects the way that we show up in life today and allow these things to inform us. But the moment that our trauma becomes our identity, then it makes for a very rigid healing situation.
Because if we're like, oh, this is how I am because of this moment, and I'm always gonna be like this or this is how I I constantly see myself, then it's gonna slow down your evolution. So in some ways, I think we can do our best to understand ourselves, but then we also have to let it go. Because it's like, okay, I'm a change and growing being. So let me let me flow with, nature and allow myself to develop new interests, new likes, you know, let go of old parts of myself that don't really serve me anymore, and start letting my idea of who I am just continue blossoming. And in terms of spiritual bypassing, I think it's it's tough because the human mind can only, process so much information at once.
That's the reality of it. It's that we can't process everything at once. And I think, we get a little confused by the fact that the technological world of today is so fast, and information is constantly coming our way. It's we're constantly being inundated, and it's exhausting. You know, there's there's you know, you don't quite realize how much you take in and how much energy that burns because you're processing all of that.
So at one, you know, one of our challenges is to be able to develop our awareness and expand our awareness, but also in a sustainable manner. Because there are times where, you know, you're going through a hard time and, you know, staying connected to every single part of everything that's happening in the world. It that may not actually serve you. And then other times, you know, you wanna be active. You wanna be out there.
You wanna stay very informed. But those may be, you know, 1 year of your life versus another year of your life. And understanding that we have very different capacities. Like, you know, there may be people out there who can not only, you know, have a beautiful business, but then they're also part of all these different organizations. And they're out there actively trying to change the world.
And they're Yeah. You know, doing all these amazing things. And that's fantastic. You're helping all of us. Great.
But then there are other people who have experienced so much trauma that all they can do is heal themselves. Mhmm. But that's also beautiful. You're actually serving us by just focusing on healing yourself. Because if you heal yourself and you increase your ability to love yourself well, then that means you're gonna be less likely to harm yourself and other people.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's true. And I think I think, you know, one of the most helpful sort of frameworks I've ever learned about my own mind is that every every emotion, every time I'm triggered, every, belief I have is is just my own interpretation of reality that Yeah. That I project I project my worldview onto the world.
And and so when I when I step back and go, okay. This is just, like, one version of reality. This is not necessarily the truth with a capital t. Then I then I can get free from believing on these stupid thoughts. You know, my my friend Daniel Amen talks about, ants, automatic negative thoughts.
Right? And he says, don't believe every stupid thought you have. And I think a lot of us are so embedded with our thoughts. And that's the beauty of meditation is it sort of creates this slowing down so you can kinda watch your arising and your coming and going of thoughts and realize that you're not your thoughts. You're not your emotions.
You're not your beliefs. You're not your body. You're not any of these things. And and so and I I shared this on the podcast before, and I almost died about 6 years ago. And I really had you know, I was in bed for 6 months and just unable to function and lost £30 and was was in really just this almost vegetative state.
And I and I wasn't anything. I wasn't my mind. I wasn't my body. I couldn't answer an email. I couldn't do anything.
And I just lay there, and I just got to be in the experience of this sort of place, which actually was very happy and blissful. Yeah. Even despite the fact that my body was in agonizing pain, I was I sort of surrendered into this kind of peacefulness. And it's hard to explain, but I realized that at the moment, I everything changed for me, and I I I the the ideas that I'd had sort of conceptually became more experiential. And it was a very powerful moment to kinda start to sort of reorient my life to be more in integrity.
And I think sort of the next topic I wanna talk about was integrity and and honesty. And I think you talked about this concept in your book lighter, radical honesty.
Yung Pueblo
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
What's radical honesty, and and why why is it so important to have that? And what does that look like for each of us?
Yung Pueblo
Yeah. Radical honesty is just so critical, so valuable, especially as the first step. And, even before I started meditating, I found that, you know, I had no technique. I had no process. I didn't know how to, really engage with my emotions.
But I knew what the problem was. And the problem was that I had gotten to that rock bottom moment by continuously lying to myself. I did not want to admit to myself that I did not feel good. And when I realized and I finally admit that, I was like, I'm not okay. Like, I don't feel good.
I have way too much anxiety, way too much sadness. And that first acceptance of me just being like, okay. This this is true. And now I can more so move forward. But I started realizing that I need to repeat that over and over again whenever I feel tension instead of trying to, you know, roll up another joint or just go find some way to just run away from myself.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Let
Yung Pueblo
me just sit with this discomfort. Let me feel whatever's there as opposed to trying to, like, scrub it away or, ignore it in some manner. And radical honesty, it's a term that's been out there for a long time. But the way that I use the term is is honesty between you and yourself. It's not about you and other people.
Like, this is just about you and yourself and whatever is coming up, inside of you. And I think that being able to develop that radical honesty, it's a critical part of self love. And when you are able to, you know, see what's inside of you and accept what's there, whether it's good or bad, then that will actually slowly start building your courage, building your inner strength. And you'll start actually seeing that, the sort of tough emotions that you're having, they're actually not as fearful and as dangerous and as scary as you originally thought they were. Because I would run, you know, as if I was being chased by, like, a, you know, an animal or something like that.
And and once I started sitting with my anxiety, I was like, yeah. This sucks, but it's not that bad. I'm okay. Like, it's this isn't gonna take me out. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. That's so so being radically honest is hard because you have to be honest with yourself. You have to be honest with how you see yourself and your beliefs and your thoughts and almost take a third party view of yourself because you get so attached to who we are and our identity and our beliefs about ourselves, and it's just so hard to undo that. Right? So, you know, doing this work and and sort of letting go of these old stories and, you know, learning about letting go.
How do how do we put that into practice? Like, you know, letting go is is really hard. Someone struggle with it. And we often make things harder for ourselves. So why why is letting go so important?
And how do we have to keep doing this practice of letting go as part of our life?
Yung Pueblo
Well, this, this really you know, to what you were saying earlier about you realizing how you were creating your own narrative of what was happening in front of you. And one thing that, I really appreciate that, you know, the Buddha and my teacher, Ehsaengo, talks about is how wisdom is actually you being able to see things from different perspectives. So not just from your own perspective, but seeing whatever the truth may be from different angles. And being able to see your own angle, put yourself in the feet of another person, to just see the complexity of the situation as opposed to just creating some simplified self centered story. That's just this was not my fault.
This is somebody else's fault. But seeing your own you know, what what was what is the role that you played in this situation, and how may someone else have seen it? I think, that can be so informing to your ability to let go because that's probably one of the first things we need to let go of is, like, okay. I do have this one perception of what's happening in this moment, but there's more. There's more to understand.
And people are seeing this in other ways. But letting go, I think it's the crux of healing. It's quite necessary to be able to even somehow process your emotions and let them go. Because we don't realize that as soon as we're born, right, we're constantly reacting. And every reaction, it creates an imprint on the mind.
It molds the subconscious. And this doesn't stop at childhood. And I think that's one of the things that I think a lot of modern therapists kind of really hone in on those, like, first 7 or so years of life. And they're very formative, but it doesn't stop there. You know, the big events that happened to you later, you know, the heartbreaks, the loss, the, you know, the accident that you were talking about that you went through.
These created massive imprints in your mind that are still playing themselves out, that are still affecting the way that you act now. But it's you're acting now in relation to what happened before. And the letting go part is letting go of the energy of the past that you're still carrying, that you're still bringing into the present over and over again. And the beautiful part of the this modern age that we live in is that there's a lot of ways to let go. You know?
Like, I let go through meditating. Other people let go through the, you know, the practices that their therapist may teach them. There's just a lot of different ways to go about it. And there's no, like, sort of 1 to 5 step, like, this is how you let go. But, knowing that the letting go often involves really always involves you coming back to the present moment.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think it's hard because we get we do get so attached to our worldview, and it's and and we think, you know, it sort of come apart if we if we actually let go of what happened to us or if we move on or if we don't hold on to things. But, you know, I I think we we tend to poison ourselves by this constant holding on to our ways of seeing in in whether it's in relationship or to ourselves.
And I think one of the challenge for people, and I noticed this for myself, which people may find hard to explain given that I'm successful and, you know, blah blah blah, is, you know, I I realized that I had a certain level of self worth and self love, but I really wasn't fully in it. And and it sort of undermined my ability to love others, to actually choose the things that were good for me in life, to say yes to what was good, and to say no to what didn't resonate with me. And so how do how do you kind of help guide people towards more self acceptance, more self love, more self worth? Because it's it's sort of easy to talk about, but it's hard to do.
Yung Pueblo
Yeah. It is hard to do. And it's also hard to do in relation to, like, what society has or, like, what consumerism has created, in regards to self love where it's, you know, self love in terms of just kinda pleasing yourself, just like, buying more things, giving your, you know, just, the consumerist aspect of it. Mhmm. But I think real self love, it is you basically trying actively and continuously to get to know yourself and to do whatever it is you need to do to heal yourself and free yourself.
So that self love, it's really an internal dynamic. And it is hard. It's not something that's gonna be easy. But the reason that we come back to it, the reason that I come back to it personally is, like, I I literally can't make a bigger investment. Like, it's the best investment that I could make.
You know? I could, you know, be out there working and doing all these things, but all of it will just not whatever I may produce will not be as good if I don't have a strong ability to accept myself deeply. A strong ability to, balance that with self love and understand that I should love myself deeply. But there's also things that I can you know, different directions that I can grow in that will help me become a better version of myself and just continue showing up into the world in a way that, you know, honors the emotions that I'm feeling, but it's still, you know, showing up in a way that I feel really genuinely good about.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. It it's sort of, it's sort of an internal journey first. But then, you know, the the harder part is in being in a relationship. Right? With with with our with our family, our coworkers, our partner.
You know, Ram Dass talks about how, you know, if you think you're enlightened, just go home for Thanksgiving.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Right. Right. Right.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And I think that that's the challenge for many of us is that we sort of seem to maybe construct our reality where we think we're moving in the right direction. And we may be. But then, you know, we're find ourselves in relationship acting out these old unconscious patterns. So how how can our relationships be part of our healing as opposed to creating more trauma for us, which they often do?
Yung Pueblo
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's tough because relationships are sort of like incubators for growth, whether we want them to be or not. You know? They're they really accelerate, us seeing the different parts of ourselves that are good and and the the really tough parts.
I think, whenever egos are in proximity of each other, it's only a, you know, a short limited amount of time until there's conflict. Because egos egos are rough. And when they rub up against each other, the friction is created. So we cannot help but find, you know, difficulties in the people that we love, but being able to understand that that it's not just about them. That the the initial reaction may be you pointing the finger and being like, you made me feel this way.
But when you develop self awareness and you start realizing that, actually, you know, I may have actually just gotten less hours of sleep last night, and this is why I woke up and didn't feel good. But then my mind wanted to figure out how this is your fault and put in place the blame on someone else. So Yeah. There's one common practice that my wife and I try to do is, is we do our best to let each other know where we are in our emotional spectrum. And we let, you know, let each other know, like, how do I feel right now?
Instead of it sort of snowballing into this bigger narrative, We try to cut that narrative by just being in contact with each other about how we feel in the moment pretty constantly.
Dr. Mark Hyman
And and so so you wake up in the morning and you go, hey. I'm feeling this. How are you feeling? Or how how do you do that in practice? Do you have, like, a time to check-in every day?
Or
Yung Pueblo
So the the practice is really you know, it's us, checking in first thing in the morning. It's, just letting us know, like, okay. Either I feel, like, a lot of anxiety passing through me right now or I feel heavy right now or my mood feels really short. That information not only helps the person who's feeling it acknowledge and own the fact that, okay, I I don't feel great right now. I'm not gonna try to fake it.
And it lets your partner know, okay, that, you know, let me figure out ways to support them or just give them space or, you know, whatever it is. So that we're both aware that one of us is a little short today. And it's been really funny because there was this one particular moment where, you know, my wife and I my my wife was feeling tough that day. And her and I were working in different rooms, because we were both working from home at that time. And we, you know, we hadn't talked to each other for about, like, 2, 2 and a half hours.
And then she comes in, and she's like, you know, I just spent the last, like, 3 hours trying to figure out how, you know, me not feeling good right now is your fault. And and and she was like, it was so crazy. Like, it was totally illogical. Like, had nothing to do with you. And there are these times where, you know, certainly, the tough moments of our past will play into how we feel and how we act and really the way that our character shows up.
But it's not always like that in the minutia of, like, regular everyday life, where really sometimes it is. Because, like, maybe the day before I had too much sugar. And now my mood's super low the next day. Or I didn't get enough sleep last night. And now, like, you know, I I feel tired.
And what happens when you're tired? Then you get angry. You know, you like it, being able to be aware of these things and honest with yourself and your partner or those around you who are with you. I think it actually stops a lot a lot of unnecessary arguments from happening. Because surely, sometimes your partner will say something to you that they should apologize for.
But I would say 90% of the time, it's like you just jumping through these illogical hoops trying to, like, create a problem when there really is not a problem there.
Tara Brach
If you're stuck in a pattern, that's causing suffering, RAIN, again, it's a weave of mindfulness and self compassion. And the letters, it's an acronym, are Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture. And I'll give you an example of RAIN. I'll give you a personal example. This was, you know, through the pandemic people have used RAIN a lot.
So I get people telling me, you know, RAIN has saved my life. Well, when my mother moved down here, and this was, oh, she she moved down here when she was maybe 78 or 80, She came right at a time. I was super busy. I was trying to put together all the material for a new book and so on, and I was really torn because I was feeling very guilty about not spending enough time with her. And I was also feeling anxious about getting work done and coming through on my teachings.
Now these this is a basic cluster for me. If you say, you know, what are what are your issues? You know, guilt. Like, I am very programmed to wanna come through for everybody and very you know, I get a lot of angst when I feel like I'm falling short. So that's a whole story cluster.
Mhmm. And then the other one is, you know, on the enneagram, if you're familiar, is I'm a 3, which is a performer who wants to make sure she's coming across well, and so I get anxious about not being prepared. So so I so those were those were playing out. And I remember one day, I was right here in my office, and she came in. She was living here then, and she had a New Yorker article she wanted to show me.
And I was completely focused on my on my screen writing a talk, believe it or not, on love and kindness, which is embarrassing, which we're always doing.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Get out of here. You're busy. I'm ready. Right.
Tara Brach
Right. Right. You're in my way. You know? And, and so she was very discreet.
She just put it down and started retreating, and I turned and I I saw her. And I thought, wow. I don't know how long I'll have her. You know? So after she left, I did a practice with RAIN.
And, the recognize is recognizing, okay, guilt, but also anxious. The allow is just what we were talking about earlier, Mark, which is, okay. Just let it be here. This is the reality of this moment. It's here.
Just not not try to judge it or ignore it. Okay. Anxiety, guilt. The investigate, it's not cognitive. That's an important piece.
It's cognitive only. You might identify what you are believing. And for me, I was believing, well, I am letting her down but I am also going to could fail and, you know, but it's mostly somatic. With investigate, you are investigating how am I experiencing this directly in my body. And for me I could feel the excuse me I could feel the clutching, you know, in my chest and just the tightness and breathing with it, letting it be there, and really sensing what that part of me, that anxious guilty place needed And what it really needed was to be reminded of my goodness, that I was a loving being and that, you know, the truth would flow through in teaching.
It wasn't gonna take a whole lot of selfing to do it. And so that was the nurturing. The nurturing was to put I I like to put my hand on my heart, and I often teach it with nurturing, the self compassion, just to say, it's okay, sweetheart. You know? Just trust your goodness.
And there is a piece with RAIN where I call it after the RAIN where you just sense the presence that is emerging. And after that kind of presence and compassion I could just feel I was resting in a much larger, more peaceful, more spacious, more tender place. And I practiced this a lot, Mark, for a few months when my mom this is still the early days of her being here and I found that I started really showing up more. Like we could have our salads in the evening, these giant salads, and I'd just be present, and we'd go for our walks by the river. And she died not she died maybe 3 years later.
And,
Yung Pueblo
you
Tara Brach
know, deep grief, of course, but not regrets. And and I realized that RAIN had saved my life moments with my mother. You know? It had really given me that. And so it's just an example of how I had been caught in the stories and the feelings.
And by interrupting with RAIN, which is just mindfulness and compassion, it really shifted my inner patterning.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. That's beautiful. I mean, it's a beautiful way of framing, a way of investigating and thinking about any feelings we're having or any emotions or any thoughts we're having. It's like it's just like a deliberate, clear practice. You know, recognize Allow.
Allow and investigate and nurture. They're really simple ideas, but they they're really powerful. I'm kind of moved by the the thinking about applying that to things that I have challenges with. So I think that it's great.
Tara Brach
One one of the things about it that's helpful to people is that when we're triggered, we have very little access to a prefrontal cortex. We forget how to get back home again, you know. And so this gives a pretty easy to remember sequence. It's not inviolable. You know, if once you go deeper into the practice you'll find that, you know, it's not so logically, you know, A B C D.
But it doesn't matter. There is still a way in which those elements are crucial. Now if there's trauma, you know, if the triggering is traumatic, you actually have to start with the nurturing. You have to start by creating more safety before you before you dive in and try to feel the feelings. And that's an important thing for people to know.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Wow. Yeah. So sometimes the order is different of how you engage with that practice. Right? Sometimes the dark and the shadows is where the light actually starts to come in, and and I know you've suffered a number of really challenging situations in your life, your mother's alcoholism, miscarriage, genetic issues that you have that, you know, you struggle with.
I've certainly had issues, you know, of health crises, and family issues, and relationship stuff, and, you know, and just life itself. And and, you know, some people can be really, in some ways, poisoned by those experiences and turn dark and bitter and angry and hurt and isolated, and yet many people find a different way out of those experiences into a very different way of being. So, for you, how your hardship shaped you and how those difficulties led you to find your way towards mindfulness?
Tara Brach
Well, first, I want to agree with you that suffering does have a potential to wake us up. And, well, maybe just to give you an example of how I got turned towards mindfulness, when I was in college, I was probably peaking in angst. I wasn't alone. I had many others angsting, but depression, anxiety, and it really kind of the hub of it was just a lot of self hatred. And I remember at one point being on a camping trip with a friend who said, you know, I'm learning to be my own best friend and how far I was from that.
So it just kind of opened up my eyes to, oh, my gosh, you know, I hate my body. I feel like I'm failing in my relationships with others. I'm compulsively overeating. I'm not producing, you know, just every front. So that was, that was a real pit of suffering.
And interestingly, at the same time, I was very much a social activist. So I was out there, you know, and on the weekends, we'd have rallies and there was a lot of agitation there, but I started doing a yoga class. So weekends, I was agitated and then Tuesday nights, you know, and it was yoga and meditation. And I remember one night, Mark, where I was it was right after class. I was walking home and, it was spring and fragrance of the fruit trees.
And I stopped and realized that my body and my mind were in the same place at the same time.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Wow. What a discovery.
Tara Brach
Amazing. And with that, just such a such a feeling of peace and belonging to the world. And and what really hit me then was, you know, if we wanna change our world, it really has to come from a consciousness that is feeling love and connectedness, not agitation and shaking a fist to bad enemy others.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Right.
Tara Brach
So it was those two things together. You know, the the sense of this is really who I can be and also being at war with myself that, I made a kind of 180 degree I was on my way to law school, and I ended up in an ashram for 10 years.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Wow. Wow. Wow.
Tara Brach
Yeah. It was a it was a big shift.
Dr. Mark Hyman
That's it. The, you know, law school to Ashram. That's like you couldn't get further apart. I don't think
Tara Brach
I know. I keep, like, I keep take double taking on it. But yeah. Yeah. That's what happened.
And in a way, I understand it now because I'm still really very dedicated to social change. And I know we have to keep on waking up our hearts in order to have it come from from love, not from anger and hatred.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. I mean, you know, you sort of touched on a little bit about the self worth issue. And I think, you know, I think people have different degrees of self worth or lack of self worth. And often, they're not even aware of and I think this is true for me, not even aware of where the lack of self worth lives. And I've always thought of myself as someone who's fairly, fairly confident in my in myself and my abilities, that I love myself, that I feel like I have high levels of self worth.
But there was a lot of areas where I really wasn't showing up that way. And I it really was hard for me to see it. And I think, you call this the trance of unworthiness. You know, you were caught in this trance of unworthiness. There was something always something wrong with life, with you.
How did how did you first sort of wake into the idea that you could let go of that story and really accept yourself?
Tara Brach
Well, for a lot of us, it's like what you said, it doesn't necessarily appear to us. And the reason I call it a trance is because most people, if I ask them I do this at workshops. You know, how many of you judge yourself? And, like, 98% of the hands will go up. But what people don't realize is that there's often this undercurrent of comparing ourselves to some idealized standard of who we should be or how we should feel or what we should be how we should be behaving in this moment.
It's like this inner monitor. Like, right now as we're doing this, there's there's a background inner monitor that in some way is evaluating. So how is it going? You know, that kind of a thing. And often we are not aware that there is a gap between how we want ourselves to be and how we are showing up.
We are just not aware of it. And it can affect everything because, you know, we are social beings and we want to be accepted and loved. And if we feel we are falling short, it's profoundly threatening. And so we are not aware that there is that kind of fear and self doubt. And it impacts, you know, how close we can feel with others, and it impacts how much risk we can take, you know, at work or our willingness to be creative or just our ability to relax in the moment if we think we are in some way in the red and we have to make up for it.
So it's a trance. And the cool thing is that when we shine a light on it and even get that there's this trance going on, there is something in us that has a yearning to be free from it, and it starts activating healing. So just seeing the trance is the beginning of freeing from it.
Dr. Robert Thurman
So in
Dr. Mark Hyman
a way, some way, you're saying that the people don't recognize that they are engaged in this battle with themselves against themselves, that they judge themselves, that they criticize themselves, that they see themselves in ways that are less than, and that they're measuring themselves against some standard of themselves that is just a fantasy. And that that disconnect that disparity is what causes suffering for people and that they're not even aware that they're doing it.
Tara Brach
And that we all have been fed those standards. It's like I'm not thinking my thoughts. I'm thinking society's thoughts about how I should be. You know? And we all have been conditioned by the same culture that says, you know, produce more and look this way and act this way and, you know, everything from, you know, how skinny we should be to how, spiritual we should be.
We have these standards, and our family is the messenger. And so they imprint it in a certain kind of constellation, but it's in there.
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's so true. I mean, we we go through life thinking that our beliefs or ideas or feelings or thoughts are all original. They come from us. That they're you know, we don't realize how powerfully conditioned we are to behave and think and act in certain ways. And, and if you travel a lot, you know, you if you meet people from different cultures, especially radically different cultures, not Western cultures, you begin to see that, wow, there's a really whole set of different assumptions and beliefs and feelings and thoughts about life.
I mean, I was just in Sardinia and I was I was up in the mountains and I was with this shepherd. And and we're sitting there talking and, you know, about his life and what it's like. And and I said, so do you have any stress? Like, you know, he's he's, he's got, like, 200 goats and sheep. And he says, well, he thought about it, and he's like, he he almost it was a puzzling question for him.
You know? And he says, well, sometimes at night, when a goat kind of wanders off, that's I had to go find it. That's stressful. I'm like Oh my God. And then sometimes, like, it's, when the goats give birth, then we have to move the mothers close to the house and then they wake us up in the night and we have to go help them.
And I'm like, oh, okay. So, you know, it's like we are just in such different worlds. And he just had such a glow about him, such a sereneness. And his whole family was there helping with their home and the whole shepherding thing. And I was like, wow.
We really have different points of cultural reference about life and joy and happiness and meaning. And we've all gotten I was thinking about this today, Tara. I was thinking about how people from other cultures are quite different. So, when I mean people from different cultures, I'm like, wow, they're their frame of reference, their way of seeing the world. They, you know, that they're seeing the world through their eyes gives me a very different perspective about life.
And it's it's kind of liberating because I realize that all of my beliefs, thoughts of what I should do, my notions, beliefs, ideas about how life should be, what I should be, what I should be doing or not doing are so programmed and ingrained and and never really begun to question them or question those thoughts about them.
Dr. Robert Thurman
In education, when you go to medical school, the the you don't the doctor doesn't say, believe you're a doctor and you'll be fine, and you can practice. No way. You have to study biology, you have to study anatomy, you have to study chemistry, pharmacology, blah blah blah. So so Buddhism is like that. You have to you have to study it.
No authority can just tell you it's like so and so, and then you believe it and that's that. And, and so that's why the Four Noble Truths, the sort of main framework of Buddhism, they translate it as truth, and that's not wrong. But if you translate it as the Four Noble Facts
Dr. Mark Hyman
Facts.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Would be better. Yeah. Yeah. In other words, aspects of reality.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes.
Dr. Robert Thurman
And and the first one is, if you don't know what it is, you're gonna misunderstand where you are who you are and where you are, and you're gonna suffer. But you can learn what it is. That's the big kicker. Everyone else tells you in school, the religious people told me you can't understand anything. You just have to believe, and and you have to believe whether it makes sense to you or not.
Just believe. And I said, that I don't like that. I refuse. That's no good. And then there's a great joke on that.
Do you know the joke about that, the theologian's joke? No. Where a theologian was asking the congregation, like, define faith. Tell me, folks. What is faith?
Can you tell me? And nobody would speak, you know. So then the little Johnny in the front row was going like, I can tell. I can tell. And he didn't go to it because he's a little kid then finally nobody grown up would speak So he says well, you all should be ashamed yourself.
Little Johnny is the only one who's answering the question Okay, little Johnny you tell this good vocal here. What is fate? He says, oh, I can tell. I know what it is. You're well, what is it?
He says, faith is believing what you know ain't true. The Langdon Gilkey, the theologian at University of Chicago, told me that joke. I love it. It sounds a little bit cynical. You know?
Yeah. Anyway anyway, so the point is, you just, you can understand yourself and the world, and you can and you don't have to be Einstein. Every human being with a brain is a kind of Einstein if they develop it. You know? And that's what he said.
The human life is so fortunate, not because we animals are not former humans, they are, But because they have souls, etcetera, that is like Albert Schweitzer, but I was like was like Schweitzer on that one. Yeah. But the point is, you have the ability to understand, 1. And 2, you have to understand to be happy. And when you really understand your world, you will be happy.
So, you know, our state So we
Dr. Mark Hyman
kinda misinterpret our reality, and that's what causes the suffering.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Exactly. But and then in cons and then and then they reinforce our misinterpretation by telling us ignorance is bliss. You don't wanna know what it is because you'd be so scared of it. You know? And they misinterpret Darwin as thinking that it's red in nature, red in tooth and claw.
You know? They're gonna all destroy us if we don't have nuclear weapons or something, which is absolutely wrong. You know? And, but the point is, you know, even death that they tell us is so terrible and scary and had to threaten us with hell and things like that. Then the scientists, they tell you, oh, yeah.
We don't believe all that. We're atheists and etcetera. And then but we also think we're looking to understand this gene and this atom and this subatomic particle and that bacteria and this virus. But we know that we'll never know everything, so we still never will know. So we just always keep looking for more stuff.
But we have a preconceived idea that you can't understand everything. If if any scientist jumped up and said, Eureka, I know everything now, like Buddha did, they would have him arrested or give him a tranquilizer, you know, because they have a preconceived idea that you also you can't understand, you see. Yeah. And but then I used to ask them, well, if you can't understand everything, how do you know you can't understand? And they could never answer that one.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, I mean, to me, say, Buddhism is the science of the mind.
Dr. Robert Thurman
That's it. So that but it's also it says you your mind, you, Mark Hyman, your mind, Bob Thurman, you, whoever it is, if you really develop your mind, it is capable of understanding the world. And you, therefore, you can understand your world. Not only can you, but you experience it all the time. So you just
Dr. Mark Hyman
You started with the 4 facts or the 4 truths.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is is that You see, if you don't understand it, it will bring you suffering. And, because you will now always be dissatisfied with everything, and you will not understand what you are and who where you are.
And so you'll be afraid that different bad things will happen to you. And so you'll fight things and you'll try to impose your own control on them rather than go with them. And then that will fail and then you'll be frustrated. And even happiness, what you think of as happiness, you'll be dissatisfied with because it won't last.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.
Dr. Robert Thurman
And then you you won't be you won't get you won't be joyed well enough to make it last. You actually can think. There is happiness that lasts, but not that not the sort of ones that depend on some some, external circumstance. So so that's the first thing. Then second noble fact is that that suffering has a cause and the causes are an inability to understand it.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Understand the nature of reality. Right?
Dr. Robert Thurman
No. No. No. That's just our habit. It actually is luckily less real than our ability to understand it.
That that's the good news. But in order to do that, we have to analyze it. We have to figure it out. And therefore he was a scientist. He he figured things out, the Buddha did.
And meditation is not just shutting down your mind. It's that's wrongly taught. Meditation meditation is focusing your mind to a very much higher degree of intelligence, which we all have the capacity for and then then we will reach an experience of what reality is. And the third level of fact and the reason they're called noble is that they are factual for a noble person. They're not factual for an ignorant person.
A person
Dr. Mark Hyman
who Can I can I go back to the second one? Because my all of my learning about was it, you know, that that the first is recognizing that we suffer, that the way we we think about reality causes to suffer. The second is that we're attached to things being a certain way and that that causes suffering. Is that is that a misunderstanding of the second
Dr. Robert Thurman
No. That's correct. But the certain way that we're attached to them is that we can't understand them.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.
Dr. Robert Thurman
They are not us. They are vast in the case of materialism, which is our mainstream view in America nowadays. It's a vast material realm that is, you know, nobody can count all the fish in the ocean, all this kind of thing. So you it's quantum knowledge is quantifiable, has to be, and you never will get to in an infinite universe, you'll never get to the full quantity ever. So so our misunderstanding of the way things are has to do with our inability to be alright within everything, you see.
And the key component is that we're ignorant, but we know we're ignorant. So therefore, we're attached to being ignorant actually. And, and if we really realize what ignorance means, then we will realize that we don't know that we we that that we can't be sure that we're gonna stay ignorant, and then we can change our mind. Follow me? So it's that first beginning point, it's a shift.
That's the big shift. We can know, and we can develop wisdom, and the wisdom can overcome that cause. It's like that's the antidote, right? But wait, then the next thing is the 3rd noble fact. And the 3rd noble fact is freedom from suffering, happiness.
And this is what nobody, I'm afraid, really teaches well who teaches Buddhism. They all stick on their suffering. And that's joining and terrorizing people. And the Buddhist themselves do that. And they say, oh, I'm so happy.
I'm allowed to suffer. That's nonsense Nobody's allowing Buddha doesn't want anybody to suffer. He's compassionate He doesn't want them to suffer. That's the whole point. The Recognition of the suffering is just a way of starting to cure it It's like when you when you're a doctor, if you go into the patient and you say, Oh, you're diabetic.
Yeah, yeah, you'll never get rid of that. Have you done the job as a doctor? I don't think so. You're just taunting people basically. Right?
That's no that's no good. If you if you, see a patient and they have a problem, sometimes you may have to say, I don't know how we can deal with this, you know, you you know, you know, get ready for it to move on to a new life. But, of course, that's a big problem and that's a big problem for materialist doctors because they're trained that all people have is their physical life. So they don't know how to help them across that frontier, you know, which is actually not that bad. Once you let go, they actually it's, you know, in French, you know, they they have an expression for orgasm.
You know what that is? And it's a little death and a pretty mole. And so that's but that's not when you're fighting to stay alive. That's when you let go, you know, and you're no longer burdened with a body that's malfunctioning. And then you think you're gonna be nothing and that, of course, is typical delusion.
Yeah. It's like it's like science supposedly goes by experiencing things to experiment, and experimental experimental data is supposed to outweigh theory. Mhmm. Dogma. Like, everything is matter, for example.
That's a that's a big dogma. But experience is supposed to outweigh that. Right? And yet they and yet which scientist discovered the nothing that a materialist is so certain they're going to when they die? Which one discovered that?
Dr. Mark Hyman
That's a great question. So if we think there's nothing after death, who proved that that's true?
Dr. Robert Thurman
Nobody. Exactly. Exactly. And and not only did nobody do it, but common sense will tell you nobody ever will. Yeah.
Because not nothing is a word for something that you don't discover, and therefore, you won't get there by dying. Yes. The law of thermodynamics, the conservation of energy goes for the mind. It's the conservation of energy of the mind. Yeah.
So but with the exact what it is, well, then that's an open question and that we can investigate. And science should be investigated, and Buddhist science investigated that 1000 of years ago and has some descriptions. But this is also the great thing. They say that no description of relative reality is the final description, the dogma, except for that. You know, that it's open, in other words.
Yeah. That it's always open for a little more refined, better analysis and helpful in this context. But all such explanations are only good in certain contexts.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes.
Dr. Robert Thurman
And your mind is doors open for further deeper understanding. So wait, then the 4th Yes. Noble fact. The 4th noble fact is the eightfold path of education. Mhmm.
And here's where typical mistraining comes from Buddhists, most Buddhists. They say training, they call it. But the word Adi Shiksha in Sanskrit or in Pali or in Tibetan, Shiksha today in Hindi is the word for the Department of Education in the Indian government. Shiksha. Shiksha means
Dr. Mark Hyman
See, Professor Thurman has a unique, privilege because he speaks all these languages.
Dr. Robert Thurman
No. I don't know what he's speaking.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Or he reads he reads Tibetan. You speak
Dr. Robert Thurman
Tibetan. Sanskrit.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Sanskrit.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Yeah. But not Hindi.
Dr. Mark Hyman
I'd But you speak Tibetan?
Dr. Robert Thurman
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh,
Dr. Mark Hyman
yeah. And so so you read the original text, so you don't have to go through a filter third party. You get to actually
Dr. Robert Thurman
Well, somewhat.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Directly to the source.
Dr. Robert Thurman
It all it all gets so rusty. I'm getting to where I can barely speak English often. You're doing okay. But but the point is the 4th noble truth, therefore, is a part a curriculum. It's a higher education in, reality, science, discovering reality, which is the job of science, wisdom, which is the goal of science, Should be, not just a quantifiable data list, but wisdom.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Ethics, you know, how to behave in a realistic manner, and m mind or meditation or how to cultivate your mind and how to manage your mind. So those are higher educations in those three things. And The 8 branches fit into these 3 higher education, but they say training. Why do they say training? I'll tell you why because in our culture, we're all totally over educated.
Yeah. We've been 4 years here, 8 years there, 4 years there in medical school. You know, totally. And we have these degrees, and we're still pissed off.
Dr. Mark Hyman
We're still suffering.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Still suffering and still frustrated. So we think and, of course, we think our education is the greatest that ever happened on the planet and lie in the universe. You know? And maybe we're the only beings in the universe we stupidly think. And then, also, we you know, they talk, you know, and then we think it's the greatest.
So since we've had this huge education, it must suck. So we're all we want to think that Buddhism is just empty your mind and then you're fine. Don't have a mind, in other words, you're just absolutely the wrong thing to do. The greatest thing we have is the human mind. It's it's a little bit divine, you know.
Yeah. And and we agree with the religions on that. And, and it's vulnerable, which is the problem with the gods is they are divine, but they're divine, but they're too they're just in their 1000 year jacuzzi, and they never do anything. So they were they're denial about the suffering, you know? But we are not because we bump into things.
We stub our toes, you know? And and so the point is, it's an education process, and but it's a higher Adi, the Adi part means higher. Adi shiksha, you know. Intense education. Yeah.
Because you're educating your whole being, your mind, and your body. Your and also and this I love that you said, you know, our body you know, in your book, you say we have to we have to do something with our body. Our body is we are responsible for our body. When we save our body, we save the world.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes.
Dr. Robert Thurman
That's just yes. Oh, that's the 4th noble truth. That's the 4th noble truth. Yeah. That is the education process.
Yeah. And it's like really a doctor with a patient. You know this and you call it functional medicine, but every doctor should do that. Mhmm. They have to educate the patient.
Yeah. The patient has gone wrong in this beautiful environment that is just suited for the human being. It's a perfect one for us if we didn't mess it up. You know, the plants are they're out there. They want they're in love with us.
Give me your carbon, they say. Oh, I love that you breed this carbon, noxious carbon, and I'm gonna give you back oxygen.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Because I love you. Yeah. And that and it's a total gangbang with the plants.
Dr. Mark Hyman
There you go.
Dr. Robert Thurman
But not if we screw them up. Not if we mess them up. No. And, the point is
Dr. Mark Hyman
So, professor, I I have a question. You know, we're we're we're recording this podcast.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Yes. Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's in the midst of the COVID 19 pandemic.
Yung Pueblo
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman
We are not doing it in person because we're socially isolating and being responsible. I know. And there are so many people suffering right now. There are so many people who've lost their jobs, who Yes. Have lost their their purpose.
It's sort of like what what, John Lennon said life what happens when you're making other plans. And we all have other plans right now, including you and me and everybody. We're all in this together, and there's just such a massive global suffering of humanity. Yes. How how do you use Buddhism as a lens to help us think differently about this moment, and what can you offer in terms of some wisdom from your learnings about how to navigate this for all of us?
Dr. Robert Thurman
Well, let's thank you for asking that. That's good, and that's a great question. And the thing is this, first of all, you know, it is a suffering, but it just it also, you know, first thing and first wisdom of Buddhism is ancient English Buddhism count your blessings. You know, if you're if you have the if you're isolated, but don't have the virus, hey, that's better than being sick. If you have the virus, but you don't have a severe case, that's better than having dying.
If you're dying in, at least, you know, you're gonna have another good life if you notice that you're dying, and you you can't help it, and you then realize you're not gonna be nothing. And also just because you believe in somebody else is gonna help you, that necessarily is not good. But if you develop a positive view and relax yourself and let go into the light, And, you know, and there's movies that teach you how to do that, like Jacob's Ladder, like like ghosts. You know, there are movies even nowadays that help you do that. And you just let go or, you know, Close Encounter of the Third Kind or, 2010, you just go into one of those special effects, Zoom.
You know, you let go of yourself. And then you'll be out of the body, you know? So in other words, no matter what, there's no worst case analysis that that is the ultimate horror. No. You you Buddhism teaches you to look for the silver lining and focus on that.
On the other hand, it doesn't teach you passively to accept the bad stuff. And therefore, you can demand that the government pay your unemployment insurance.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes.
Dr. Robert Thurman
You can demand that they they stop the bank from foreclosing on your mortgage. You could demand that they take the 100 of 1,000,000,000 that they give to the corrupt corporations, and they give it to you to grow your garden, and they start subsidizing regenerative agriculture.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes.
Dr. Robert Thurman
And they and they move 20,000,000,000 we give $20,000,000,000 of direct subsidy to the oil industry, which they use to lobby the government to buy the congressmen, like the Moscow Mitch. Yeah. And other corrupt also corrupt democratic congressmen. And the president, they buy the president. They presidents are cheap.
You give them a $1,000,000 for his campaign, and you get 1,000,000,000 of dollars of subsidy. That's a total that that's like hiring some somebody on the street.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So so it's interesting. A lot of Buddhists are political activists.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Right? Yeah. They well, some not. When they understand Buddhism as meaning, shut yourself up in your shutdown mind and just sit there and take the pain of sitting there uncomfortably.
Dr. Mark Hyman
But but the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, these are guys who are real political activists.
Dr. Robert Thurman
Well, of course they are. They're not only activists, but they are activists. To be a political, any kind of activist has to be an educational activist. Mhmm. That, you know, you don't hate the bad guys.
You wanna educate them. Sometimes people are harming you, and you have to, you know, like even with demons, you know, the Buddhists usually try not to kill the demons. They try not to. Now and then, you know, you have to have been self defense by accident, you know, it's something bomb goes off. But they try to capture them, sit them down, and get into the classroom with them.
They have these legends of interminable multi life lectures going on with the demon. And then the demons shape up. Once they realize that that's not gonna make them happy to harm people and harm other beings, that never makes you happy because that increases your isolation. If you're harmful to someone, that means you don't identify with them, and that means you're different from them. So you're divided up the world and you have stuck yourself in in isolation.
So the fact that we're all in isolation now if we are under a sensible government and with helping us to do that to stop the play because our human life is so valuable because it can give us the opportunity to understand the world. Yeah. That is only showing us actually that we normally live in isolation. People are lonely. They are they are shut down.
They watch it. They go on Facebook instead of having a friend who's their neighbor. They don't build their community. They they're they're purposely isolated by industrialization Mhmm. Because that makes them potential brainwashable consumers.
They can do, as you said, 4000 ads shown to children about some disgusting, poisonous, sugary color thing. They have to they they they get brainwashed by the tea by the media. So they don't want them to hang with their parents, and the parents who would who know about have a good doctor tell them, don't eat that stuff. Don't drink that nasty, diabetic drink.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes.
Dr. Robert Thurman
They they they so in other words, the isolation is imposed on us actually by industrial culture. Even though Gerry Mander's work, I'm sure
Yung Pueblo
you
Dr. Robert Thurman
know that book, Four Reasons Why You Threw Out the Television. Well, I don't I don't agree with him. It's the ultimate bottom line. I don't agree. But his awareness of that these things are gonna be so badly misused, which are actually good things.
Dr. Mark Hyman
But people are fearful now. Right? So people are having fear. And and how do we how do we change, our relationship without fear? Instead of it shutting us down, how can that serve?
How do we change relationship with fear as a tool to improve our lives?
Dr. Robert Thurman
A great Bodhisattva, who was once our president, told us how. The only thing to fear is fear itself. Mhmm. FDR. Yeah.
One great bodhisattva.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So what is a bodhisattva for those listening who don't know?
Dr. Robert Thurman
A bodhisattva Or a noble person is someone who genuinely cares about other people.
Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.
Dr. Robert Thurman
In other words, and technically the technical the the in in the Buddhist education, the technical barrier of it is beyond having a theory about I should care for other people. You begin to have you open up your natural human empathy to feel what they feel, which we all have. Everyone feels that about a newborn baby, their newborn baby. It's compassion. Yeah.
Yeah. It's with empathy, and compassion is empathy, actually. But it's not only empathy. Beyond empathy, it then is the sharing of happiness is what it is. Because it the only way to get rid of suffering is to feel happy.
So compassion wants to spread happiness. That's what it does.
Dr. Mark Hyman
So my my understanding was the bodhisattva is someone who's reached the gates of enlightenment Yeah. But rather than get there himself, turns back to help relieve the suffering of all sentient beings.
Dr. Robert Thurman
That's right. And but that's because that person it isn't just because this person is automatically nicer than someone else. It's because that person has investigated reality enough to realize that if no matter how cushy they feel, if there's 10 people around them in agony, the vibe is gonna destroy their sense of feeling happy. So we feel each other's feelings, you know. The sixties, we have this wonderful expression from the sixties, good vibrations and bad vibration.
Yeah. But that's that's in a they have those kind of expressions in more enlightened languages than ours about how you do actually feel each other's feelings. You do do that. Yeah. And of course, we can cut we cultivate that like like military people.
They cultivate, but out of, you know, sort of I'm riding on anger and hatred for the enemy, they cultivate a sense of expanding the kinship empathy to your platoon members, to your nation, to your patriotism, you know, so and only that far, and then they do it only as an opposite of the hatred for the enemy. So but they show it shows that you can shift the way the mind of a person is. And and but it's very hard for the military and it creates great suffering for the soldier because it means it to they just to do 2 opposite things at once. They have to cultivate their empathy for their fellow soldier and and citizen supposedly, but meanwhile hatred for someone else which means no empathy for them. Yes.
So they're they're they're puts them in an internal conflict right away. 100%. And then and that's p t then they come back with their PTSD, and then pretty soon they don't have empathy for anybody. And they're they're like like Rambo, you know? They're they're impossible.
If a sheriff is gonna get them, you know, they're gonna get the sheriff. They're gonna shoot the sheriff.
Dr. Mark Hyman
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Thank you again, and we'll see you next time on The Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center and my work at Cleveland Clinic and function health
Dr. Robert Thurman
where I'm the chief
Dr. Mark Hyman
medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guest opinions, and neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services.
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